Boom: There is now, on average, one set of twins per class in British schools.
My godson George, aged eight, is a
non-identical twin. He’s not alone. That’s not a gag from
#kidswritejokes. He obviously has his twin William to keep him company,
not to mention their younger brother Henry who, as George put it, “would
have been a triplet if Mum hadn’t put him in a special fridge”.
But George is not alone in another sense, too. Over the last 40
years, the twinning rate has roughly doubled in the world’s wealthiest
countries, leading to a veritable twin boom. There’s even a festival celebrating twins, this weekend in the Ohio city of – you guessed it – Twinsburg.
It won’t come as a surprise to most people. Given that there is now,
on average, one set of twins per class in British schools, most of us
know at least one family that has them. For the first time, however, a
team of academics from France, the UK and the Netherlands has gathered data on the phenomenon from around the world.
Their analysis, published in the Population and Development Review,
has fascinating things to say about how the trend has played out
differently in different countries, but also reveals one pattern that
holds across the industrialised world: starting in 1970 - a low point in
20th century twinning - the rate increased rapidly to reach a peak in the first decade of the Noughties.
The reasons for this boom are twofold, say the authors, Gilles Pison,
a demographer at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, and his colleagues. The
one we all know about is the explosion in medically assisted
reproduction (MAR) - the umbrella term for in vitro fertilisation (IVF)
and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and hormonal treatments
designed to stimulate ovulation.
The boom has added 60,000 twin pairs to the population of England and Wales since 1970
MAR increases the chances of a
multiple birth simply because it tends to increase the number of embryos
implanted simultaneously in the womb. But another factor has driven the
boom too: the advancing age of first-time mothers.
In England and Wales, this hit 30 in 2013, meaning that women having
their first baby in that year did so three years later, on average, than
their mothers.
Female fertility begins to fall off steeply in the early 30s, but
because of hormonal changes in older women, which mean they are more
likely to produce two eggs rather than one in a given cycle, they are
also more likely to have twins - an effect that peaks around 37.
Overall, the effect of MAR in driving the twin boom has been about
three times as important as that of rising maternal age, but there is
enormous variation between countries. In Japan, researchers estimate the
boom is 10 parts MAR to one part older mothers, whereas in Catholic
Poland (where MAR is not popular), mother’s age is the dominant factor.
In England and Wales, 60 per cent of the increase is down to MAR, 40
per cent to maternal age - figures that give the lie to a widespread
assumption that twins are always the product of IVF.
As Norland nanny and twin consultant Claire Burgess explains, this
assumption manifests itself as a tendency to ask twin parents, “Are they
natural?” - a question that, as she points out, we don’t feel entitled
to put to the parents of singletons.
We're experiencing a twin boom (posed by models)
The boom has added an estimated
60,000 twin pairs to the population of England and Wales since 1970. The
majority are non-identical, those who, like George and William, are the
happy outcome of two eggs being fertilised. Identical twins - the
result of one fertilised egg splitting - are rarer, though the twinning
rate in their case has also increased over the last four decades, for
reasons that aren’t entirely clear.
So what has been the impact of those 120,000 suspiciously similar-looking individuals on the population?
We love the idea of twins, but they are pernickety - at least to
begin with. Because of the added strain they impose on their mother’s
body, they are more likely to be born prematurely, at lower weights and
suffer complications at birth.
There’s now good evidence that these are associated with health
problems in later life, and because they can affect brain development, a
lower level of educational attainment. Twins’ risk of dying in the
first year, though small, is four times greater, and for this reason the
twin boom has put the brakes on a positive, longer term trend: “The
increase in the frequency of twins in developed countries has certainly
slowed the decrease in infant mortality across all children,” explains
Prof Pison.
The cumulative stress, potentially, of the IVF process with its
success rates in the 20 to 30 per cent range, miscarriages,
bereavements, anxious time spent in the neonatal intensive care unit,
and the sheer expense of two babies instead of one, takes its toll.
Mothers of twins are twice as likely to develop post-natal depression
and twin parents have a higher risk of divorce. Recognising the strain
the boom has placed on families, in 2014 the Norland Agency for nannies
and the UK’s Twins and Multiple Births Association (TAMBA) teamed up to
create an initiative called Helping Hands, to support families with
multiples, in crisis.
Jules Chappell OBE considers
herself one of the lucky ones. Formerly Britain’s youngest ambassador,
when she took up the post in Guatemala aged 31, she is now back in
London and mother to six-month-old non-identical twins Lily and
Charlotte.
The 37-year-old tells me the last time she knew such fatigue, she was
part of a team working round the clock to help Iraqis rebuild their
wartorn nation. Once, she was so tired she tried to open her front door
by swiping it with her Oyster card. And she had an uncomplicated birth,
has an “amazing” husband, a good family support network and no other
children.
The school years bring the difficult question of whether or not to
separate twins. In Cornwall, where George and William live, their
nursery had a single class per year, so there was no choice. From the
start, says their mother Yasmina, George began answering for William,
with the result that William’s speech was delayed: “He never got a
look-in, and started retreating into his shell.” Later, at primary
school, they were separated. “William never looked back, and it was
George who struggled to begin with.” Now they’re back in class together,
and making good progress.
Many schools enforced separation in the past, believing twins
developed better apart. The data on this is very mixed, however, and
there is growing recognition that each case is different, that the
solution may be different at different stages of education, and that
parents know what’s best. In 2014, after a decade of campaigning by
TAMBA and others, the government published a schools admissions code
that included a provision to stop the forced separation of multiples at primary school.
But life with twins isn’t all
bother. Fathers can feel less excluded than with singletons, because
it’s a case of all hands on deck, and as they get older they constitute a
“self-entertaining module”—to quote George and William’s dad, Aldwin.
