Childhood and Future Fertility

The link between childhood and subsequent fertility rates.

With the recent study linking childhood diet and environment with subsequent adult fertility, I began thinking of our steadily rising infertility rates and wondered if the current junk childhood culture could be partly to blame.

Last year, in the UK, famous chef Jamie Oliver headed a campaign for children to have healthier diets, as most schools were serving up daily portions of fries, pizza and other fattening junk. Imagine my amazement, when watching the TV, as I saw parents protesting AGAINST healthy food and handing their children greasy fries through the school gates. One mother stood there, declaring that no chef was going to dictate to her what her child ate. She pushed a baby in a stroller, and the baby was drinking cola out of a bottle. I was speechless at that news report.

Surely a child is the most precious thing in the world? Feeding a one year old cola may have far reaching health implications, as would endorsing a 'fries everyday' lifestyle, but it is commonplace these days.

Even when you go into a restaurant, the children's menus are always all junk food: fries, sausage, pizza, tinned beans. If the quality of childhood diet is so important in determining when we reach puberty and how fertile we are, then why do we view pizza and fries as the standard 'kid's diet'? If what our child eats in the first 8 years is a factor in whether she is a subsequent IVF patient, then we should move away from the idea that kids will only eat junk food and they don't like vegetables.

Kids eat what you give them. They eat what they're used to. If you let them have sweets all the time, and you don't experiment with interesting and nutritious foods, then all they are going to want is pizza. My 5 year old refuses to eat hamburgers, even when offered by her friends, as I raised her vegetarian. It is her choice to remain so. My 11 year old was fed curry as a baby (home made, real curry, not takeaway) and it is now one of her favourite meals. If little Johnny will only eat hamburger, it's because that's what he's used to.

Others factors of 'junk childhood' may also be having an impact on fertility as we have replaced sports games with X-Box games. Children of a couple of decades ago would have spent time cycling or playing football, or making tree houses. Now they come in from school and want to watch TV, go on the computer or play their X-Box games. Not only does it rob them of a 'real' childhood, it denies them exercise, in turn reducing their natural endorphins, messing up the natural balance of their hormones, increasing their risk of childhood obesity, diabetes, depression, amongst other things. The constant bombardment of radiation from computers (even in schools), TV sets, consoles and cell phones also reduces their chances of parenting in the future.

The first generation of children brought up on frozen junk foods and with computers, was in the 1980's, and its these children who are now in their childbearing years.

Could this be why so many of us are now seeking assisted conception?