More women are deciding to have children on their own in Flanders, as per UZ Gent, UZ Brussels, ZNA Middelheim, and UZ Leuven.
According to sources, there are one-third more applications than during the epidemic, and some reproductive clinics have even increased their clientele since then.
In UZ Gent, 172 women requested fertility therapy last year. “This is a doubling from the 90 applications in 2017 and a fifth more from 2019,” said Dominic Stoop, director of the reproductive centre at UZ Gent. Nearly 100 applications have already been submitted in Ghent in the first half of 2022.
According to Stoop, “that is already more than the same period last year.”
The ZNA Middelheim and UZ Leuven fertility clinics have noticed the same tendency. Twenty-four applications were submitted to ZNA Middelheim to become single moms and get fertility therapy, which is nearly as many as the 26 applications received in 2021 and twice as many as there were before the epidemic.
Ingrid Inion, chief of the medical department, claimed that women are “obviously less disposed to allow their desire for a child depend on whether or not they have a partner.”
For several years in a row, UZ Brussels has received an average of between 650 and 800 applications. Six hundred thirty-four requests were made in 2020, while 782 were made in 2021. However, barely one-third actually begin the procedure. Four hundred sixty-three treatments were performed last year.
Herman Tournaye, a professor of fertility, stated that there are two causes for the high dropout rate. There is a thorough psychiatric examination to determine if someone can handle the care of a kid alone.
Tournaye mentioned in the statement, “For example, we sometimes see women who are socially isolated or even still live with their parents. Or women who no longer have parents and hardly have any friends have a small social safety net for the child in case something happens to them. You do not pass the screening if there is no social safety net.”
