[Female age - related fertility decline: Far from the myth of the "selfish working-girl" and the "right to have a child"]

[Parental project of general medicine residents from Aix-Marseille university: Theoretical knowledge in reproduction and behavior towards parenting]

OBJECTIVES

Analyze residents' intentions about parenting and knowledge about fertility, as well as their alleged behavior towards a diagnosis of diminished ovarian reserve.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Prospective study with distribution of self-administered questionnaire to residents of Aix-Marseille university from June to September 2015. The questionnaire was composed of a first descriptive part including generic and personal informations about the residents and their intentions towards parenting. The second part was a 9 questions survey aimed at testing their knowledge about fertility and ovarian reserve and a final question placing them in a situation of a diminished ovarian reserve diagnosis in order to analyze their reactions.

RESULTS

The overall participation rate was 53.2%, including 220 women with an average age of 27 years (SD: 1.8 years) and 116 men with an average age of 27.3 years (SD: 2.2 years). The 11.8% of female residents (n=26) already had one or more children vs.6.9% of male residents (n=8). Among the residents without children, 99% of females (n=192) and 91.7% of males (n=99) said they wanted to have children in the future, planning an average age to have their first child of 29.6 years (SD: 1.9 years) for females and 30.4 years (SD: 2.2 years) for men. Moreover, 58.3% of female residents (n=112) and 53.5% of male residents (n=53) reported that they were postponing their plan to have children after the completion of their medical studies. In a simulation of couples facing a diagnosis of diminished ovarian reserve, 73.6% of females and 61.2% of males would be ready to change their life choices and conceive a baby sooner than originally planned.

CONCLUSION

Almost all the general medicine residents have plannedto have children in the future and more than half of them postpone their parental plan after the end of their residency, although the decline of female fertility in relation to aging is widely known among them.