Anne, a 45-year-old director at an investment bank, had been trying to find a partner for more than a decade to start a family. She tried online dating and cast her net wide – but the catch was usually underwhelming.
The men she met either felt emasculated by her success, lacked ambition or could not do their own laundry. An ex-boyfriend even complained that she should be more “feminine” about her career.
“I would have liked to have met a lovely man and had a supportive husband and a father for my children. I just didn’t see how any of those relationships weren’t going to end up in divorce… potentially murder,” she shrugs.
“You start making yourself smaller so that men can deal with the fact that you’ve had some achievements in your life.”
She refused to give up on motherhood, however.
Having her two-and-a-half-year-old son, who she describes as the love of her life, took multiple rounds of IVF, cost thousands of pounds, and came with periods of considerable grief and uncertainty before eventually being successful.
But for Anne, it was empowering: “There is this sort of ‘oh poor you’ [attitude]. There’s an association that there is a sob story if you’re a single parent,” she says.
“I have friends who are in broken marriages and they’ve had ex-partners who have been abusive, or are just feckless men, drinking and not turning up to see their child regularly. I just think ‘thank God I’m not in that scenario’,” she says.
Anne’s choice is an increasingly common one. More women are pursuing their dreams of motherhood even if they find themselves out of luck with love.
Data from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) shows that from 2008 to 2020 the number of rounds of IVF and donor insemination by single women in the UK more than doubled, from 1171 to 2385.
They are still only a small share of the total, at 4 per cent, but the increase marks a growth of 102 per cent over only 13 years.
It far outpaces the rise among heterosexual couples, at 9 per cent, and surrogates, at 60 per cent. Only among female couples has the growth been even more rapid, at 336 per cent.
While official data on what happened during and after the pandemic is yet to be published, consultants at fertility clinics say they have seen demand from single women rise.
It never feels like a sad choice… I actually think [women] feel really empowered by it.
“What we saw during and maybe coming out of the pandemic was definitely more single women either being concerned with preserving fertility or thinking to themselves: ‘you know what, I’m actually just going to go for this by myself’,” says Emma Kafton, patient services director and co-founder of The Evewell, a fertility clinic in London.
The women she sees who embark on motherhood alone are determined and tend to see it as a positive decision, she says.
“It never feels like a sad choice… I actually think they feel really empowered by it.”
Kafton says: “I always say to women who are in that situation that they need to find their people. Just because you don’t have a partner doesn’t mean you don’t have people around you who can be a massive support.”
Figures from King’s Fertility, a fertility clinic in London, show that - relative to 2019 - treatments for single women rose by 98 per cent in 2021 and 53 per cent in 2022.
King’s Fertility director Ippokratis Sarris says that while numbers only provide a small snapshot that is not necessarily nationally representative, the pandemic accelerated the trend for several reasons.
The savings many people accumulated during the pandemic would have put more women in a position where they could afford treatment, he says.
Working from home also helped remove practical obstacles: “To do the fertility treatments, no matter which kind, you need a number of very frequent visits to the clinic over a short amount of time. A lot of the time that was very difficult for people,” he says.
Many women do not want to tell their employer that they are trying to conceive for fear of discrimination. Remote working made hiding it much easier.
“Our waiting room was pretty much full of people doing conference calls,” Sarris says.
Leanne Harrison, a 39-year-old woman who is self-employed and runs her own digital marketing company, first decided to freeze her eggs during the pandemic, thinking it would buy more time in case she met the right partner.
If I’m able to start my own business, I’m able to be a mum too.
But three years later, she is now about to start treatment on her own to have a baby.
“I’ve always wanted to be a mum,” she says. “I was starting to find things quite stressful. So even when I was dating I had, in the back of my mind, my age and the fact that I wanted a family. It puts a lot of pressure on things. So I just decided instead of waiting for somebody to come along I’m just going to do this on my own and embrace the journey.
“I am a little bit terrified. But I’m also excited because I know it’s the right thing for me. If I’m able to start my own business, I’m able to be a mum too.”
The rise in solo mothers reflects changing societal norms and was also helped by a change in UK law in 2008, says Clare Ettinghausen of the fertility treatment regulator HFEA.
The large costs still act as a barrier, however: “There’s very little NHS funding for single patients. So most people are paying for treatment themselves, which is expensive,” Ettinghausen says.
This is reflected in the official numbers, too: the share of single women undergoing fertility treatment through the NHS, rather than at a private clinic, is tiny, at 6 per cent.
The high price tag means some women desperate to have a child go outside regulated services to find donors, for instance using Facebook groups to find men, at great personal risk.
“We know that there are cases of physical and sexual assault and even rape. There are obviously no health screening checks that have taken place and there’s also no clarification over who the legal parents are for any child [subsequently] born,” Ettinghausen says.
Figures from the UK’s Office for National Statistics show that increasing numbers of people are neither married nor live with a partner, rising by 18 per cent from 3.8 million in 2002 to 4.5 million in 2020.
Meanwhile, the birth rate is near record lows and the average age of first-time mothers has risen to the highest-ever figure, at 30.7 years.
These shifts partially reflect a society where it’s difficult to have children, says Christiaan Monden, a professor of sociology and demography at Oxford University.
High housing costs, insecure employment and costly childcare all contribute to this, he says.
But birth rates are even declining in countries with good childcare provision, generous parental leave and lower housing costs.
“There is also just this general trend that many things are pushed back in your life course,” Monden says, adding that there is no silver bullet for reversing these societal changes.
For those like Anne who spent years feeling underwhelmed by the dating experience, Monden’s research also holds an explanation.
As more women rise into high-powered jobs, are over-represented in higher education and have financial independence, there is a reason why it feels like all the good men are gone.
The lack of donors has always been a problem and I don’t see that becoming any better.
“The saying is ‘opposites attract’, but if we look at who actually marries whom, or lives with whom, that is not really the case,” says Monden.
“People are much more likely to live with or marry somebody of relatively similar educational level. If there are mismatches then you run the risk of not finding that partner. The tables in some ways have turned. That will have its effect on family formation.”
Such trends – which happen very gradually – are unlikely to change unless there is a wider shift in the labour market or education, he says.
All the research points to an increasing number of single women pursuing motherhood. Yet a shortage of donor eggs and semen could pose a challenge, says Sarris.
“The lack of donors has always been a problem and I don’t see that becoming any better. If anything, it might become worse,” he says.
Changes to UK privacy laws mean donor children born 18 years ago now have the right to know where the other half of their genetics comes from.
Even if the laws had not changed, the rise of websites and apps allowing people to test their DNA and find distant relatives would have effectively largely ended anonymous donation, he says.
The changes are likely to put some people off, he believes. Meanwhile, demand is likely to continue rising.
The cost associated with going through fertility treatment and raising a child alone also means it is inaccessible to many. The cost of living crisis is likely to raise the barriers further.
“I’m a director in a bank and I shop at Aldi. I have to count every single penny,” Anne says.
With parents in their 80s and no family around, she pays £1600 (NZ$3213) a month to send her son to nursery.
Despite the challenges, Anne only has one regret: “I wish I’d done it earlier. I wish that I could give him a brother or sister.”
When her son starts asking questions as he gets older, she will tell him: “Mummy did not have all the right ingredients, she went to the doctor and somebody did a kind thing.”
