More Danish women having donor babies alone

Numbers up 50 percent since 2013

According to new figures from the fertility firm Dansk Fertilitetsselskab, Danish women are less inclined to wait for a knight in shining armour to ride into their lives.

The figures showed that the number of children born to Danish single mothers using donor sperm has increased to 658 last year – up 50 percent from the 449 born in 2013.

“It’s new that life as a single mother isn’t the last resort. A lot of single mothers have listened to the advice of fertility doctors and have started having children earlier now,” Signe Fjord, who runs the website selvvalgtsinglemor.dk (self-appointed single mother.dk), told Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Experts point to Danish men wanting children, but wanting to wait until their education, careers, travel dreams etc. are on track – something that is making them less attractive to the opposite sex.

READ MORE: Still prohibited, is the tide slowly turning for commercial surrogacy?

For the best?
However, Lars Dencik, a professor at Roskilde University maintains the development might not be that great.

“We have introduced the option of fertilising single women in order to satisfy the woman’s need to realise herself. It’s not in the child’s best interest to be born to a single mother,” he told Jyllands-Posten.

Others contend that the phenomenon is down to a lack of attractive and well-educated men for the swiftly-growing number of strong well-educated women in Denmark.