What type of woman should freeze her eggs?
Apple and Facebook announced that the companies will pay for female employees to freeze their eggs. It’s a great company policy.
For one thing, it’s acknowledgment that the gap between women and men in the workplace is that women’s careers are controlled by their biological clock and men’s are not. Another thing this new policy does is it gives women more reproductive choices. Similar to the pill, really.
So it should be no surprise that like the pill, egg freezing faces widespread wariness. As if perfectly timed for the news, Jonathan Eig just published a book titled, The Birth of the Pill. When the pill emerged, it spawned a whole industry of people saying that women should not have reproductive choices because women would make bad choices. (Sluts! Hussies! Adultery!) Today, people are worried women will wait too long or women have bad priorities. (And of course there’s great commentary from The Onion as well.)
I don’t see how anyone can complain about women getting more reproductive choices and companies paying for it. Paying for egg freezing seems very similar to me to paying for kids to come eat dinner at the office. Both programs strive to keep people at work, putting career before family. There have been programs in place for a long time to keep men from going home to kids. So why is it surprising that now there are programs tailored to keep women from going home to kids?
Look, if you really want to spend time with your kids then you can just decline to take advantage of the programs. And if you’re so upset that parents in Silicon Valley are never home, well, at least you can console yourself with the fact that slews of those same parents are homeschooling their kids and most of you are not, so different kids get different benefits from their surroundings.
So this all begs the question: Who should take advantage of the new policy of corporate-sponsored egg freezing?
Do you ever wish on a star? I do. I think about what is the most important thing to me. I never cheat—I don’t wish for ten wishes. And I don’t use conjunctions to string wishes together. I don’t wish for superpowers or anything I think would be unachievable, pie-in-the-sky.
If you try this, you will end up figuring out, each night, what is most important in your life. I discovered that I want to see my kids grow up and find their own paths. I want to see how they turn out. More than anything.
This should not surprise me because when I was at the World Trade Center, and it fell, and I couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe, time slowed down. To the point of almost stopping. What I now know to be only about one minute feels, in my memory, like five or ten minutes. I stood still and thought: This is it it. Now I will die. And I was had a sort of peaceful feeling. I thought: I have heard asphyxiation is very painful. I hope this is not painful. Then I thought: I was so looking forward to watching my life unfold. I’m so disappointed to not see my brothers grow into adults. I’m so disappointed to not watch my marriage unfold into a family.
That’s all: disappointment about not getting to watch family grow and make choices.
I had a big career. I never felt sad that I would not do any more of my big job.
We don’t know the meaning of life, but we know that relationships matter more than anything, and watching them unfold is the most enjoyable part of life: Watching people make decisions and be themselves and connect themselves to us. This is all what life is about.
Here are bad reasons to freeze your eggs:
1. You want more time to find a career
Look, if you don’t have a career by age 30 you probably don’t really want to have one. People who love working and are fulfilled by working find something that suits them by the time they are 30 because they work on finding it all through their 20s. People who travel, do art projects, go to mental wards, move in with questionable significant others—these are people who are fulfilled by other things besides work. They should just admit it and not keep asking for more time to be something they are not. They are only putting their real lives on hold to live out the life they wish they needed.
2. You want to get more done in your current career
There is no time when you can have a baby and it won’t ruin your work life. And there is no time when women who have stellar careers are excited about putting the career in the tanker to have a baby. It’s discouraging, of course, to have to slow down a steep upward slope because of a biological clock. But the timing only gets worse as you get further and further into your career. If you are not willing to interrupt your career before you’re 35, why would you interrupt your career after 35?
3. You might want babies in the future
We don’t get a lot of guarantees in life. We don’t get promises about having enough money, or marrying someone honest, but we do get to make choices. So we need to make them. The world divides between people who like to make decisions and people who don’t like to make decisions (Find out which type you are here).
The people who don’t like commitment are the ones most likely to put off having a baby. But ironically, those are the same types of people who don’t generally need to protect their career carefully. Careers of fluid thinkers who don’t like closure are not generally huge or linear, which means that taking time off for kids will not derail the career. And this means that there is no reason to put off having kids. It’s just a ploy to put off making the decision, but making decisions is what defines our lives.
4. You don’t have a partner
Women do not have partners by age 30 because they don’t make finding a partner a priority. It’s not a mystery how people find partners: they look. Consistently. With focus. It’s difficult to meet your match in adult life. No one gets a good career without focus, and drive, and making decisions based on incomplete information. And the same is true for a spouse: you can’t get a spouse unless you use focus and drive and make decisions on incomplete information.
I read advice from marriage counselor Kelly Flanagan that really crystalized for me why we have life partners.
To be alive is to be lonely. It’s the human condition. Marriage doesn’t change the human condition. It can’t make us completely unlonely. And when it doesn’t, we blame our partner for doing something wrong, or we go searching for companionship elsewhere. Marriage is intended to be a place where two humans share the experience of loneliness and, in the sharing, create moments in which the loneliness dissipates. For a little while.
Most people are partnered-up by their 30s which makes plain the loneliness people in their 30s feel without a partner. So avoid that—focus on finding a partner, and focus before age 30 instead of after, and you’ll open more opportunities for yourself.
So who should freeze their eggs?
Probably no one. It just delays the inevitable. You will disrupt your career, you will hate the transition to parenthood, you will feel out of control, and you will have the brunt of household care. You will never have enough money for your kids because no one does. And you will never have enough time for them, either. Freezing eggs doesn’t make any of that better.
But having a baby by the time you’re 35 means you’ll get to see the child in adult life. And I can tell you with assurance that for me, that’s a huge part of why being alive feels so exciting and full of promise. I want to see how my kids’ lives unfold.
Freezing eggs does not change one thing in your life. It just delays it.
The whole truth is that while I don’t see a huge benefit to freezing eggs, I also don’t see a huge benefit to people with kids eating free dinners at their workplace. Our first job is family and our second job is work, but kids can’t speak up like your workplace can. So you have to be a balanced voice for both.
If women hit their earning peak at 40 (which I think I learned from you), wouldn’t it make sense to freeze your eggs at 30, and reach your maximum earning potential before you have a kid? I feel like at 40 (depending), you can be senior enough and have enough points in the bank at work to reduce your effort when you have kids. At 30, not so much.
Yeah, but you also need the energy! And believe me you have more patience and energy at 30 than you do at 40. It makes a lot of difference.
