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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.'"

21 of 342 comments (clear)

  1. Making a Safer World... by Anna+Merikin · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...for procrastinators.

    1. Re:Making a Safer World... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, cause 60-year-olds make great parents for teenagers.

    2. Re:Making a Safer World... by CastrTroy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.
    3. Re:Making a Safer World... by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Making a Safer World... by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, it's not quite that bad for men. While the quality of sperm is known to start to deteriorate eventually, male sperm is far less susceptible to this problem than female eggs.

      That and the fact that we know that male sperm quality has been dropping fairly steadily over last century or so. Age doesn't appear to protect against that (i.e. quality of sperm of younger men is also going down), and we're not really sure what's causing it.

    5. Re:Making a Safer World... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah, cause 60-year-olds make great parents for teenagers.

      I am not quite 60, but I had my kids late in life. I may not have the energy of a 30 year old, but I am financially secure, and can take as much time as I want to spend with them. Every school day, my kids and I ride our bikes to and from their school. Number of 30 year old parents that do the same: 0. After school, I coach a robotics club. Number of 30 year old parents that participate: 0. Parenting takes energy, but it also take time. If you don't have the latter, the former doesn't matter.

    6. Re:Making a Safer World... by Beck_Neard · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Sadly this attitude is becoming so common people don't even recognize it's wrong. Take day care. As an institution, it was designed as a last-resort option for single mothers who were forced to work due to poverty. It was supported to large degree by charitable organizations. Now it's a booming business and caters to career women who think it's ok to stop being a parent when your kid is 24 months old. I can't imagine why people would deliberately stick their children into what is basically a part-time orphanage before they can even speak. Unless they were so poor they literally couldn't feed their kids without it.

      --
      A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
  2. Obligatory by Johann+Lau · · Score: 5, Informative
    1. Re:Obligatory by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And people still assert this is in spite of decades of the Flynn Effect. There's an important genetic component to intelligence, but everything we've see recently suggests fetal development, nutrition, and education make such tremendously larger difference that the "idiocricy effect" could at most be considered a momentary blip.

      Human beings are smart. Given good conditions, they tend to be really smart. And we're all incredibly genetically similar.

    2. Re:Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Obligatory by ArhcAngel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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
  3. Don't delay too long by Chelloveck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Don't delay too long by Algae_94 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Kids being out of college and self-supporting is becoming a myth for many people as well.

  4. im not even sure where to start with this. by nimbius · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Oocyte cryopreservation has been available since 1986 with success rates of nearly 90%. Its commonly used for women with cancer or history of early menopause.

    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.
  5. Or foregoing kids altogether by sandytaru · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Or foregoing kids altogether by lorinc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Or foregoing kids altogether by jma05 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  6. Re:why not just have a baby earlier? by alen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    yep, i'm also 40 and have 2 kids

    best to have kids in your mid 20's right after college and buy a home around the same time. by the time you hit 40 your kids are ready to be kicked out of the house and as you start to make more money you will have time for real entertainment like nice vacations instead of the 20s deal of going to bars all the time

    and when you get to your 40's you start to feel like chilling out a lot more instead of always having to have small kids tug you everywhere and take your attention

    i see a lot of parents in their mid to late 40's now with newborns and i'd hate to be that age and having to wake up at 6am on weekends to watch the kid

  7. FTFA: "typical profile" by tomhath · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  8. Re:Useless without a surrogate by popo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 : )
  9. The good ol' days were a historical anomaly by Xaedalus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.