By LOUISE JOHNSON
Like MamaMia writer Kate Hunter, I am a woman and a mother and I’ve had many conversations with other women about children and family. I also work in the field of assisted reproductive treatment and fertility, so my conversations with hairdressers, taxi drivers and people at parties usually touch on the subject of having children.
As the CEO of the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority and the spokesperson for the Your Fertility campaign, I read with great interest Kate Hunter’s article on MamaMia ‘The conversation no woman wants to have with her new boyfriend.’ That conversation being the one about whether he wants to have a family – and when.
Like many women around the world, Kate’s interest was piqued by a current UK advertising campaign ‘Get Britain Fertile’ in which 45-year-old British TV host Kate Garraway is depicted pregnant (and it has to be said, looking quite haggard!). The message behind the campaign is that women should start thinking about motherhood at a younger age than Kate Garraway’s generation did. In Kate Hunter’s article for MamaMia, she says the aim of the ‘Get Britain Fertile’ campaign was to ‘start a conversation’ about fertility and ‘how it declines markedly at age 25’.
As the Your Fertility campaign involves informing people about how age and lifestyle factors affect fertility, there are a few things I’d like to say in response.