It’s very disheartening to work for twenty years, alongside men, and then scale back to have kids.
Those men keep building their careers. And they had kids when they were 30 or 35 and it was great for their careers.
The decisions for women are different than men, and freezing eggs doesn’t change that.
The disappointment about not continuing to compete with men. The shock of becoming a mom which is something the business world does not particularly admire. These are the hardest parts of having a baby. Theere is no good time for that.
Penelope
“Those men keep building their careers. And they had kids when they were 30 or 35 and it was great for their careers.”
Cause and effect problem here. Married men with kids make more money than single men without kids, true. But that’s not because the simple fact of having a wife and children is “great for their careers”…it’s because the increased responsibility of children motivates men to build greater security (which after all is what money represents in this case).
You know, this gets trotted out a lot, but to make it any better of an answer you’d have to demonstrate that men would not be making the exact same career choices whether or not they had the family- and I believe they often would.
Of course, the men who get married each year make a lot more than those who don’t.
We are in our early 30’s. We have always made decisions for MY career (location moves, promotions, etc).
Our solution to having a family: he is staying at home.
While this is not perfect, we assume it is maximizing my career potential while providing the primary caregiver environment we want for our baby.
There is hope. I worked various jobs throughout my 20s while having 2 girls, then again in my 30s while having 2 more girls. Got my degree during that time and got the best (both best paid and best job) when I was 58. Still working there. Got to go to parent/teacher conferences, volunteer at school and at after school programs, fix dinner most nights, go to swimming/volleyball/softball/tennis tournaments most weekends. Yes I am tired now but I was there for my girls when they needed it. We can do it, just have to re-set our priorities in our 20s and pick a good spouse.
Heya Penelope is there a link missing? (LH re silicon valley homeschooling their kids) pointing out as would like to read :-) PS great blog post thanks
Thanks for pointing that out. I added the link. Something that has really been fascinating me lately is that really rich people have already been homeschooling en masse. We just don’t talk about it.
Like, of course the Jolie-Pitt family home schools – how else could they travel so much?
There are countless examples.
Penelope
I really wish I had found this blog when I was in my early 20s rather than my late 20s. (I’m 30 now…) The choices you make in your early 20s really set the stage for the rest of your life. I just didn’t realize that then.
This is true, though, but I think most people make decisions in their 20s that are true to them. If you are not building a career in a very focused way in your 20s then that life is probably not right for you. I think it’s more important to get realistic about who we are and what we want than it is to get five more years – or whatever – to craft a life that isn’t right for us anyway.
Penelope
This is so great in so many levels. I always wanted a career but it’s crystal clear to me (because of this post ) that family is not equally important and that I’m making it priority because the kids are little. It’s MUCH more important,it’s the most important and that’s why i keep making the decisions I’m making.
It takes a lot to unlearn the messages inculcated in our lives for so long. Some things seem so simple and obvious only after I’ve clearly understood and processed them.
I was that 20 year old that made a rational decision regarding the path of my life. Then threw it all away to go with my gut.
I’m so glad I did.
I’d do it again, just sooner.
“I think most people make decisions in their 20s that are true to them. ” So true! Now that I am, ahem, the age that I am. I find that I’ve come full circle back to the path I was on in my twenties. I veered off the track that was true to me to follow one that felt like the one that I “should” be on (ego, approval seeking, fitting in with society….). I was so insecure about who I was, I felt I had to prove I was okay by competing in a whole different arena than one I was suited to by my nature.
Thank you for saying this. You’ve put into words what I’ve been doing my whole adult life: following the path I think everyone else wants me to be on while avoiding the one thing I truly feel called to do.
I think the incessant marketing of “romance” and “true love” by Hollywood are big problem. They misrepresent reality and brainless young people (myself included) suck it all up. The overall lack of sage guidance from the older generation is a major culprit. (Of course old people are just sitting around watching color TV all day long too.)
Great timing Penelope!
But there is the crux of the conversation about egg freezing (which is by no means as easy as sperm donation as per what I read, it is a painful medical procedure).
But some of us, yours truly included, don’t have the luxury of planning child rearing ahead of time. We don’t have great timing.
I don’t have normal experiences, my first car accident, I was 16 years old, driving a Gremlin, I was rear ended. I looked at the rear view mirror and there was a clown mouthing “I’m sorry!”. It was dress up day at school, and one of my classmates was in full clown gear.
So when I tell you the first time condom broke and turned to shreds after another clown (my ex) knew petroleum jelly broke down latex but used it as a lubricant anyways. I was 20 years old and at a crossroad in my life. Having had a baby magazine in the mail the month before, suffering from the malaise of unfulfilled mothering instincts with a sideways glance at my flat stomach and being told by an intuitive coworker I was pregnant and it was a girl, well, I couldn’t argue with fate. Ready or not I was going to have a baby. The pregnancy test 2 weeks later confirmed it.
Although I was pro choice, something my ex threw in my face when I decided to continue the pregnancy. I later pointed out to my dad during a family conversation a couple of decades later, there were no other children.
You never know when the last time, is the last time.
Yes, I spent my 20’s and 30’s child rearing and homeschooling, but now that I am past my mid 40’s with almost 30 years of work experience as a working single mom, I have no regrets.
I have watched the news report millions of people lose their homes to foreclosure, lose their pensions, lose their income during the past few recessions. I agree with you, Penelope, there is never a good time.
Some are lucky. Everything goes according to plan. Those women are the perfect candidates for both egg donation (a financial benefit) and freezing. I commend them in their pursuit of great timing.
Some of us just got really good at making lemonade with the lemons life gave us. We’re experts at crisis management. We put family before profit. We are still reeling from medical issues that reared it’s ugly head as we aged, our bodies betraying the years of stress and neglect. We learned to live on little, to find gratitude in the benign and to take one day at a time.
It’s not money and the pursuit of wealth that motivates us, it’s the desire for freedom and autonomy…and respect.
My skill sets? Entrepreneur, senior management or nanny. ; )
I think what is most worth mentioning is that egg freezing is a very unreliable procedure and should not be used as “insurance”, because it is not. Relatively few babies have been born from frozen eggs and the reality is that most or a very large percenge of women who try IVF are not successful. If you really want to have kids “someday”, better do it now or asap.
Actually virtually no pregnancies result from frozen eggs. I mention this in my comment below.
