Survey on women’s attitudes to having children

Fertility education is a global issue and this week we have launched a survey to ask women aged 25-45 about their attitudes to having children.

Globally women are having children later and later, but our fertility has not kept up with this change in culture, and female fertility declines with age. In the UK, 20% of women are childless, some by choice but some by circumstance. Last year we did a survey of women who were childless by circumstance and unfortunately it does not make happy reading (this paper is in press and will be out soon).

I am on a mission to ensure that women and men understand that female fertility decline is real and we need to increase awareness on how to get pregnant, and how to have a healthy pregnancy.

In 2016, myself and Adam Balen set up the UK Fertility Education Initiative under the umbrella of the British Fertility Society. Our co-chair is Professor of Health Psychology from Cardiff University, Jackie Boivin and our committee includes key stakeholders including Fertility Fest, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Fertility Network UK, Sexpression, Marie Stopes International, Sex Education Forum, Brook, Teenage Pregnancy Knowledge Exchange, Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH), Public Health England and Progress Educational Trust.

Why do we feel that fertility education is important?

The graph below is from the ONS database. The white triangles shows the mean age women had their first child in 1995 and the blue columns shows the same data for 2015. This age has increased in every country and in many it is over 30 years.

The global total fertility rate, which is the average number of children a woman has, is decreasing. One argument against fertility education is that there are too many people in the world. China operated a one child policy and had to abolish it as the country did not have enough young people to run the country. When I was a child, we used to say that a family was made up of 2.4 kids. The average fertility rate in Europe is 1.6, with countries such as Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Italy being around 1.3. This could be an economic issue for these countries.

Unfortunately, as a woman ages, the quantity and quality of her eggs declines. A woman will only ovulate about 500 eggs in her entire life. I do not want to give you the age when a woman’s fertility declines as this is one of the questions in our survey.

Why are women delaying having children? This is exactly what our survey asks. Two of the key questions in the survey are: ‘In an ideal world, at what age approximately would you like to have had/have children? This may be an age in the past or the future’ and’ Relating to reasons which may affect a women’s decision on having children, what are the top three that apply to you?’ Options include ‘my partner is not ready to have children’, ‘I do not have a partner’ and ‘I am developing my career”. The research is approved by UCL Ethics Committee and it is totally anonymous. I have developed the survey with Dr Sebastian Botero.

I am running a global fertility education campaign and we have designed a fertility awareness poster to start the conversation. The poster has been translated into over 30 languages and I am working with key countries to set up national fertility education initiatives. We will be making a male version of the survey and translating the survey into different languages later in the year.

If you are a woman aged 25-45, are considering having children at some point but do not have them yet, please can you complete our anonymous survey. The results of this work will be published in the scientific media and promoted in the popular media so we can improve fertility awareness.

Access the survey here.

Thank you so much for your help. Please can you share this on social media. We are aiming to get 1000 responses.