The "need for a father"

There's been a lot of debate about the "need for a father", which fertility specialists have in the past had to take into account when they're considering whether to treat single women or lesbian couples. The latest legislation on IVF is being discussed in the House of Lords today, and there's controversy about removing the requirement to make sure a father is involved in the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

The leader of the Roman Catholic church has said it would be "profoundly wrong" to change the rules about the need for a father, but the reality is that around a quarter of children in the UK are currently brought up in single parent families. These one-parent families are not the result of fertility treatment, but of the disintegration of the traditional family unit.

When I was writing my book, The Complete Guide to Female Fertility , I interviewed dozens of single women who'd decided to have fertility treatment. Their awareness of their biological clocks, and the fact that they hadn't met the right partner in time, meant a stark choice between having a child alone, or not having one at all. None of them had gone into this lightly, and they had spent far more time thinking through the consequences for their children and working out how they would cope financially and emotionally than most of those who get pregnant naturally. Having a child without a partner may not be ideal, but it is a reality of life we cannot ignore.