A fertilised egg has a higher chance of resulting in a pregnancy
I think the lack of partner is the biggest reason to freeze eggs. Because it is totally reasonable to know you want to be a parent, but not a solo parent. However, I totally agree with PT about looking for a partner is work. It is. I mean, it’s a fun kind of work, but it is still work. I’m engaged right now, on track to be married when I’m 27 and hopefully start with kids right away. But I hear my friends at work complain or wish for a partner. Before I began dating my fiance (3 years ago), I dated tons. Like actually went on dates – I figured it was a numbers game: if I dated enough guys, I’d meet someone who I wanted to marry. And it was.
It’s interesting that the perception seems to be that it’s easier to hit the pause button once you’ve achieved a certain leadership status and salary.
From my own experience (and what I’ve observed) it seems to me the more senior you are the harder it is to take a “break”. Sure you may have more financial security but with that comes more responsibilities, more goals, more people vying to take your spot and fewer opportunities to jump to the next level.
In addition the baseline of your performance has been set pre-children. Once you’re back in the office and you have additional responsibilities at home you will have to juggle both while maintaining the reputation you’ve built for yourself throughout your career.
Right? If you have such a big position and you’re hard to replace you’ll be marissa mayer building a nursery in your office. Forget breastfeeding and bonding with baby. You’ll have a small nation (the business) depending on you.
The idea of pause button is a fantasy.
Very smart observation!
This is very true. I don’t even have a “huge” career, but this was my experience. Right before I left for maternity leave, I had established myself as an effective teacher, department chair, and part-time grad student (working on a second grad degree). When I came back from mat. leave, I still had to live up to all those roles, while pumping 2-3x a day, on little sleep, etc. Now that I’m more comfortable with the parenting thing (son is 15 mos), I find myself tempted to take on more at work, but I know I want a second kid before too long. That means I need to keep my current responsibilities more or less static–or face coming back to even higher expectations, plus a second child at home. I can always ramp up my career later–branch out into consulting, or go for the full Ph.D or whatever. But I don’t want to take on yet MORE responsibility while my kids are really little, because it just means more stress.
I live in Germany and in the last days all our newspapers wrote about Facebook and Apple offering eggsurance to their female stuff….But not in a positive way. The general consensus could be summarized like this: another weird american trend, hopefully it does not cross the Atlantic too soon.
As much as I personally love american trends (and wasting my time on american blogs), I do agree this time that eggsurance as offered by Facebook&Co is actually abusing this wonderful technology to work against women. Young women are basically said – work now and don’t even THINK about getting pregnant. Your eggs are waiting for you so really no excuse for anyone to do anything else but work.
Another thing : Penelope, I was happy to read this post and (like I told you some months ago :)) this topic will become big, because it is important and you with your huge blog do have a responsibility in a way to say a few right things about egg freezing to the young ladies from your audience.
And when the rush about egg freezing is over and everyone has learned the basic, one more topic which women will want to know more about is, how to live and adjust lifestyle as to maximize the quality of the eggs they already have. Women in their 30s for example have only about 10% eggs left and their quality is the key to pregnancy. This quality can be managed and that means the right combination of diet, supplements and physical activity.
Long story short, here is much more to read about it (I think your audience can profit much more from articles like this then from the newspapers with stories of celebrities who get twins in their mid 40s etc.):
http://www.eggqualityimprove.com/biological-clock/#
http://www.paleo-mama.com/egg-quality-ovarian-reserve/freezing-eggs-social-freezing/
A friend forwarded me this article as I had been recently mentioned freezing eggs (wondering if I should look into it). It started out as an interesting post, but you lost me at the end. Tying ages to things like when you should have a partner or when you should have a kid so you can see them as adults makes people like me feel like there is no hope. I’m 35 and single and even though I’m in a big career, my sole reason for even contemplating egg freezing is because I don’t have a partner and I want children. It’s not that I haven’t worked at finding a partner, I have. It’s not that I haven’t dated, I have. It just doesn’t always work out as easily or as quickly for some people as it does for others. And I do agree it’s work, believe me, but I don’t think it should be anyone’s main focus. My 20s weren’t spent looking for a man, they were spent finding myself, understanding what I wanted in life, and knowing what I would and would not settle for.
I’m sure your intentions were good, but this was a bummer of a way to start my morning.
Hi Laura,
I’m sorry that you had a bad morning.
I do not think that Penelope intended to say anything hurtful. I think the overall message is to encourage women to use their time wisely.
You are still young and there is no reason to feel badly about sunk costs. However, there is also no time to lose. If you want a baby, it is up to you to make it happen. If you want a man, it is up to you to make it happen. No excuses.
What Penelope is doing here is discouraging indecision and encouraging action. This applies to you as well, even if for you taking action means freezing your eggs, finding a sperm donor, or adopting.
Penelope did say “Probably no one” in response to the rhetorical question, “So who should freeze their eggs?” That leaves space for people for whom freezing their eggs happens to be the most proactive choice that they can take, considering their circumstances.
It’s only too late for you if you think it is. Here is my tough love for you: Take responsibility and be decisive, creative, and creative.
Best wishes,
Cay
*Decisive, creative, and pragmatic :)
Thanks, Cay.
Don’t worry, I don’t give up that easily :-) Hope is far from lost, but I appreciate the tough love!
Laura, I was like you. I loved my career, my friends, my life. Sometimes, to get married in your 20s is to know you are marrying the wrong person (or to accidentally marry the wrong person.) I married at 38 and ended up having two healthy babies in my 40s. I still work, and still make choices.
Hang in there! Keep loving the life you’re living!
Thank you, Betsy!! I need to hear that :-)
*needed
I would love to hear comments from kids who are children of mothers who waited late in life to have their babies, and then maybe they have no dad? or a sperm donor dad?
What would it be like to be a child with a mother that is 45 years older than you, and no dad? And maybe no siblings….
I’m not sure I follow. What would you expect them to say? By the time any kid is old enough to care (assuming they even would care), we would all be in our 40’s, based on the advice on having kids by 30. And freezing eggs doesn’t mean your kids won’t have a dad, it could also mean you’re saving viable eggs so that when you do meet your guy, you can use those. I’m not sure why people keep saying “waited later in life”, as if it’s a choice on when you meet the love of your life.
