4 June 2015
Fertility and the Next Generation
by Lynda Goetz
There has been much coverage in the media since the weekend about female fertility. This has been prompted by Dr Geeta Nargund’s leaked letter to Nicky Morgan advising that schoolchildren should be made aware of the ‘fertility timebomb’ and that, if possible, women should start trying for a baby before they reach 30. Of course Dr Nargund is perfectly aware that this is not always possible, but she feels that the emphasis in sex education is based so much on how to avoid becoming pregnant that the other side of the coin is not addressed. As the lead consultant for reproductive medicine at St. George’s hospital, Tooting, she is obviously in a position to see the amount of heartache caused by those who have, for the sake of their careers or other reasons, left trying for children too late. As she points out, the treatment becomes more complicated and expensive the older the woman gets.
The reactions to this advice have been mixed. Bryony Gordon, a Telegraph feature writer in her 30s, has reacted with exasperation. She felt that she had been made only too well aware of the female ‘biological clock’ and that much of the information was exaggerated and part of some ‘patriarchal conspiracy to remind women that their main purpose is as a glorified womb’. However, the conclusion she came to was that men needed to be included in any education, since fertility was not simply a ‘wimmin’s issue’. She has a point.
Cristina Odone, writer, journalist and one-time editor of The Catholic Herald, in her 50s, took a rather different line. She felt that as a young woman and a product of the Eighties, she had focused so much on her career that she had neglected her personal life and very nearly missed out on having a child. She now has one daughter and wants to tell her to avoid the mistake she made. She will tell her daughter that she would have liked more children but that that was not possible because of the emphasis she had placed on her professional career. She will advise her that she cannot ‘have it all’, that essentially compromise may be inevitable.
My daughters are in their 20s. One is a vet, the other training to be a doctor. Neither of them sees their career as defining them as people. Both would, if possible, like children. Both are well aware that women’s fertility is not ‘forever’. I suspect that many of their generation may share their understanding, having seen mothers who were too busy to spend time with them, too preoccupied with work-related issues to pay proper attention to what their children were telling them, or simply too tired after work to fulfil meaningfully their role as a parent. I do not think that there are many who are going to say on their deathbed ‘I wish I’d spent more time focusing on work’, whereas I have a sneaking feeling that there might be a rather larger number wishing they’d spent more time watching and guiding their children growing up or indeed having children at all.
