Career breaks to avoid ‘infertility timebomb’

YOUNG women should be allowed career breaks to have children to help avert a looming fertility crisis, an expert said yesterday.

Professor Bill Ledger said the increasing age at which women were having their first babies was contributing to an “infertility timebomb.”

Threats to both female and male fertility could mean that in 10 years’ time as many as one in three couples would struggle to have children without IVF treatment, he said. The current figure is about one in seven.