I think we are way more hung up on things like this than our children ever could be. They want to be loved, happy, and have us engaged in their lives. That can and DOES happen with one parent, no siblings, when you’re over 40. I have more energy now at 35 than I ever did in my 20s. I’m healthier, stronger, and in a better position mentally to have a child now than I was 5 years ago. Age is so relative, I just wish we’d stop using it as benchmark.
Your reasoning sounds very narrow minded. I don’t agree with the idea of having kids that will have no father. But life is not that way. I met a woman that gave birth to her first child at 45. It was an accident, she or her husband never wanted children. It happened and as the pregnany progressed her husband divorced her because he never wanted to be a father. The woman was a good woman, a doctor. If everyone would fear being mothers at 45 or so, then that child should have never been born. Life mocks that theory.
Uh, Liz, my comment may be out of context here. But let’s just roll with it because I’m trying to get a lick in very quickly, just skimming comments, forcing myself to get back to work. Saving reading the actual post as a reward for finishing up, soon, god willing the comment boards will still be open. I’m not even sure I have well intentions and commenting/replying. I feel like I’m manically correcting type-o’s too, telltale sign to just turn around now. But in your case we’ll call them, “thought-o’s” so I must help out. “Reasoning” and “narrow minded” are a destined to go together. There’s broad spectrum and then there’s reason. One must narrow down the broadness of a topic such as “when to have children” to create advice based on idealism, such as “I believe this age is most career friendly to have children” or it would be a forum post rather than a blog post. Again, haven’t read Penelope’s post yet, just giggled slightly, reading, “freeze eggs” and thought, why not? Having kids later than 35 is no bueno because it’s such hard work to get the body back and get out of the financial hole from missing work at any age, one should ideally get that out of the way sooner than later. But it’s not really much of an issue nowadays to have kids old either. And who really thinks about how well off the kids will be, having kids is a 100% selfish endeavor. As long as they’re not born drug addicted, what’s the worst that can happen? Young moms are fun, super cool. But old moms are cool too, especially if someone has nothing else going on. Similar to buying a pet. Longing for love? Buy, I mean have a child. I kid, but it’s common for older financially stable women to mesh the two realities for nurturing in their 40’s, pets and kids, they just buy kids now too. Yup, 15k, and you have yourself a saved pet, I mean baby from another country. Just a thought blurb, carry on.
Well just ask Drake – his mom was well into her 40s when she had him, and his parents got divorced when he was five. He seems to be doing more than okay! Also, the fact that she waited to have him allowed her to afford to raise him in a wealthier neighbourhood, lend him the car for Degrassi shoots and other auditions.
Obvious, older people do better with anything that requires responsibility. Flexibility, social awareness, and coping with adversity in today’s gen y society -different story. Today’s 35 year new mom to baby, is tomorrow’s 50 year old mom of 15 year old, dealing with teenage issues from a different time. Look up the suicide rate for teens with parents in their early 50’s and 60’s, much higher than teens of parents in their 30’s and early 40’s. I just made that up, but I know it’s true. Scanning my first hand memory and created my own statistic. K, going now, I’ll leave you kind people in peace. :) !!
I dated a woman whose parents had been older; she had her two kids young, and then had a tubal ligation at 35, since she thought that was too old to have children (I know because I was looking to raise a family of my own; her kids were grown.)
I enjoyed reading this post, but I strongly felt that after all that unconventional thinking of homeschooling and other stuff, you somehow sound in this post squared headed and totally traditional. You just shifted one decade forward than our grandparents did: marry before 30 (not 20), have kids before 35 (not 25). Ok, it makes sense but it isn’t a cut that suits everyone or even the majority and it really should not. You look forward seeing the lives of your kids unfold, that’s why you think having children before 35 is a good idea to achieve that goal. Makes sense, but life is not that way, not at all. I fell madly in love at 27 and wanted to marry but it didn’t happen due to forceful circumstances. So, I got married at almost 34. I tried to have kids immediately, but it did not happen due to my partner’s infertility. A friend of mine had two children, at the right age with the right man, well one day both kids and her father suffer a car accident and died. What should she look for to unfold later on? She can’t have more kids, but even if she had the chance, she would not be there to see her kids lives unfold. So, what should she do? Watch emptiness unfold? I think you have good insides, but still it felt like a recipe that I and others tried to follow and did not work because life is more than a meal course.
About the Onion story. In one of Robert Heinlein’s science fiction novels, Podkayne of Mars, women do just that, freeze their babies.
Because the best time physically to have your children is the worst time for a career.
Of course, this is SF so the unfreezing actually works.
This is pretty cool. I was at first pretty confused when I heard about the option of women being able to freeze their eggs. Your points make sense to me, I get that being career-orientated isn’t something you want to be for the whole of your life, I mean, guys seek companionship and children too. To “settle down” as they say.
I wish I had frozen my eggs. I ended up doing several unsuccessful rounds of IVF at 40-42, wasted a lot of money and the sad truth is my eggs were too old. I just wasn’t ready at 35 to have kids. At the time, the economy was in the toilet, my job was a nightmare and my health insurance was horrible. At 40 I found my perfect job and was ready. I ended up with an egg donor and am thrilled to be 7 months pregnant. I’m pleased to be here, but would have liked the choice to use my own eggs.
Life isn’t constant. There really are bad years to have kids not just because you’re indecisive or on the endless treadmill towards success. Sometimes those bad years coincide with the end of your reproductive life.
Besides, there are several other reasons to freeze your eggs when you are young. Your chances for chromosomal anomalies go way up the older you get. In some ways, 35 is already too old. If you were using the eggs of your 25 year old self, all those high risk factors are vastly reduced. I can’t tell you how nice it is going through this pregnancy with the egg of a 22 year old. It’s true that frozen eggs aren’t as viable as fresh ones, but the technology has vastly improved in even the last few years. Using young eggs increases the viability even more.
This isn’t talked about much because men can have kids their entire life, but it doesn’t mean that the quality of sperm from a 40 year old is as good as the sperm of a 20 year old. I’ve had lots of friends whose issue was related to the age of the man. I’d even argue that it might be worth it to freeze embryos of young couples when they get married just so they aren’t worrying about fertility issues later. Also, embryos freeze better than eggs.
Anyway, having just lived out the scenario and experienced the technical side of fertility up close in person the last couple of years, I thought I’d share my experience.
IVP methods just pump you with a bunch of horomones. If you want to be fertile- and want children, just take zinc supplements. Low zinc is what causes women to not be able to conceive.
