If you want grandchildren, pay for IVF for your ageing daughters

Would-be grandparents funding IVF treatments? Sounds wonderful. It is in the best tradition of families caring for each of their members and I’m delighted to see that such coherent and selfless families still exist.

There is already plenty of evidence that they do, of course. Grandparents account for a third of all childcare, taking on the burden of noisy toddlers to free up their daughters or daughters-in-law to go to work.

Wealthier grandparents regularly pay for private school fees, perhaps even hoping the offspring will follow in their shoes . . . to Eton, Harrow, St Paul’s. Even at the local comprehensive, grandparents may fund the extras: piano lessons, football coaching and school trips. The time to be generous is while children are young. Why hoard your money until the need has passed, only to hand it over in death duties?

If daughters get to 35 before wanting children, they are more likely to need IVF. And the cost is soaring. By then, of course, would-be grandparents are holding their breath with hope and apprehension. The yearning to be a grandparent can be powerful, news of friends and relatives becoming grannies and grandads hard to bear.

But there is a caveat: IVF is stressful and often disappointing. Would-be grandparents must face the prospect of their money being lost. More importantly, their own end-of-life care is likely to be more costly than they imagine. Living longer will mean providing for more years without earnings: middle-aged people aren’t saving enough to provide for themselves, let alone their offspring.

As a consequence it’s only the really well-off who can afford to pay for their children’s IVF. And longing for a child pays no regard to money.

I feel sorry for those without the means.

Joan Bakewell , Times Online, UK