Parents of IVF babies remain quiet on fertility issue

WHILE one Australian baby in 35 is now conceived through IVF, many parents still fear a stigma is attached to fertility problems.

Experts say that while about 10,000 women each year undergo the treatment nationally in an industry worth $40 million, many prefer to keep it a secret.

"There's a lot of secrecy around assisted conception and it's not entirely clear what percentage know their origins," said early childhood development expert Frances Gibson, who has conducted several studies of women on IVF programs at Macquarie University.

"Some people aren't sure how to put the words to it, how they will describe it."

As with adoption, Dr Gibson said children should know early about how they came into the world.

Telling children as soon as they started asking questions, often by the age of three, made it easier for them to discuss later on. By adolescence it was harder to alter their own sense of identity with new concepts, she said.

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