I’ve read this comment several times now on different posts and I wonder.
How low is your IQ?
Just take zink supplements?
You’re no where near reality and your comment is offensive and in the same category as “eat broccoli to cure cancer”.
I should ignore you again like everyone else is doing but I guess I’m a bit to hormonal right now.
(Natural hormones if you’re wondering).
” Logan” Maybe you did not finish school for some disastrous reasons or you are just incredibly ignorant and arrogant. Good news for women: for infertility problems science has found some help and it works. Bad news for you: science will not find help for stupidity ever.
I applaud your comment!
This was my first thought when I read about it all.
The young eggs/fertilized eggs.
My brother’s first child is an IVF child and they have 4 fertilized eggs “in the freezer”.
A year ago he got cancer and treetment for it and has gone through a lot. His body has gone through a lot of poison.
He’s going to be fine but his wife is considering their third child to be an IVF child. (Even though their second child was ‘au natural’).
What has happend to his sperm by now?
She’s naturally worried.
They’re both 33.
I have completely made finding a partner a priority before 30 . I’m 33 and still don’t have a husband. Not everyone is lucky enough to find someone they love in their twenties.
Hi Tracey,
I empathize with you so much, though our circumstances were slightly different.
My mother started nagging me about getting married when I was 24. Incessantly. When her friends came over for dinner, she said grace starting with Heavenly Father and ending with And please find Cay a husband, amen.
For better or worse, I became intensely driven to find a husband. I dated ruthlessly to vet marriage prospects, not to enjoy companionship as many people around my age did.
One of the things that I think helped a lot was that I openly stated that people should know whether or not they are going to get married after two years of dating, and that I would not waste my time dating beyond that. I also figured out my non-negotiables during the vetting process — strong values is number one.
I do not think that I would have gotten married before the age of 30 if I was not so focused on addressing the task. I can’t take the credit for what I did. My mom was relentless. But, as a result, I did not rely on luck.
I was really angry with my mother about this for a long time, but now I look back on it with a kind of bittersweet fondness. I married a great guy.
Here is my tough love for you: When priorities are real, they don’t get achieved because of luck. They get achieved because of determination and intelligent effort.
Wishing you all the best,
Cay
I am not sure I follow all these arguments – why is it necessary to make marriage an absolute priority? I understand the desire to have children and that is a very good reason, but the general drive to get married – why? Because married women are more valued by society then single women? Because this is just what a woman is expected to do? After all the US census bureau says that 24% of women have never married. That is a sizeable number.
Hi redrock,
I personally do not think that marriage is an absolute priority.
My mom is super old-fashioned, however, and my familial circumstances certainly motivated me to take a proactive approach towards finding a partner.
It worked out well in the end for me. As mentioned, my husband is great.
However, it could have worked out just as well if I were born to a different family — not religious, not conservative — and did not face the intense social pressure to marry.
Marriage happened to work out in my case, but I do not see a correlation between marital status and awesomeness :)
I do think that if one is completely dedicated to finding a partner to marry, and does not do so, the reason is not likely to be purely because of luck or the lack thereof.
Best,
Cay
Individually no one should get married unless they want to and are suited for it. Personally, I would not have gotten married if I didn’t want to have children.
From the standpoint of society…
Well, a society without marriage and children ceases to exist – see France and Italy.
Perhaps because I am an umarried mother of two from France, I totally failed to see how the french society has disappeared into non-existence.
France has the highest fertility rate in Europe and is also higher than the US. Italy’s is low though, you’re right there
But it’s not ethnically French people having all the babies….it’s the people, the “immigrants”, who have replaced the natives, who are reproducing.
HomeschoolDad, unfortunatley France’s version of anti-racism involves not collecting any data on anything by race, so all we can talk about is accedotal as far as I know. In France you do see a lot more white families with more than 2 children than you do in neighbouring countries. Only children also seem more rare than elsewhere.
Most families do stop at two, but there is a certain (large) group of middle-class, catholic white people who’s norm seems to be four children.
That just doesn’t happen in the white middle class in the rest of Europe.
I completely agree it requires determination and work but it does also require luck. I haven’t met the right person to marry; either I didn’t want to marry them or they didn’t want to marry me. There’s a little bit of luck in meeting the right person to marry and having it work instead of just marrying anyone.
Luck, sure. But what you’re failing to acknowledge is that you work for your luck. You seek, learn, find, date, move on to the next. You find what you are looking for when you make it a goal.
Ok, this post started out about freezing eggs but is going into the “getting married before the age of xyz” and the pressures we women feel.
First, I have NEVER been married (I proved it in Texas divorce court – thus I won custody hands down.) and I am 48 years old. Common-law can get cagey.
Second, I heard it all. My sweet widowed aunt asking me why I don’t get married, I’m not getting any younger! (To which I respond with tales of the murder suicide of a blind date and his ex-girlfriend, and the recent husband who killed his wife in her sleep.)
When my dad asks me “Why aren’t you married? ” I retort “So I can end up like you?” (my parents are divorced).
When men, so many men (bosses, mechanics, East Indian male neighbors) ask me if I have a husband or I am I married I explain “No, men are too expensive. I put my ex through college working 2 jobs and ended up with all of the bills”. They usually chuckle, turn red and look away.
Ladies, we assume the sperm donor will help raise our child. We forget the 50% divorce rate. We seem to forget some are married to domestic violence, addiction, and predators with criminal behavior.
We are sadly measuring ourselves by unbelievably unfair and uncertain odds. Our career, our desire to have children, our lifestyle should be for our own benefit and the option of freezing eggs or embryos (although embryos could have legal ramifications if caught in a divorce web) should be as a precaution. But ultimately, even with frozen eggs, we can still miss a pill during a bout of flu, have a defective condom, or be one of the .oo1% who still get pregnant. Then what of those eggs? Do we hold on to them to pass on to our own daughters should they become infertile?
I’m all for Apple paying for cloning procedures. ; )
So the reason I’m unmarried at 32 is because I didn’t TRY hard enough? THANKS. What a load of crap.
What do you believe is the reason?
it probably just – is. Not everybody thinks about being married or not all the time. Therefore the reason for not being married (or being married) is irrelevant.