If twins are identical, there are unique employment opportunities open
to them. Name any long-running TV show that features a small child, says
Sandra Mooney of the PC Theatrical Model and Casting Agency, and the
chances are that he or she is played by identical twins. British law
prohibits children from working more than a few hours a day, so
production companies look for twins who can alternate. Young George
Crawley in Downtown Abbey was played by two sets of identical
twins. Ms Mooney has experienced the twin boom as a steadily growing
volume of unsolicited approaches from parents.
But at some point twins have to make their own way in the world. Does
that special bond give them a headstart? Again, there’s not much
research, but some twins certainly think so. Non-identical twins Philip
and Andrew Oliver are among Britain’s most successful developers of
video games - the inventors of the successful Dizzy series. When they
started out in the 1980s, they say, they had a natural advantage over
their competitors, because they could split the cost of an expensive
computer, challenge each other to games and “praise each other, when we
did something clever, in a way that was motivating and not hollow”. They
could pull off in two months what took others a year.
Bestselling French crime writer Fred Vargas once told me that her
twin, the artist Jo Vargas saw the first draft of every book she wrote.
“She says, this is great, but I don’t understand this bit, or that
bit leaves me cold,” said Fred. Twins often point to the honesty of
their relationship.
Seeing double? Uncanny doppelgängers.
March 2015
When Neil Richardson, 69, moved to Braintree, Essex he was constantly greeted by strangers who insisted on calling him John.
John Jemison, 74, is the spitting image of Mr Richardson and lives
just miles away. When they finally met, they even discovered that they
had attended the same college.
October 2015
Two passengers seated next to each other on a flight were shocked to discover they looked exactly like one other.
The ginger-bearded men took a grinning selfie together on the flight,
which was posted on social media by the friend of our hero's wife.
October 2015
Ciara Murphy, from Ireland and Cordelia Roberts, from the UK met while studying in Germany.
When they went out for drinks, people asked them whether they had a
twin or a sister staying nearby. The two eventually met and posted a
selfie on Facebook.
December 2015
Sara from Sweden traced her doppelgänger, Shannon from Ireland, through the website Twin Strangers.
"Our noses, our eyes... we have the exact same ears... lips,
expressions, pout, smile... it's just weird," said Shannon, after the
pair met up in Dublin.
January 2016
A photo of Leonardo DiCaprio's
"doppelgänger" - a Russian policeman - set Twitter alight, with users
wondering if this is what the 41-year-old actor would look like if he
had not found fame.
There are downsides, of
course. “You can become a bit of a circus act,” say identical twins
Nicola and Teena Collins. “People are always comparing you - ooh, you’re
a bit fatter than her, aren’t you?”
Romantic relationships can also be complicated: “Men find it really
intimidating. It takes a secure, level-headed guy to come into
this.” But 30-somethings Nicola and Teena, who are currently both
single, console themselves with a theory, adding: “We don’t think we
have the same yearnings as singleton girls.”
When I asked George and William if they could imagine ever being
married, they split their sides laughing: “Maybe we could all live
together in one big house?” There are twins who dislike each other, but
none of those I spoke to could imagine living apart, and this is their
Achilles’ heel. When one twin dies, the other is bereft—and the little
research there is on the subject suggests it can be more debilitating
than the loss of any other relative, except a spouse.
The twinning rate has slowed since that peak in the early 2000s. It
has levelled off in many developed countries, and in some, such as
Sweden and the Netherlands, it has gone into decline. The reason is that
many countries began to revise their attitudes towards MAR in the light
of better knowledge of the risks associated with multiple births.
Governments, including in Britain, began to promote a “one-at-a-time”
policy - advising fertility doctors to return no more than one IVF
embryo to a woman’s womb.
This coincided with advances in IVF technology. In the late 1980s,
says Joyce Harper, an embryologist at University College Hospital (and
mother of IVF twins herself), there was no way of knowing which was the
best in a batch, and hence which was the most likely to “take”, so you
put back more in the hope that at least one would - accepting the risk
of a multiple birth. It is now much easier to select the best embryo,
use frozen embroys and filter out those with chromosomal abnormalities.
“The embryos we had 20 years ago were not the embryos we have today,” adds Prof Harper.
New IVF techniques will impact the number of multiple births.
In the UK, the government’s Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which licenses fertility
clinics, strongly recommends a one-at-a-time policy, but it is not
legally enforced. In Sweden, where it has been since 2003, the data is
striking: despite fewer embryos being put back, the chances of a birth
remain the same, while the risk of multiple IVF births has been all but
eliminated.
Prof Harper thinks we should take a lesson from the Swedes. “We are
interfering with nature,” she says. “It is not good practice to create a
multiple birth when you have the technology that allows you to create
two healthy single ones.”
The boom is taking a little longer to peak in Britain, perhaps
because of the relatively large contribution of twins born naturally to
older mothers. Unlike access to MAR, the age at which women have babies
is not something governments can control - though they can encourage
them to freeze their eggs, as is now happening in the UK. The boom will
almost certainly recede here eventually, but for the time being the
twinning rate is still increasing in England and Wales (it has peaked in
Scotland).
With twins set to become more common, will they lose their novelty
value? Claire Burgess doesn’t think so. Our enduring fascination for
twins stems from their unique bond, she says, and is in no danger of
dying just because there are more of them.
Jules Chappell agrees. Still relatively new to the twin experience,
she has been surprised both by people’s curiosity and helpfulness. Once,
in a downpour, she had covered Lily and Charlotte and was getting
drenched herself, when a strange woman came up to offer her her
umbrella. “I didn’t take it, but still.”
For more News and Entertainments,
follow Us at our Social Network :
When Neil Richardson, 69, moved to Braintree, Essex he was constantly greeted by strangers who insisted on calling him John.
No comments :
Post a Comment