The Why Wait Agenda Podcast

Becky Kearns was 27 when she and her partner started trying for a baby. After being turned away twice by her GP and told to keep trying, she was eventually diagnosed with premature ovarian failure and began a taxing path through IVF, eventually turning to egg donation, and she and her partner now have three daughters. That journey turned her into a patient advocate: she founded DefiningMum, the on...

Best Fertility Counsellor 2025 award winner and BICA Chair Angela Pericleous-Smith joins The Why Wait Agenda to talk about the stigma still surrounding counselling, why she would never suggest a patient stop treatment, and the hope and fear that coexist in every fertility clinic. Behind every fertility clinic's doctors, nurses and embryologists there is often another professional working furt...

By age 37, 90 percent of a woman's eggs are already gone. Professor Joyce Harper – reproductive scientist and former infertility patient – joins The Why Wait Agenda to talk about the trauma of treatment, the age that matters, and why feeling healthy isn't the same as being fertile. Joyce Harper has dedicated her career to closing the fertility information gap. She teaches Reproductive Sc...

Fertility awareness is not taught in school. Most people only learn about contraception — never about how fertility actually works, or what can go wrong. Zoya Ali is trying to close that gap. At 23 she opened an Instagram account and started posting. «There was no thought», she says: that account, Uteropedia, has since grown into one of the most trusted voices on female reproductive health, follow...

The public conversation around infertility remains almost exclusively focused on women. Men sometimes get tested, receive a diagnosis – but after that, are largely sidelined. Ian Stones wants to change that. A fertility acupuncture therapist and one of the founding members of the Zita West Fertility Network, Stones is one of the co-creators of Test Him, a podcast dedicated to male infertility. Lau...

Approximately one in every six people experience infertility in their lifetime . In this episode of The Why Wait Agenda podcast we discuss the main causes of infertility – a disease of the reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse – with Karin Hammarberg, an Australian fertility expert and Senior Research Fel...

What have Constitutions got to do with people’s decision to have babies or not? Well, for example, the Italian constitution has an article that states: « Working conditions shall allow women to fulfil their essential role in the family», placing working women in a subordinate position to working men, who are free to work without being forced to fulfil any «essential role».  And an unequal househol...

Becoming a parent is first and foremost a decision to make. A choice. But what happens when our mind and our heart long for a baby, and our body simply does not cooperate? When it comes to fertility, wanting is not enough – choosing is not enough:  only 85% of couples will conceive naturally within a year of regular unprotected sex. No less than 25 million citizens are affected by infertility just...

Postponing parenthood is now a strong trend. The average age of women giving birth to their first child is steadily increasing: in the EU in 2020 it was 29.5 years, peaking above 31 in four European countries – Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Luxembourg. The rise in the average age at first child recorded worldwide does not favour women wishing to become mothers : the higher the average age when the...

Why do people postpone parenthood? Well before being the driver of The Why Wait Agenda, this question underpinned an academic paper published by a group of researchers to present the findings of their study of the causes, consequences and possible solutions of the significant delay in childbearing. Melinda Mills , now Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science of the University of O...

In this episode, journalist Eleonora Voltolina, founder of The Why Wait Agenda, explores the topic of paternity leave. Working women in their twenties and thirties are usually wary about having children for they know that once the baby is born, they’ll most likely be perceived as the main – or sole – caregiver. Women are often undervalued in the workplace precisely because the role of caregivers c...

Closing the fertility gap from a lay point of view: The Why Wait Agenda in a nutshell - The Why Wait Agenda ( www.thewhywaitagenda.org ) is a brand new social and editorial initiative aiming to spread information on the topic of natality and promote cultural, social and political action to tackle the root causes of the so-called “ Fertility Gap” . In this pilot episode, journalist and founder Eleo...

 “ Having kids is an asset to the workplace”: The Why Wait Agenda Meets Maam’s founder Riccarda Zezza - In this episode journalist Eleonora Voltolina, founder of The Why Wait Agenda ( https://www.thewhywaitagenda.org ), explores one of the most common reasons that lead people to pospone the decision of starting a family in Western countries: the fact that being a parent – and especially becoming a...