The reason I’m unmarried at 32 is that I haven’t met anyone I want to marry, pretty simple. You can’t find a partner like you find an apartment, there is another human involved. All you can do is put yourself out there, meet people, go on dates, and it either happens or it doesn’t. You may be 25, you may be 55 when and if it does. I found the tone of that paragraph to be really condescending.
A very good friend of mine is getting married next summer. She is 42, never married and at 39 she was still looking for the right person. Don’t give up! I got married in my 30’s too.
I agree with you 100% Andrea!
I made a conscious decision to prioritise my career in my 20s so I could push that mythological pause button on my career when I was a fair way up the mountain. I was going to get where I wanted to be before I took time out to have kids. The product? I’m 32, with a great career, a non-existent personal life, no partner, and no kids.
I’m not looking for a partner and I haven’t ever really put energy into it. I’m not lonely. I have no desire to get married. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything by not having a partner. But I do want kids. Desperately. It’s always been a higher priority for me than finding a partner.
Fortunately, there is another option for those of us who don’t have partners (and who maybe don’t *want* partners), and that’s having kids without one.
Is it ideal? Well, no. But neither is partnering up just to have kids.
Not having a partner by 35 does not mean you can’t have kids by 35.
This is one of the best blog posts ever. I think everyone should read it.
I’ve been searching endlessly on books about regret and missed opportunities. Explorations on these topics are mostly romanticized and literary. You’ll ever read about these themes about real life contexts.
In terms of tying real life situations with deep introspection about who I really should become, I haven’t felt so free in a while. Thank you Penelope.
This is a very controversial topic, because freezing eggs does not elevate the chances of a future pregnancy. The fertilised egg has a higher change of survival. So before you freeze the eggs, the eggs have to be fertilised to be able to survive through future pregnancies. Simply freezing the eggs by themselves have a low chance of fertilisation and hence pregnancy.
A lot of gay couples utilise cloning methods to produce offspring with their genetics. If you have a lot of money, this methodology is better. You’ll probably spend a comparable amount to the costs of freezing/fertilising/ using host mother etc anyway.
So imho, freezing eggs is not necessary if you want to have children later in life.
nope – no human cloning is not yet possible.
What type of woman should freeze her eggs? The type of woman that should freeze her life.
any woman can freeze their egs if they want to be sure in the future…
“People who travel, do art projects, go to mental wards, move in with questionable significant others—these are people who are fulfilled by other things besides work. They should just admit it and not keep asking for more time to be something they are not.”
Oh my, this section really strikes a chord. I’ve spent most of my twenties (just about to turn 29) trying to “become” a career woman, when I knew deep down inside that I really wasn’t one. Being a creative/wanderer type kinda sucks when you’ve got an advanced degree, because everyone expects you to put it to good use.
This post makes a lot of sense to me. Freezing your eggs doesn’t guarantee you’ll have children someday. There are no guarantees in life. There’s no guarantee that you’ll have a long relationship whether you hold out for your “soul mate” or marry the nice guy down the street. There’s no guarantee that your children will grow up to be good people or that they’ll want to spend time with you or bless you with grandchildren. There’s no guarantee that the successful career you’ve built in your 20s and 30s will continue to grow or even be relevant down the road.
Still, I think we’re more likely to live the life we want if we plan for it and actively work toward it, rather than leaving it up to chance or luck. That includes mitigating our risks as things change along the way. So if you’re 30 and you want to get married and have kids, maybe you settle for the nice guy next door, or maybe you decide to become a single parent, or maybe you freeze your eggs to buy yourself more time. You have to play the odds – what can you do today to get you closest to your goal tomorrow?
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
I was not married by 32 and I am so glad even though the family pressure to do so was pretty overwhelming. I really believe that many women make the wrong choice in a mate because they are worried about the stigma of being single. I had the chance to start over, and move from an expensive area (silicon valley) to Los Angeles where my life became more interesting and I found a career instead of a job. I broke off my engagement to do this. When I met my husband later in life we both had our independence as a springboard for a long term relationship. We have been married for over 22 years. Of course, I think it would have been great if we had met earlier, except he tells me he was a difficult person in his twenties. (Weren’t we all!)
I want kids (3 of them). I should be able to have two of them at once and then one after and still up the work angle. By grace of God I will do both and hire all the help I need to get it done.
I won’t be freezing my eggs.
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I feel pressured by that law…let them have freedom over what they want to do. They shouldn’t have to freeze their eggs if they don’t want to, neither should they feel pressured to?
I think what I am asking is: is that a choice? Did the policy proceed out of the choice of the people?
I love this, it’s so true….
“We don’t know the meaning of life, but we know that relationships matter more than anything, and watching them unfold is the most enjoyable part of life: Watching people make decisions and be themselves and connect themselves to us. This is all what life is about.”
I almost didn’t have kids. I thought I didn’t like them and adamantly didn’t want them. I worked all the time. I was building an empire. I had no idea who I was yet either.
Then, I found myself in a work environment surrounded by women, and it seemed all of them were getting pregnant. I was married for 15 years by that time. I was 32 years old. I pursuing an MBA, working up to 15 hours a day, thinking I was on the right track for me (which couldn’t have been more wrong for me and my personality type, now that I know who I am…) And, suddenly I thought….hmmm….I should think about this before it’s too late to make the decision.
So, I asked myself, “What do I see my life looking life 20 years down the road?” I loved my life the way it was, but I faced the fact that the people around me would change, get old, die….My grandparents would die. My parents would die. Who would be my family then? I decided to have kids and was pregnant, luckily, within a few weeks. I had another exactly two years later. And, they are, hands down, the best big decision I’ve ever made. I wish I had started younger, had a few more… I love being a mother. I’ve loved watching them grow. It’s a fascinating process. When they hit 12 years old, their evolving brains blew me away…..Just wait…it’s a magical age. So much about it, it’s just beautiful and wondrous to be a part of. They have, most definitely, enhanced my life.
I look back and I am incredulous that I almost did not have them because of the place I was in, in my life and career at the time. It would have been an enormous mistake.
The place I am now, with all of the loss, destruction, rebuilding and recreating that have had to happen to get here, is the best place ever in every aspect of my life. I am happier now than when I was a child. That shocks me.
It would have been such a mistake to forego having children, to stay on the track I was on, because that track wasn’t really who I was, it was just what I was doing at the time.
Cindy, you are sharing a very nice experience!
If you reeeeeally want kids you don’t need a partner or a spouse.
Separate the two.
