Why more and more women feel they are being pushed to freeze their eggs
Forget the joy of sex, for an increasing number of young heterosexual women in Australia, freezing their eggs has become the first step to becoming a mum.
Fertility experts used to think the key reason for this was obvious.
Having fought the good fight for equal opportunity, women would be able to enjoy the benefits of successful careers for longer.
A growing number of heterosexual Australian women are no longer waiting for ‘Mr Right’ to start a family. Nine
Now though another reason has emerged.
There just aren't enough men out there genuinely committed to lasting relationships, who want to be dads.
The result is more and more older and single mothers.
Naomi always knew she wanted to be a mum one day, so at 36, she decided to freeze her eggs and hit pause on her biological clock.
By 43, she gave up searching for a partner and decided to push ahead with parenthood on her own.
Using her frozen eggs, she became pregnant on her first round of IVF with donor sperm and gave birth to Eli.
"It can be hard at times, probably the best, the most rewarding, empowering and scary decision that I've ever made," she said.
Shanise Coomans, 30, a registered nurse, said she's freezing her eggs to be proactive.
Women are opting to freeze their eggs to increase their chances of having babies later in life. Nine
"It's not coming from a place of fear. It's coming from a place of, I guess, being proactive and giving myself some choice," she says.
"I would really love to be a mum one day, definitely, but not at the expense of doing it with someone who's not the right person for me."
Being single, in your thirties and struggling to find a life partner is a place more and more young women are finding themselves.
So it's not surprising to see the egg freezing phenomenon now trending on social media.
Influencers are feeding an industry worth five billion dollars a year globally.
In Australia, new figures show demand for the procedure has increased by more than a third every year, since 2009.
Nine out of 10 women who froze their eggs in the past decade were single.
And incredibly, almost half of those who returned to use their eggs were prepared to take on motherhood by themselves.
With the lack of eligible partners and the biological clock ticking, more women are settling into single parenting. Nine
Dr Lynn Burmeister, owner of Number One fertility in Melbourne said it's important to inform women of the practicalities, however.
"That's something that we need to be very, very transparent that not all eggs that we collect will be a baby," she says.
Egg freezing now makes up half of Dr Lynn's business.
Every collection costs between $5000 and $15,000, a huge expense young women are having to fork out to buy themselves critical time.
Dr Devora Leiberman runs an IVF clinic in Sydney
She says women she sees simply have not found a partner to have a family with.
"I think to say that women are freezing their eggs because they're selfish and want to pursue a career, no, I think we busted that myth ages ago," she says.
"The most common reason that women give for freezing their eggs is they haven't found a partner to be the father of their children."
The Centre for Big Data Research in Health at the University of New South Wales has developed an IVF success tool that allows individuals to calculate how many cycles of egg freezing they may need to do and their chances of a baby from those eggs.
Statement from the Australian and NZ Assisted reproduction database
The statistics referenced in the 60 Minutes story are supplied by the University of NSW ANZARD research team.
The study utilised data from more than 20,200 women who undertook egg freezing procedures between 2009 and 2023 across Australia and New Zealand.
These findings are still under peer review and will be given general release in the coming weeks.
Watch the full episode of 60 Minutes on 9Now.
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