More single women over 40 are using IVF to have children without partners 

In 2023, the U.S. witnessed a surprising demographic shift: for the first time, women aged 40 and older had more babies than teenage girls.

Since 1990, the share of births to teenagers has drastically dropped—from 13% of all births to only 4% today—while the birth rate among women aged 40 to 44 has skyrocketed by 127%. Despite the overall fertility rate in the US decreasing to 1.62 children per woman, this group of older mothers continues to grow.

In remarks cited by NBC News, Elizabeth Wildsmith, a family demographer at Child Trends, admitted that “there’s a flip in the age distribution.” 

There's more to this trend than these statistics reveal: not only are more women over 40 having children, they are also turning more frequently to IVF to have these children — and, increasingly often, doing so without a partner.

Key Takeaways:

• More women 40 and over are having children — and many of these women are relying on IVF to have their children without the cooperation of a male partner. 

• Such an arrangement results in the child's fatherlessness from conception.

• IVF is a "commodities market," which puts the desires of adults over the well-being of children.

The Details:

A growing reliance on IVF

The traditional nuclear family is being reshaped, fueled by the onslaught of advanced reproductive technologies as women have an increasing reluctance to postpone childbirth while waiting for a partner who may never appear. In the United States, more women than ever before are using IVF to have children—and their numbers continue to rise.

Elaborating on the reasons why many single women choose to rely on IVF to have babies without the cooperation of male partners, Rosanna Hertz, a sociologist at Wellesley College and author of Single By Chance, Mothers by Choice, stated that nowadays, many women devote their 20s and early 30s to earning advanced degrees, advancing their careers, and exploring the world. 

Once these women are ready to settle down, “there’s no one to settle down with,” Hertz declared. “So, am I going to spend my time waiting for somebody to come along?”

Consequently, while IVF typically begins as a backup plan for many women, it often becomes the main route to parenthood as their biological clocks tick. Currently, IVF comprises almost 2% of all births in the U.S.—about 100,000 babies annually—and entails retrieving eggs, fertilizing them in a lab, vitrifying the embryos, and placing them into the uterus.

Over the past 10 years, use of this technology has risen by 50% with users including more LGBTQ+ couples and older single women. Nonetheless, this path to parenthood involves considerable financial and physical costs.

One round of IVF can cost anywhere from $15,000 to over $30,000, with many women bearing the massive financial costs single-handedly. This huge price tag has led to many women with advanced degrees being the most regular users of IVF, primarily because they have the financial means to pursue parenthood independently.

Intentionally creating fatherless children

From a pro-life viewpoint, the increase in IVF use among women over 40 who hope to become single mothers by design broaches a serious moral issue: IVF regularizes bringing children into the world with the knowledge that these children will never live with their fathers.

Unlike widows or women who find themselves single through abandonment or tragedy, these arrangements chart out fatherlessness from day one of the child’s conception. 

Pro‑life advocates and faith leaders contend that children deserve, as much as it is possible, to be born within the stable bonds of marriage. Both the father and mother can offer a child complementary love and protection. When a woman purchases sperm and uses IVF to have a child on her own, the father becomes a mere provider of genetic material, intentionally divorced from his traditional role as provider, protector, and good parental role model.

While the child may grow up loved by his or her mother, he or she may have to bear the lifelong burden of an absent father — not because tragedy struck, but because the mother’s desires were prioritized at the expense of her child. 

Pandering to adult desires

Additionally, IVF also recalibrates family bonds in ways that often blur or undermine them. Donors and surrogates divide and atomize the process of motherhood into genetic, gestational, and social parts, setting up confusing networks of adults with partial claims on the child.

Lawsuits over custody, payment, and “wrongful birth” after IVF reveal that when reproduction and conception involve contracts and clinics, children can become “products” and the “objects” of dispute among various parties, such as clinics, birth parents, and intended parents. 

Moreover, studies have proven heightened risks of preterm birth, negligible birth weight, and other health issues among IVF‑conceived children, as well as greater complication rates in mothers.

If we already view each embryo as a full human being, exposing them to elevated risk for the mere goal of pandering to adult wishes becomes morally questionable. The entire process of single-mother IVF, the disposable embryos, genetic screening, contractual arrangements, and deliberate fatherlessness is a commodities market in which adults’ goals are paramount. 

The Bottom Line:

A genuinely pro‑life response to infertility and delayed childbearing would sympathize with those who suffer, back life-affirming medical care that respects the sanctity of every human life, and explore alternatives like adoption or infertility treatments that do not create and dispose of embryos, thus honoring embryos as children worthy of love, and not commodities to be discarded.