If what you want is marriage first then kids then make a priority of finding a partner to marry.
But thinking you need a spouse to have kids because it’ll be too hard to raise them yourself…well that’s not how it works. Just talk to all the married people whose lives are harder because of the constant tug of war with their spouse.
I think if you really want something you’ll make it happen.
If career is your thing then you already spent the first part of adulthood making decisions in that direction whether you feel fulfilled or not.
If family is your priority then you have already made moves in that direction or need tp focus on making the right ones.
But kids and marriage are separate from each other. We’re not used to thinking of it that way but women don’t depend on men for income anymore which was what made marriage a big need. Not anymore.
First this thread started with the argument to freeze or not to freeze eggs and Apple’s policy.
Then it went on to the issue of finding a mate and marriage before childbirth.
Then separating childbirth from marriage and how the two are not conditional one from the other.
I have a caveat to share before some impressionable women jump ship and decide to become single moms on purpose.
I once said being a single mom was harder than the military.
I found this article today and this writer says it best : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vanessa-martir/im-a-single-mom-and-this-s-is-hard_b_6023856.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000046&ir=Women
“I have a caveat to share before some impressionable women jump ship and decide to become single moms on purpose.”
Impressionable women? Really?
What about considered, cautious, hard working, resourceful?
The decision to have a child without a partner is not one I’ve made lightly. I’ve given it years of thought. I’ve done the research. I’ve assessed my circumstances. I’ve made an informed decision.
It is really important that women give this careful thought and understand the challenges this path will bring. But ‘impressionable women’ aren’t going to respond well to that language. Perhaps your message would be better communicated without the inference that those of us who are choosing this path are silly girls who don’t know any better.
Kate,
Now, now, did it ever occur to you that perhaps my warning wasn’t meant for you? I know it’s hard to imagine…but do try, sometimes, it’s not about you, Kate.
With so many teenage moms and let’s not forget Octamom . If a single mom is in a car accident, if she had a medical issue, if she is laid off, she has a 100% chance of living with her new children below the cost of poverty or homeless until her crisis is over. Some never recover.
I was very careful, as much as I loved children, it was so hard as a single mom especially financially, that I chose not to have any more. I mourned that decision. I’ve had a hysterectomy a few years ago which finalized that route.
Maybe someday, I will finish my degree and get a teaching certificate and teach other people’s children, perhaps I will become a foster mom, perhaps even adopt older children who are harder to place should my finances become more stable.
Motherhood is not for everyone. It definitely wasn’t a wise choice for my own mother, yet she gave birth and abused 4 of us in an alcoholic fog.
Let’s play nice, shall we, Kate. When I give advice, let’s keep in mind you are excluded.
Cheers!
Oh, you were referring to all the *other* impressionable women. That makes it okay then! ;-)
The reality is all of the single mums by choice (SMCs) I know have also made informed choices. I know there are people who might not think it through but plenty of us do.
Some people have good experiences of single parenting, even if it’s tough.
It’s also a very different thing to make the choice to have a child on your own than it is to have a child with a partner – expecting parenting to be a joint endeavour – and to end up doing it on your own.
All I’m saying is: it’s an option, and yes it mightn’t be ideal, but it’s doable and it can be positive.
This gets trotted out a lot, but to make it any better of an answer you’d have to demonstrate that men would not be making the exact same career choices whether or not they had the family- and I believe they often would.
I don’t know if anybody has mentioned this yet, I haven’t noticed it. BUT, our eggs aren’t the only parts of us aging, we are. The optimal fertility age range of women is also our peak physical time in all other ways. We have the health and energy we need to make and begin to raise babies in our twenties to mid thirties. Having the baby is just the beginning. We can freeze our eggs and stay in great shape all we want, but we are still getting older, slowing down as we go, etc. Our bodies shut down the baby making process at what seems to be the right stage in our lives for it to do so. Sadly. I know… But, it’s the truth.
…..and, I have one last thought to add to my last post about our reproductive years ending at the right time in our lives….I totally get age discrimination now, totally.
I think it’s telling that the suggested posts to go with this one include “if you want a high-powered career have children at 25.”
There is never a right time to have children, it’s something one needs to get on with, your life will find a way to fit itself around the very special things that you’ve produced.
Having dealt with infertility’s emotionally and physically exhausting challenges, I find it bizarre that healthy women would see freezing eggs as an insurance policy for their careers. Going through IVF is like a full-time job with the appointments and complex medication schedules, yet success isn’t guaranteed. In fact, every year that passes, the chances for pregnancy decreases significantly. I would never suggest not to do it, but not to be taken lightly.
What type of woman should freeze her eggs?
A woman who
-believes that her huge-business employee has any business whatsoever in her personal life and health
-is not at all suspicious of why said employer is willing to drop the cash for a medical procedure rather than just give her $20,000 bonus for a 5-year contract, for example
-trusts that the per-surgery injections will not have any negative effect on the creation and health of her future child
-trusts that the egg-harvest surgery is truly what the docs will be doing while she’s knocked out (i.e. not sterilizing her, etc.)
-trusts that her eggs won’t be used for some other unrevealed mission / experiments
-trusts that when she’s ready to use her eggs, it will truly be *her* eggs injected back into her and not someone else’s (or no eggs at all, which they could, in turn, tell her she’s got ‘infertility issues’)
-believes (as pointed out already above), that her body can handle pregnancy at any age and her energy level will be great after carrying, birthing and breastfeeding her baby with minimal sleep–and she’ll continue to be resilient for 18 years or more
Where do I sign up?
So, I like the article. I like that it points out the true motive for the ‘freeze-egg’ offering by the tech gods. It keeps us working and dependant on the system. Great.
I don’t like that these ‘benefits’ are only available to an ultra-exclusive, high-educated, well-paid society of engineers. Why not offer this to more than JUST their company? It just screams privilege of the few, while the rest of the country looks upon and shrugs. Of course they can freeze their eggs.
What I think the article misses: the work/career situation was true about 10-20 years ago. Now, not so much. Women can start businesses with their ingenuity online. The menswear dog blog makes 25k per month. A dog. Dressed in menswear. It’s a new economy and there is SO MUCH opportunity for those artists and 20 something floaters. Especially over the next 10 years. I don’t see this as a disadvantage (that the career ‘pick me’ thing) won’t work out for the 30s and over. I see it as a shift and change that will be great for a LOT of moms.
