“I’m not against having children, but I don’t want to just find someone to marry because time is up,” relates Nancy, a 38-year-old manager in the financial industry. Work gives Nancy a tremendous sense of satisfaction, yet it also keeps her too busy to meet a match. Plus, she has seen enough of the marriages of the friends around her fall apart as they live “faux single parent” lives, only solidifying her conviction to think carefully about marriage.

There are more and more women like Nancy who would like to have children yet cannot find anyone to marry.

In 2001, the average age of first marriages in Taiwan was 30.8 years for males and 26.4 years for females. Yet two decades later, the average has been delayed to 32.3 for men and 30.4 for women, respectively.

Not only has marriage been put off, but an even more prominent trend is unmarried elderly.

Unmarried is the new mainstream

Last year (2022), 55 percent of Taiwanese men and 41 percent of women between the ages of 30 and 39 were unmarried; the proportion was higher among twenty-somethings.

This has resulted in the unmarried rate among Taiwanese females aged 15 to 50 approaching 51 percent for the first time. In other words, not marrying is the mainstream for females, while marriage is outside the mainstream.

Delayed marriage is practically equivalent to delayed parenthood and having fewer children, and it could ultimately lead to missing the child-bearing age completely and not having children at all. This is why it is difficult to resolve the issue of Taiwan’s aging population.

Delayed marriage is a common phenomenon in advanced countries around the world. However, the progression of aging among highly educated women with active careers in the US and Europe is slower than that in Taiwan.

Various reasons can be given, such as better social welfare. In Sweden, for instance, new parents can get around 480 days of combined paid leave, and children one year or older can go to daycare without having to draw for places in a lottery.

Another reason is that in some countries, people do not equate having children to being married, as that concept is being replaced by more relaxed systems and freedom, while still enjoying certain legal safeguards for cohabitation and domestic partnerships.

Such factors have contributed to an average birth rate of almost 42 percent for unmarried women in OECD countries as of 2020. Among these, more than half of the women giving birth in France, Norway, and Sweden were unmarried, while in Taiwan, the rate has held steady under four percent for many years.

“Confucianism’s notions of marriage continue to influence Taiwan to this day,” offers Lee Yen-jong, director of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of General Equality Affairs. Today’s vernacular still contains phrases such as “marry and bear children,” binding the two together, and marriage is viewed as the foundation of family. Lee believes that if Taiwan promotes domestic partner law, it would give children born out of wedlock legitimacy and possibly help raise the birth rate.

However, in today’s Taiwan, the idea is still deeply rooted in society that people will look askance at children whose parents are not married. This has frightened some Taiwanese women from having children before they are married, and the fear of being unable to find a mate during child-bearing age has prompted more and more women to opt to freeze their eggs.

There is a private fertility clinic on the first floor of a sleekly designed building in Taipei’s Dazhi District.

Egg Freezing Business Up 500% in Three Years

Numerous young men and women come here to freeze eggs or undergo artificial insemination procedures. “At first, we expected that business would be down due to the pandemic, but it actually got better,” revealed Dr. Hsieh Chia-lin, director of the Stork Fertility Center Taipei Branch. Over nearly the last three years, Stork has seen a five-fold growth in clients freezing eggs, reaching 1,000 patients. Hsieh draws a connection between the considerable number of online “influencers” and celebrities sharing their experiences with freezing eggs and this rise.

However, Hsieh also admits that, although the success rate differs according to individuals’ age and physical condition, Taiwan’s overall artificial insemination success rate is currently around 40 percent.

This means that even after forking over a minimum of six figures (in NT dollars), it is possible to end up with nothing.

Still, TV anchor Wu Yu-shu, who recently succeeded in getting pregnant, encourages younger women to seize the opportunity while they are still young to freeze their eggs. Even if they do not have children in the future, it does not matter, she says, because freezing eggs “is like regret medicine.”

Egg freezing. (Source: Chien-Ying Chiu)

The cruel thing is that in Taiwan, women not in a heterosexual marriage do not even have the chance to try artificial insemination.

Legal barriers: singles and same-sex marriages cannot freeze eggs

Current Taiwanese law governing artificial insemination stipulates that only women currently in heterosexual marriages are permitted to use eggs they had frozen themselves.

At Stork, the usage rate for frozen eggs over the past decade is only around six percent, mainly when women cannot find someone to marry.

As Taiwanese law does not currently permit sperm donors, unmarried women looking to use their own eggs have no choice but to go abroad, which can cost at least NT$1 million, putting this option out of reach for most women.

Could the law be amended? Former legislator and current mayor of Hsinchu, Ann Kao, relates that discussion of frozen egg usage rights typically touches upon three levels: first is whether the user must have demonstrated fertility issues; second is whether same-sex marriages can use eggs for artificial insemination; and third is whether single women can use their eggs. Kao admits that laws allowing single women to use eggs for artificial insemination would have the most difficulty passing in the Legislative Yuan, “Because the Legislative Yuan has deep-seated notions of traditional families.”

Having exhausted various approaches and still unable to find a partner and successfully bear children, adoption has become another option for those looking to raise children.

Adoption barrier: myths of Taiwanese adoptive parents

Puma Shen, an assistant professor at the National Taipei University's Graduate School of Criminology, adopted a daughter. He believes that raising children is not about bloodlines but rather passing one’s values along.

However, the reality in the Chinese world is that concepts of bloodlines remain deeply held, and adoption is not popular in Taiwan.

“Children far outnumber adoptive parents in Taiwan right now,” admits Li Fang-ling, senior director of the Child Welfare League Foundation. Children awaiting adoption outnumber adoptive parents by two- or three-fold. And even where there is willingness to adopt, adoptive parents in Taiwan often have demands on children, such as young age, good health, and coming from a family with an untarnished history.

However, the reality is that only 20 percent of all children up for adoption meet the above criteria.
In 2022, among 203 adoption cases approved by the courts, half involved adoptive parents from abroad.

It is worth noting that single-parent adoption was potentially legally excluded previously. However, after regulations prohibiting discrimination of adoptive parents went into effect, last year adoption by single parents accounted for around 10 percent of all adoptions in Taiwan.

“Single adoptive parents must have a very mature character,” reminds Wan Yu-wei, director of the Department of Social Work at Tzu Chi University. Single adoptive parents must have a sufficient support network, stable income, and self-confidence, so that after the children grow up, they can feel free to seek out their roots.

From the mindsets of marriage to population policies, more conversations need to be started in Taiwanese society. (Source: Ming-Tang Huang)

Disinterest in bearing children among young people does not tell the whole story of Taiwan’s aging society. The reality is that set social frameworks make it increasingly difficult to bear children naturally. Consequently, artificial insemination and adoption are two avenues that today’s Taiwanese looking to have children are working hard to resolve.

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Have you read?

• Why so few women in Taiwan use their frozen eggs 
• Even as Birth Rates Decline, Overpopulation Remains a Global Challenge 
• The Fertility Effect of National Health Insurance in Taiwan

Uploaded by Ian Huang