Slashdot Mirror
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 procrastinators.
It's not just the eggs that deteriorate as women age. Test tube babies are going to become more and more common as parents decide to wait longer to have kids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Babies are people, not toys that you lay away for.
Just wait.
...wondered, "Why is Slashdot posting cooking and preparation of eggs as 'women's work'? And why would that affect woman's career? Kinda sexist if you ask me..."
I8-D
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.
My husband and I decided (long before we got married) we didn't want kids. We have three nieces and a nephew between us. That's plenty of kidlet time when we need it, and it gives their parents a break. (Turns out I'd have difficulty getting pregnant anyway so I'm glad we already decided on our route before I got my hopes up only to have them dashed.)
People may consider it selfish of us, but I'm not sure I want to bring any more human beings into this already over crowded world.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I found the old fashioned way of making babies far more enjoyable.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Are the eggs viability all that different from "young egg" to "old egg"?
Isn't a huge factor simply the age of the mother?
Is planting a 'frozen young egg' in a relatively elderly 50 year old uterus really going to be that much more successful?
-Styopa
I'm in my 40s now (and male for perspective), but when i was in high school, i had it drilled into my head that having a baby in your late teens / early 20s was one of the worst mistakes you could possibly make.
Well, here i am 20 years later and now i feel like it would be an even bigger mistake to have a kid. I've got to keep active in my middle age. my regular exercise schedule is staving off the onset of old age. I'm pretty sure that as soon as i get a kid, BAM! i'm 10 years older and thats a virtual age of 50s. Plus, kids are super expensive. Sure, i've got a good health plan, but babies would still be a huge expense and i've got retirement to save for. When i was 20, i was so much less financially responsible, i never would have noticed a kid sucking my money away.
Looking back, i think it would have been far better to have had a kid at 20. Really, my college education was a waste. At that age i lacked any sort of focus or purpose. i think i probably needed a kid to give me something to work for. I've met enough people my age who had their kids early on and went on to have successful careers and awesome families that i'm starting to think our society has it's priorities backwards when it comes to the right time to start a family. It's far better to do that stuff when you are 18 and 20 and think you can overcome anything.
LaJoie fits the typical profile of an egg freezer: They’re great at their jobs, they make a ton of money, and they’ve followed all of Sheryl Sandberg’s advice. But the husband and baby haven’t materialized
Apparently it isn't so much about not wanting to have babies earlier, it's more about "all the good men are married or gay". Once a person (man or woman) is out of school it becomes increasingly difficult to find a spouse; moving into higher income brackets makes it much more difficult - mostly you need to wait for the mid-life crisis to free some up through divorce.
Talk about an off-site backup!
I am turning forty this year, and already have two school aged kids. They can feed themselves, wipe their own asses, go to bed on their own and bathe themselves. They also can clearly communicate (sometimes too clearly!) their needs, wishes, desires, aches, pains, etc. Even still, they are damned tiring to have around and suck up a lot of time, too. I can only imagine the sheer living hell that would be having an infant at this point in my life. I'd either need the mom to be some twenty something trophy wife with a pile of twenty something energy, or someone who made a pile of money so we could hire a nanny, because I can't imagine a forty something woman who works a full day and is a high achiever coming home and being Super Mom. I know I barely scrape by some days on the parenting scale after a big day at work.
I do keep in shape (which helps keep the energy up) and I do love my kids, but I see people with infants and it makes my vasectomy turn into a happy memory. You have to pick priorities in life, and I know by making the choice to have kids, I've likely shut more than a couple doors career-wise since things like business travel, relocation and ability to take "risky" (e.g. startup) opportunities are kind of off the table now, or there is a whole bunch more at stake than before.
The grandparent post ("And people still assert this...") cites actual data. The parent post cites a movie and a demotivational poster. Which is the better argument?
Finding God in a Dog
Putting off having kids is not as easy as you think.
My sister did have a kid in her late 40s, but the viability of female eggs is actually not that high.
You're far better off having kids and doing what First World Nations do, which is have women with kids not suffer in their careers.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
https://xkcd.com/603/
As a parent who got a late start due to some biological issues, all I can say is "Good luck." Even with frozen eggs, it's very hard getting and staying pregnant. My wife and I are only in our late 30s, and it took a huge amount of medical intervention to get our two kiddies here.
Plus, the other thing to consider is that having kids is definitely a young man's game. I'm doing all right, but having a 3 year old and 1 year old is extremely tiring, as I'm sure it is to a 25 year old, but that just goes up as you get older and have more responsibility at work, etc. Free time doesn't exist anymore, and I'm not going to get that back for a very long time if I keep doing this right.
I guess I kind of understand why people wait. If my wife and I had kids when we were 24/25, we would probably be broke now and in perpetual debt. Having kids later allows you to save a little bit, build up a cushion and actually be able to provide them a decent life without taking out 4 mortgages and 20 credit cards. The problem is that waiting too long to find a mate (i.e. being unattached into your late 30s) puts you in a disadvantaged pool of single people. Lots of single women I talk to who haven't found anyone yet say the quality really drops off -- and they cite immaturity of the man as the reason. Past the mid 30s, you either get the permanent single guys hopping from one club to another on the weekend or the unmarryable.
