For years, a couple’s fertility problems have largely been blamed on women. Selfish women, putting off having children to pursue a career! Naughty women, not settling for Mr Not-Quite-Right even as the sound of the biological ticking gets louder! But how accurate it this? Now new research claims that men, and their delaying of parenthood, are just as responsible for fertility problems.

Around 49 per cent of IVF cycles carried out in Britain in 2014 were due to ‘male factors’, according to the latest records from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, according to the Daily Mail.

This is an increase from 31 per cent in 2010.

While traditionally women have been blamed for dwindling fertility, specialists are now claiming that men are also putting off parenthood, unaware that they have a biological clock that is also ticking.

Specialists claims the main reason for declining male fertility is that sperm counts and sperm quality decline with age.

Studies also that show women with older partners are more likely to miscarry, with their children at greater risk of birth defects.

The statistics are likely to be explained further later this month, when researchers at Yale Fertility Centre in the US, currently studying the extent to which paternal age affects fertility, present their results at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine congress in Salt Lake City.

Women who spoke to the Daily Mail claimed that their men have a problem of “kidulthood” – the women want to have children but their partners keep putting it off, wanting to continue with a youthful lifestyle and delay adulthood for as long as possible.

“The man I’m with still wants to play with his PlayStation.”

There are many in Australia who could certainly relate to that.