Why I want to give my daughter an egg-freezing voucher for Christmas

On Christmas morning, when I ask my daughter how she’d like her eggs, I’m hoping she replies, “Fertilised”… because that’s the present I’d really like to give her – an egg-freezing gift voucher.

When I get together with women my age, so many of us are singing the same tune, it’s like being in a new version of the musical Frozen. Our main refrain is that we’re worried about when – and if – the snooze alarm is going to go off on our daughters’ biological clocks. My own darling daughter is 32. I’d had two marriages and two children by that age. But she’s still happily dating and very much in demand.

And she’s part of a trend. Women are having fewer babies, later. The Office for National Statistics reports that the number of births per 1,000 women aged 20–24 fell by about 79 per cent between 1964 and 2023. Overall fertility rates in England and Wales have also dropped to record lows, meaning the average number of children a British woman is expected to have in her lifetime is now 1.44 – the lowest since records began. What has increased, though, is the average age of mothers, with more births occurring in the mid-thirties and beyond.

But eggs have a use-by date. While Rupert Murdoch or Donald Trump could father a child tomorrow, for women, fertility noticeably decreases in the late thirties, and by 40, the likelihood of conceiving each month naturally becomes substantially lower. Yet more proof that God is a bloke.

And yet so many young women ignore the deafening tick-tock. When I talk to my younger female friends, their reasons for delaying motherhood are entirely understandable. For some, it’s an economic decision: childcare is a “creche” course in how to go broke fast. And it’s not just housing costs and nursery fees making parenthood more challenging either, there’s job insecurity too. Fall off the ladder and it’s hard to get a badly pedicured foot back onto a rung again. Some businesses, such as Goldman Sachs and Facebook, are so keen to retain valued female employees that they offer health insurance covering several cycles of egg harvesting – giving a whole new meaning to “frozen assets”.

Our daughters’ reluctance may also stem from watching their own mums desperately trying to juggle kids and careers without dropping anything. Working mums juggle so much, we could be in Cirque du Soleil. My generation thought we were going to Have It All… but we just ended up Doing It All. The sad truth is that women face a second glass ceiling at home, too. Even though we make up 50 per cent of the workforce, we’re still doing about 99 per cent of the housework, childcare and emotional labour too.

One solution is universal, free childcare, as New York’s inspiring mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has pledged to introduce. Another is to improve paid paternity leave – I say perhaps make it mandatory – so men contribute equally to raising children. At the moment, society expects women to work as if we don’t have children and raise children as if we don’t work. I don’t want to limit my daughter’s choices or put a timer on her romantic life, but nor do I want her to miss out on the joys of motherhood. So why not buy some peace of mind about future fertility by whacking a dozen or so eggs in the freezer? Because the price tag is one that many women can’t afford. Most clinics quote £3,000–£6,500 for a single cycle, and annual storage can cost between £125 and £600 – as if having a child wasn’t already expensive enough. If men were the ones who gave birth, IVF would undoubtedly be publicly owned and free for all men.

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More mums like me are prepared to help with those costs to buy their daughters more time. Even if my daughter eventually wants to go it alone, there’s no longer any stigma attached to being a single mum. Access to sperm banks – finally, a bank we gals can really count on – means women no longer have to settle for second best. I well remember the panic that set in among my single girlfriends in their early thirties. Suddenly, they were no longer looking for Mr Right, but Mr Kinda-OK, Mr Slightly Bearable, Mr Yeah-He’ll-Do-Because-He’s-Got-Kind-Eyes. Forget beer goggles – this is a serious case of baby goggles. Basically, if the guy had his own teeth and didn’t collect Nazi memorabilia, it was a case of: “Well, what’s not to love?”

Nordic sperm tops the most desirable donor list worldwide (a case of designer genes?) But I tell my daughter that gay best friends are also a good option. She has a gorgeous gay bestie. I refer to him as my “sperm-in-law”. Fertilised eggs have an even better chance of successful hatching, so I’m, er, egging him on.

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A close friend of mine in her forties can’t believe the time she wasted looking for a potential partner who didn’t turn out to be secretly married, wanted by Interpol, or a closet druid, Klingon or Reform voter. She has recently defrosted the fertilised eggs she banked a decade earlier as a safeguard. Nor will she be going through the motherhood journey alone. Female friends have rallied around. We attend every scan, blood test and, most recently, the egg implantation. And what a great gaggle of godmothers we’ll be.

Of course, I’m aware that egg freezing is prohibitively expensive for many and isn’t 100 per cent successful, but it is one of the fastest-growing fertility treatments in the UK, having roughly doubled since 2019. Age matters, however. A recent clinical study found that for women who froze eggs under the age of 35, the chance of having a baby can be as high as 57 per cent. Hence, my Christmas gift coupon idea.

With the world teetering on ecological collapse, terrorist threats and wars raging, I understand why young women are reluctant to procreate. But being a parent is honestly the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. I tell my daughter that nothing can prepare you for the great joy that squeezes into your bone marrow when your child says they love you. Parenthood is the greatest love affair you’ll ever have – for life. Unconditional (well, as long as they don’t take up the bagpipes, drums or the descant recorder).

Of course, offspring must always remember that “perfect mothers” exist only in American sitcoms, but I so want this joy for my own darling daughter. It’s a foetal attraction that lasts a lifetime – even if the use of a freezer gives a whole new meaning to “Frosty the Snowman”.

Happy Blooming (I wish!) Christmas.

Kathy Lette’s latest novel, ‘The Revenge Club’, is published by Bloomsbury