Modern couples looking to start a family are turning to IVF… because they are too busy for sex

Modern couples wanting a baby are turning to IVF – not because they are infertile but because they are too busy to have sex, according to experts.

Couples are advised to try to have sex around every three days to optimise their chances of conceiving.

But the pressure of being ‘always available’, checking emails out of hours and finishing to-do lists has left many people with flagging libidos and little time for passion.

The spare time they do have is often spent watching Netflix, experts fear.

The number of British couples turning to fertility treatment they do not really need simply because they do not have sex often enough to conceive naturally is thought to run into hundreds.

Charles Kingsland, chief medical officer at clinic group Care Fertility – speaking to the Daily Mail after giving a talk on IVF at the Fertility Show, a conference in London over the weekend – said: ‘People are having half as much sex as they did 30 years ago.

‘We have this culture where we talk about sex all the time on television and in magazines, but we don’t do it.

‘People don’t make the time because they are too busy and too tired – they have a poor work-life balance and sex starts to seem like another chore. There is no doubt that some people are opting for IVF simply because sex isn’t something they have time to do.’

Couples are advised to try to have sex around every three days to optimise their chances of conceiving

Another speaker at the conference, Allan Pacey, professor of andrology at the University of Sheffield, added: ‘There are people having sex less than once a week, only every few weeks, or not at all, because modern life has taken the joy out of it and there are too many other things like emails and work competing for our attention.

‘Couples I see now have very different expectations of what a healthy sex life is.

‘I have been concerned for a long time that they’re too busy to have the amount of sex compatible with having a baby, so potentially hundreds are turning to fertility treatment.’

The most recent National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles took place a decade ago.

It showed the proportion of women reporting not having had sex in the past month was 29 per cent – up from 23 per cent in 2001.

A more recent survey by YouGov, with results reported in 2020, found people in their late twenties are more likely than any other age group to have regular sex.

But this changes when people grow a few years older, with 35 to 39-year-olds the age group least likely to have had sex in the previous week.

Experts are concerned that Netflix may be destroying our love lives, with a study by the University of Lancaster in 2017 finding a ‘busy hour’ between 10pm and 11pm when people are thought to take their tablets to bed to stream TV shows.

Digital tickets are still available to watch online talks from the Fertility Show.