There is a counter argument to that. Most of these women are the smarter, more viable types carrying better genes. If they are selected out of the gene pool, it's to overall detriment to human evolution in short term.
Overall, genetic selection hasn't been very suitable for human species after we have uplifted ourselves from animal level of intelligence. That method of selection is simply not well suited to select most viable members of that kind of a species. Your issue is one of the better examples. We need people to get more intelligent to progress as species, and yet those who are the most intelligent are in fact getting selected out of the gene pool because they don't breed nearly as much as those who just blindly follow their animalistic instincts.
Most people who say "Oh it is selfish not to have kids," are jealous. Kids are a big commitment, you have to trade off a lot to have them, at least if you are going to be a good parent. Now there are benefits, of course, it can be extremely rewarding emotionally. But there are tradeoffs and some people don't like them. So they see childless couples and see all the extra money and time they have and get jealous, and thus hateful.
It is, in fact, not a selfish position. It is a very pragmatic one. If we are to have a sustainable future, we need population growth to level off. Now I suppose we could go about it all draconian like China and force people to have a certain amount of children. However a better solution is for people who don't wish to have children to not do so. That allows those that want to have more children to do so and yet maintain a consistent population level.
So, where are all the "why are you sitting in the snow" jokes?
Table-ized A.I.
No, but every child SHOULD have parents who wanted them so much that they were willing to try anything to have them.
My mother was in her early 40s and my father in his mid 50s when they had me. Yes, I lost my father young, but I wouldn't have had my world any other way.
As a gal with 40 looming and no prospects of the right guy looming it's a scary world. Yes, I've had the jerks telling me "too bad, it's just not in the cards for you" or "it's not fair to the child for you to consider having them on your own"... .but I know if I choose to go to extremes no one would ever be able to tell my child I didn't want them.
This is often the point where a few "kind and giving 'gentlemen' offer their services".
Lets look at logic. Everyone made the jump that this meant having kids in 50. Having kids at 35 with the eggs you could have had at 30 is also a viable option here. This is saying hey, I can freeze my eggs NOW because I want to have kids in case something happens where I can't later in life, and I may as well use the younger, healthier eggs. So, this could mean "I want to have kids at 35-40, but I should freeze my eggs before most diseases start showing up around 30" I'd also include this isn't a "Selfish" decision. If me working for 5 more years means that I can have the white picket fence house with the perfect school neighborhood for my child and the best early education, then why wouldn't I? The "costs" can also be in 5 years I'll have $50,000 college bond put away from my child that will effectively double by the time he or she is 18. That would be my reason for delaying kid, I want to know before I even have one the education money is saved away. So does that mean having the child at 30 and potentially risking giving my baby any education he or she wants? Or does this mean I say, hey, I can give me some time and know when I have this child I have her future secured away and I can just enjoy my time with her. Additionally, I'd like to add if this article was "Men freezing sperm to avoid putting off fatherhood until they are older because the sperm they produce when they are younger is better" what would your thoughts be? Would it be men embracing the role of eventually becoming a father until they satisfied their career? Typical male putting career first? I would like to see that data for how we'd react and what jumps we would make.
Seriously, if you were anything else, you wouldn't pine for the 50's.
Exactly. People who work for minimum wage for a prolonged period of time don't have the foresight or fortitude to do any such thing and just pump them out like pez.
I enjoy kids, but when I sit down and figure out the math, I don't like them enough to risk my retirement (or early retirement). This is the driving force behind making sure what kind of people I get involved with and ensuring that protection is always a necessary precaution. There are also a lot of other things I would like, in life, but am not willing to risk a couple hundred grand or more on for the limited return that comes with it.
If I were a multi-millionaire, it would be a simple thing to accept (well, no it wouldn't - lack of sleep, diapers, screaming, babysitting, teen years, mooches, layabouts, etc). Not being a multi-millionaire, it is an easy decision -- just like deciding not to buy a yacht is an easy decision.
I just feel bad for my parents. The burden of raising three children has made it a difficult life of sacrifice and less reward or stability. One, likely, without even any promise of affording a retirement as they now approach that age. This won't be a burden I shoulder, however. As most parents desire for their children to have more successful lives than they had, I will be saving myself that burden. (But let's be frank, I'll probably die very young from shitty health anyway, so it isn't like there's a long retirement to contend with anyway!).
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.
If $country has a declining population, then just open up the immigration flood gates and let the populations equalize. Or do you only want to be surrounded with people who look/act/think like you?
Actually, yes. Is there something wrong with wanting to only be around people I like, and not around people who irritate me with customs and values I don't share and don't really appreciate?
If you disagree, why don't you go live in rural Alabama for a while and get to know the locals there? Or some other part of the Bible Belt where most of the people are fundamentalists? Or better yet, someplace in rural Idaho that's dominated by white supremacists? What, are you now saying you don't want to be surrounded with just any random people, and that you actually prefer some cultures to others? How racist!