I had my eggs frozen at 36. I’m now 39 and it was a great choice for me. People are too quick to assume things about why women are without partners/children. I had a long term partner of the same age whom I married at 30. He was diagnosed with cancer shortly after the marriage and following a long, painful battle died at 34. It took me a few years just to feel normal enough to even date again. I froze my eggs so that I could possibly have a greater chance of having children, because my Plan A simply did not work. Sometimes life can deal you a terrible hand, unraveling your best laid out plans. I am currently engaged and will be trying for a family soon. I wish people would wish the best for me, rather than make prejudice assumptions about why I waited so long to start a family. I’ve always wondered about Penelope’s husband, who is without his own biological children and married to a woman older than himself. Obviously Penelope’s Plan A failed, as she divorced her first husband. What if the farmer wanted to have a child of his own, but you are now in your 40’s. Wouldn’t frozen eggs in this situation be ideal? Divorce… Death.. these things do happen and in a perfect world no woman would ever need to freeze her eggs. But alas, we do not live in a perfect world and having this one extra option helps.
Very good points you have made here. Just what i was thinking about when i made my initial comment. Sometimes we plan life but it does not always happen the way we want. So, having a backup plan will not be a bad idea. Life happens and a lot of unexpected events can change the course of a once well planned life.
I didn’t read all this. Did anyone point out the Wired article which basically said that the failure rate of this procedure is extremely high?
I see Penny is moving closer and closer to the World Trade Centre on 9/11 as time goes by. Let’s all stand by her in 2015, as she is certain to be in the North Tower as it collapses in her blog posts by then. She’ll need our support. It was a terrible time.
The freeze-eggs policy scares me a bit. Next thing will be corporation offering good employees hibernation in case they get badly sick.
Very interesting and informative post. Life is all about choices and consequences. Every decision or choice we make has a consequence and that is why we have to think carefully about the decisions we make. And like you’ve mentioned, trying to delay motherhood will take a lot from a woman. There are things like you’ll become very old when your kids are just little children, not having the energy to cope with their activeness, not being there to see them through several stages of their life. But on the other hand, it’s not a bad idea to keep the window open. Life sometimes does not happen according to our plans. Some people get married and it takes them years to conceive. Other tragic things may have also happened to have hinder them from having kids. So, it would be better for women who choose to freeze their eggs to do it as a backup plan rather using it as a means to intentionally delay motherhood.
“I never felt sad that I would not do any more of my big job.”
I am not sure why I even felt compelled to read this post, but boy am I glad I did. This one sentence for me was very powerful!
I’d like to add my personal situation here, since I think it sheds light on this topic. First, I’m 34 (almost 35) a doctoral student and single. I have done a lot of research on egg freezing, and contrary to what is written in this post, there have now been a significant number of healthy babies born from frozen eggs (embryos too, but I’m talking about eggs specifically).
I’ve actively searched for a partner throughout my 20’s in every possible way, and I do believe that it is possible to put a great deal of very focused effort into something like a partner search and just not find the needle in the haystack. I don’t think we can just “try” harder to find a partner. It’s something that needs to be a combination of effort, being in the right place emotionally, and (yes) luck.
I’m very happy in my career choice, but I didn’t fully figure it out until my early 30’s, even though I spent my entire 20’s working on it. So, it’s possible to be the kind of person who travels and does art and still be the kind of person who can get a ton of satisfaction from a career.
I very much want children and always have. I also know I want more than one child. I can’t stop my doctoral program to have a child right now because I’m smack in the middle of my final year and will want this degree so that I can happily do what I love in my life. Even if I have a child without a partner after I finish my doctoral program next year, I will be 37 when that child is born, and then I will be 38 by the time I would want to try for a second child. At 38, 39 or 40, I will likely want my 34-35 year old eggs. I’m not sure if I will decide to freeze, but for me, it seems to be a logical choice, and I do believe I am exactly the kind of woman who should freeze her eggs if she so decides.
For clarification, I also want to note that while I was the kind of person who traveled and was into art, I also was someone who very seriously engaged in a number of professional careers looking for the right fit, earned a masters degree, and had success in each field. So, it’s possible to be someone who gets a great deal of satisfaction from life outside of career, and inside of it (I ultimately found what I love to do which is a great match for me both personally and professionally). We all have different time clocks, and sometimes it makes sense to shift certain things around in order to align ourselves with our fullest potential. I am certainly in line with wanting to have kids as young as humanly possible for me, but given how my life has unfolded, that might just mean I need to wait until my late 30’s, and might just mean I will be happy to have thought of freezing my eggs for the future.
I worked at WTC2 103rd floor when I was young. I left a few months before everything happened.
I watched out the windo wof my condo as all my former coworkers were murdered.
I had been planning to leave my bf as I wanted marriage and kids, but he was an abusive type.
9/11 paralyzed my brain and I stayed with him another 4 years. I finally had work going strong and left him but he stalked me and threatened to kill me and and anyone knew I would date.
I lived in fear and managed to fall apart for a while.
The last few years I have bene refinding and remaking myself.
I have also been livign with my boyfriend whom I have loved very much.
He knows I am traditional and wanted marriage and kids.
Suddenly, he has decided to leave me.
Leave me behind.
So I am faced with the task of feeling good inside, looking really good outside (Thank you to my Aspie youthful hot genes!) , but emotionally been broken and confused.
The soon to be ex bf is Aspie in his own way and I cut him slack that we weren’t married yet.
I am INTJ and he is
oops, cut off…
I don’t know what his Myers Briggs is as he hans’t taken the test.
I just find it hard to find guys who are right for me and now I am just wide eyed and confused as my next step to take.
I have read 27 of your articles and they have given me some hope.
But I feel that you make it too black and white that one MUST know if they’re on a career path or marriage track by their 20s.
Mine were shot to hell. Heck, part of my 30s were also.
I have a lot of energy, I look very young for my age and still want the guy and the family.
Plus I am aware of the latest in fertility news and egg freezing is worthless.
Ovascience has shown that women can actually coax new eggs easily. Fresh lovely eggs.
Plus the Dr. behind Ovasciene, Jonathan Tilly, has shown that mice/women can even starve themselves for a while and when they resume eating better/more they will have RENEWED fertility.
Day job is simply means to earn money.
So perhaps work into the equation that there are many variables thrown at women and give soem advice on a Plan D.