Educated women are freezing their eggs over a lack of suitable men

Your mam always said there were plenty more fish in the sea, but is that really the case?

Young professional women are freezing their eggs over a lack of suitable men, a US study has claimed. Ninety per cent of the women in a study at Yale University who had frozen their eggs told the researchers they had struggled to meet someone. The researchers suggested that an 'over-supply' of educated women and a 'dearth' of men with a similar background was causing women to put their fertility on ice. Prof Marcia Inhorn, who wrote the study, argued that this revelation debunks that women are holding off on having children to in order to pursue their careers. "Rather, they (are) desperately preserving their fertility beyond the natural end of their reproductive lives, because they (are) single without partners to marry,"she told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Geneva. Prof Adam Balen, president of the British Fertility Society, told the BBC that choosing to freeze eggs is "not a decision to be taken lightly."

"The technology in egg freezing has improved a great deal but it is still no guarantee of a baby later in life. "Women choosing to 'bank' eggs until they are ready to start a family have to go through painful procedures and what can be a difficult regime of medications - this is not without potential risks to the woman undertaking the procedure."