If you haven't had a girlfriend by 31, I don't think the future looks too bright for you in the relationship department. Have you tried online dating?
Maybe you should think about leaving the country; you'd probably do better in a different culture. American culture sucks in a lot of ways, especially at younger ages where women have horrible criteria for selecting male partners.
I thought this was going to be a thread about me microwaving frozen dinners because the wife was busy at work.
Have gnu, will travel.
For should they want to reproduce in middle age. A few conditions like autism are blamed on aging fathers. And/or chemo or trauma ends sperm production.
Actually, we find menses depends on the culture and biological constraints.
In some areas it's as young as 12, in others as late as 18.
Earlier births lead to more early births, later births lead to more later births.
Age of male partners historically has been much older in many locations, but is closer to age of female partners in most locations nowadays.
A friend of mine was a grandmother at 29, and she has a professional job. Other friends have had children at ages much later than 29.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Fundamentally people want to have their own biological children. They dress it up in all sorts of justifications.
When I think honestly about the years and tens-of-thousands of dollars I've spent trying to have a biological child, I must admit that I do it only out of a selfish desire to fulfill a biological imperative.
You say this as if it were surprising, or deep. The thing you don't seem to get is that pretty much everything else you do is for the same reason. Mostly, you do what you do because you are genetically programmed to do it. You are an animal like any other animal. People are just more inclined to invent a posteriori rationalizations for their actions.
I take issue with the 'immaturity of the man' argument. In my experience, it's much more to do with some fantasy of the perfect guy who will make them happy, instead of making themselves happy and finding someone to share it with.
In fact, I think some rough empirical evidence exists in this direction. Women's sexual market value peaks in their 20s and falls off rapidly in their mid 30s. For men, the peak is much later. In the same way teenagers think they're invulnerable and youth will never end, women find this drop unexpected so their experience is one of a sudden drop in quality of available partners.
Moreover there seems to be a general social move away from long term commitments of any kind. Marriage rates are declining, divorce rates increasing. People move around much more so friendships are broken up. Jobs don't last, etc.
mimicry
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
They don't seem to have any problem finding what they're looking for, so why should they settle for a guy like me?
What makes you think they're finding what they're looking for? I think the high divorce stats in this country prove the exact opposite. They're picking the shiny and glamorous, and then changing their minds later on. Then they find themselves 35+, divorced (because they just couldn't stand the guy any more, or he dumped her for some reason), and bitter.
The last thing I want to do is finally land one and then disappoint her.
No offense, but I think you need to work on your self-confidence. This is coming from someone who has his own issues with that, so you're not alone.
and I would be suspicious of their sincerity anyway.
That's very wise. Leaving the country isn't that easy (unless you go to a 3rd-world cesspit), but if you have valuable tech skills it can be done pretty easily.
Quoting tomhath quoting the article: "LaJoie fits the typical profile of an egg freezer: They’re great at their jobs, they make a ton of money, and they’ve followed all of Sheryl Sandberg’s advice. But the husband and baby haven’t materialized"
..
Maybe it's because men don't want to marry another pseudo-male
Yeah, the "bitter" part kinda covers that.
Here's a nasty point for you - ability to adapt to environment and survive is the key selector in evolution. Regardless of how you view that environment.
Adopt a child. That's what we did... there are an enormous number of children that desperately need a home or they will die... or worse, possibly end up in sex trade. It's a scary thing to do, and it's tough. But I love my son more than I could have ever possibly imagined. He doesn't look like me, isn't the same color as me, doesn't have the same hair as me... but he's my son. God damn, I'm glad I adopted. It's the most important thing I have done, or ever will do again.
I was father when 19 and grandfather at 53. Now, at 57, some afternoons I babysitting my grandsons (4 & 2 yo) and wonder how I had the energy (at 19) to raise childrens, because right now, I got tired after just a few hours taking care of them. Now, I'm a fit man, spending hours in my mountain bike or over the surf board almost every day, but kids ...
Have your children as early as you can.
Whats the point in reproducing, if you have no mother feelings?
"Lots of single women I talk to who haven't found anyone yet say the quality really drops off -- and they cite immaturity of the man as the reason. Past the mid 30s, you either get the permanent single guys hopping from one club to another on the weekend or the unmarryable."
Send the ladies to me...
I should be viable alternative for most women, but I have never encountered an attractive woman who does not suddenly find a partner somewhere , just after she met me. Some girls even dump their boyfriends and find a new one that I've never heard of, while dating me....
I have no idea what it is about me that makes women suddenly fall in love with just about anyone except me, but the statistics are insane.
You might think I'm boring, stupid or unhealthy but I'm clever, quite funny, well educated (there are companies who could hire special troops to kidnap me within 48 hours if they knew about my skill and knowledge), sporty and....unfortunately, disliked for reasons I don't really know. Anyway, I'm just above 30 (although most people think I'm still in my twenties) and I am lost in a strange world where everyone else seems to get a nice career, a girlfriend/wife and a pleasant future.
Maybe my problem is more common than I think?