Nicola Alpe: Is fertility the new inequality?

OPINION

I hadn't heard of Fertility Inequality before but when Jessie Stephens, co-host of Australian podcast "Mamamia Out Loud", referred to it the other day it got me thinking that, yes, fertility is anything but equal.

Jessie's problem - or existential crisis may be a better way to describe it - is that as a woman in her early 30s her biological clock has switched from digital to analogue. In a serious relationship with a partner younger than her, who's not ready for the commitment of children yet, she's feeling nervous about missing her window altogether.

It's a cruel joke that Mother Nature has played upon us: that men of any age can become a father, while women have a defined window. Men have the luxury of waiting decades to find the right woman or to decide whether they are ready to shake off their Peter Pan Syndrome and admit that they want to breed altogether.

Women waste many peak biological baby-making years because we are either actually too young to look after a baby, or society deems us too young. We are told or feel that we need to have achieved everything we can hope to career-wise before we step off to raise children. At the other end of things, when we have travelled, waited to find the right person and have reached glorious heights in our careers, only then do we start a mad sprint for the finish line to conceive not only one but, hopefully, multiple children in a rush, lest our reproductive organs knock off for good.

I've been reminded of the inequality of fertility in recent weeks, with Kyle Sandilands expecting a child at the age of 50 and Naomi Campbell discussing her motherhood journey at the age of 51. While Campbell and other high-profile mothers aren't under any obligation to share the intimate details of the workings of their ovaries, by not being open and up front about fertility, surrogacy, and egg donation, it gives regular women the world over false hope that they will continue to be able to menstruate, ovulate regularly, and bear children so late in life. Janet Jackson, 50, Laura Linney, 49, and Halle Berry, 46, grab headlines and, with them, the hearts of hopeful women whose clocks are ticking.

Nicole Kidman and Celine Dion broke ranks and shut down speculation and false hope by admitting to using a surrogate and undergoing six rounds of IVF respectively. Currently Chrissy Tiegan, 36, is undergoing IVF again in the hope of expanding her family at an age that many women, including myself, are looking to get pregnant or are having their first child.

As if the biological clock isn't enough to contend with, young women are now encouraged to freeze their eggs in their late-20s and early-30s, which in itself is a truly marvellous scientific advantage - but can run close to $20,000 once the cycle, storage, defrosting, fertilising and transferring is accounted for. A different kind of inequality, for sure, but it's another heavy burden for young women to bear mostly alone, alongside saving for house deposits and life in general.

New Zealand faces an ageing population and at the same time it's implied that women can have it all, including having children well into our 40s and even 50s. I hate to bring another inequality to the table for us all to be sympathetic to and understanding of but Jessie Stephens is right, and she is right to be worried about it.