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Women Increasingly Freezing Their Eggs To Pursue Their Careers
Lasrick (2629253) writes "Really interesting piece by Emma Rosenblum about women freezing their eggs in order to take 'biological clock' pressure off while they pursue careers: 'Not since the birth control pill has a medical technology had such potential to change family and career planning. The average age of women who freeze their eggs is about 37, down from 39 only two years ago... And fertility doctors report that more women in their early 30s are coming in for the procedure. Not only do younger women have healthier eggs, they also have more time before they have to use them.'"
For purely financial reasons both men and women probably want their kids to be out of college and self-supporting before they retire. That kind of means you really want to have them by the time you hit your early 40s.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
my biggest issue is that the article is predicated on the condescending notion that without this technology, women are forced to forego their careers and simply bare children instead. There are plenty of women who do not want children. Its also worth noting that the spike has very little to do with the success rate of cryopreservative technologies but instead:
with increased media attention and an unlikely celebrity spokeswoman. In a 2012 episode of Keeping up With the Kardashians, Kim, post-divorce, consulted with a fertility doctor about freezing her eggs.
given this recent advocation and the fact that fertility is a 4 billion dollar industry in the united states, its difficult to say women are intentionally choosing this rather expensive procedure not covered by insurance by their own volition and without the assistance of businessweek articles. like gout, antidepressants, and erectile dysfunction medications, expect cryopreservation to start making its commercial debut on television in the near future.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Yeah, cause 60-year-olds make great parents for teenagers.
Yeah, but freezing your eggs doesn't freeze the rest of your aging. As somebody with 3 kids, I'm glad that I had kids young, because I would not have the energy to deal with kids when I was 50 or 60. There's people who are having babies when they are 45. I would not want a teenager in the house when I'm 60. I guess everybody is entitled to their own way of doing things, but it takes a lot of energy to raise kids. Also, I'd like to point out that kids cost exactly as much to raise as you want them to. Sure you could buy $200 shoes for your kid, but they definitely don't need any of that stuff. My kids get plenty of enjoyment from going out for a walk in the woods, which is free, and don't need to go to amusement parks all the time to be entertained.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
everything we've see recently suggests fetal development, nutrition, and education make such tremendously larger difference that the "idiocricy effect"
Except for twin studies which indicate a heritability for IQ between .7 and .8:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
So, you know, there's that.
Of course environment has an impact. It's similar to height in that regard - malnourish a child and they won't grow into their genetic destiny. But to therefore suggest that height isn't strongly heritable is just absurd.
If both your parents are morons then the likelihood of you receiving good fetal development, nutrition, and education are slim to none. There are exceptions but the reason they are called exceptions is they are RARE! That said growing up extended family would frequently commented on how much I was like my grandfather (he died when I was an infant) because I had his smarts (He taught himself chemical engineering and was part of the development of polymers). My take on our society is today's typical highly intelligent couple are too self absorbed to embark on a life of selfless giving by having children. Of those that do have children a large percentage offload the actual parenting to paid support so they can continue to be self absorbed while patting themselves on the back for having pro-created. Having said all that I believe a child raised by morons that love the child has a far superior life to a child raised by intellectuals or affluent parents who see the child as a trophy or burden.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
My wife and I are in the same situation, and I never understood the selfishness argument. Why is it selfish? To whom? What harm does it bring and to what?
The more I have this discussion with family and friends, the more it turns out to be pure jealousy towards us better enjoying our life. Most of them didn't expect it is that hard to raise children, and especially the many things you have to give up due to the lack of time to do it.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Sadly, not tongue in cheek. Nowadays many parents view that parenting like many other business tasks can be outsourced.
It's a major problem with modern schooling for example. Traditionally schools were mainly about providing education. Now they are widely expected, especially by older parents to provide at least partial parenting.
This is causing a large amount of friction in many countries that are seen the phenomena of older parents.
It's only one particular class of humans on earth that is waiting longer. The uneducated, the religious and the poor (which are often one and the same group) are actually having babies at an increasing rate, starting at a younger age.
The global effects of "waiting" on overall population are actually very small when measured against the overall metrics of global population. It's a big world out there. The effects on demographics and culture are actually profound though -- but they are opposite to the intent of those who wait: Populations are dumbing down precisely because the educated have decreased their rate of reproduction.
What is good for the individual family, may be fatal for the society.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Personally, I thought that the opposite is true...that people who have kids are selfish (and I may yet be one among those selfish people - not decided yet)... since they are adding kids to a planet that can do with a lot fewer of them.
The "replenishment" argument has not made sense in centuries. Not having a baby is the most green thing one can do. Babies have bigger carbon footprints than *anything* else you can have and most probably (unless some revolution of green technologies hits soon) more than everything else you do.
Parents having children later in life also exerts some downward pressure on population growth, even if we retain fertility rates. So more power to those who choose this technology.
What you are referring to is the post-World War II era of twenty years that applied really just to the United States, Britain, and a few other select nations. The rest of humanity's history is very similar to the present: both parents working and trying to find low-cost alternatives for child-care, education rapidly approaching unattainable levels of cost for all but the very elite, and a resurrection of the landowner/landlord aristocracy. We're moving to a form of Feudalist Capitalism, only instead of lords and mandarins, we have Corporations and oligarchic republics. Even during the Industrial revolution, we STILL had aristocracies, merchants, and peasants. It was just that technology was redefining who was who. Right now the entire planet is reverting back to the *standard* way of life, the way it used to be before World War I. We just happen to have higher living standards and better technology to assist us.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.