A group of leading doctors, fertility experts and campaigners have told the government that girls should be taught how and when to get pregnant in compulsory sex education classes.
The Fertility Education Initiative has warned that young women assume they will conceive whenever they want to, even though NHS figures reveal that one in seven couples struggle to have a child.
According to the FEI, fears over teen pregnancy and the increase in contraception has led to a rise in the age of women having children.
Leading doctors, fertility experts and campaigners have warned that young women are assuming they can easily get pregnant later in life
The experts told the government that this rise in age is a concern for the UK as it can lead to emotional pain in people who can’t conceive, no matter how much they might want to.
With teenage pregnancy in Britain a historical problem, schools have been very careful about ensuring students are aware of contraception and the risks of accidental pregnancy.
However, the FEI believes that this has made sex education lessons in schools one-sided.
The FEI is part of the British Fertility Society and is in partnership with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health, which trains doctors and nurses.
Members of the FEI include Jessica Hepburn, who went through 11 rounds of unsuccessful treatment, and Gabby Vautier, mother of three-year-old IVF twin girls.
In 1976, the average age for a woman in the UK to have a child was 26. Now, this has increased to 30 with a fifth of women reaching 45 without having a child.
However, research shows that one in seven families struggle to have a child and that some women are wrongly assuming that they can use IVF to conceive later in life
According to research, the best age for childbearing is believed to be 20-35.
Meanwhile, the teenage pregnancy rate has dropped to a record low.
It fell to 21 in 1,000 in 2015. This is half the rate it was in the 1990s, which triggered a government sexual education initiative involving schools, youth services and sexual health clinics.
To add to the problem, research has also uncovered a misconception over the success rate of IVF.
In the UK, a fiftieth of all babies born each year are conceived through IVF, however the research showed that a third of women thought that up to a fifth of babies were born from IVF or donor insemination.
Ms Hepburn told the Times: ‘We are failing young people because important fertility information is missing from this education. They urgently deserve the full story about fertility and its limits, so that they can make informed decisions about their future.
There are growing calls in the UK from campaigners and academics who believe there should be a more balanced approach to sex education. Geeta Nargund, one of the UK’s leading consultant gynaecologists, has said there should be fertility lessons on the national curriculum while other expert have are worried about women postponing a family until their late thirties and early forties.
The Department for Education said its consultation had been ‘extensive’ and it wanted the new lessons to ‘help children deal with the challenges they face in modern Britain’.