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Facebook and Apple Now Pay For Female Employees To Freeze Their Eggs
Dave Knott writes: While freezing eggs has become an increasingly popular practice for career-oriented women, the procedure comes at a steep price: Costs typically add up to at least $10,000 for every round, plus $500 or more annually for storage. Now two Silicon Valley giants are offering women a game-changing perk: Apple and Facebook will pay for employees to freeze their eggs. They appear to be the first major employers to offer this coverage for non-medical reasons, both offering to cover costs up to $20,000. Tech firms are hardly alone in offering generous benefits to attract and keep talent, but they appear to be leading the way with egg freezing.
Advocates say they've heard murmurs of large law, consulting, and finance firms helping to cover the costs, although no one is broadcasting this support. Companies may be concerned about the public relations implications of the benefit – in the most cynical light, egg-freezing coverage could be viewed as a ploy to entice women to sell their souls to their employer, sacrificing childbearing years for the promise of promotion. Will the perk pay off for companies? The benefit will likely encourage women to stay with their employer longer, cutting down on recruiting and hiring costs. And practically speaking, when women freeze their eggs early, firms may save on pregnancy costs in the long run. A woman could avoid paying to use a donor egg down the road, for example, or undergoing more intensive fertility treatments when she's ready to have a baby. But the emotional and cultural payoff may be more valuable, helping women be more productive human beings.
Advocates say they've heard murmurs of large law, consulting, and finance firms helping to cover the costs, although no one is broadcasting this support. Companies may be concerned about the public relations implications of the benefit – in the most cynical light, egg-freezing coverage could be viewed as a ploy to entice women to sell their souls to their employer, sacrificing childbearing years for the promise of promotion. Will the perk pay off for companies? The benefit will likely encourage women to stay with their employer longer, cutting down on recruiting and hiring costs. And practically speaking, when women freeze their eggs early, firms may save on pregnancy costs in the long run. A woman could avoid paying to use a donor egg down the road, for example, or undergoing more intensive fertility treatments when she's ready to have a baby. But the emotional and cultural payoff may be more valuable, helping women be more productive human beings.
A few of you had questions about the 'work/life balance' at this company. I take it that those have been settled?
Someone let the IT guy into the HR office again.
"helping women be more productive human beings." Because working at Apple is more productive than raising a family?
That men will also be seeing a 20k bump in available work/life benefits. You know, because there is still no indication that the 'Wage Gap' exists in skilled IT positions.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Just a quick mention. I just think it would be better to say that Apple and Facebook are "covering the expenses for female employees who wish to freeze their eggs to delay when they have children".
When you say "Apple and Facebook are paying women to freeze their eggs", it almost sounds like Apple and Facebook are actively pursuing women to freeze their eggs and paying the women to do so.
At least, that how it sounds to me. ^_^
Your children will call you grandma, but they never need to know that you chose being productive for Zuckerberg over being a mom.
... that women who have children don't have time to work but men who have children do?
What percentage of women's down time for giving birth is larger than a man's golfing time?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
emotional and cultural payoff may be more valuable, helping women be more productive human beings.
Women are human beings?
I am seriously appalled at that parting shot. I think choosing to pursue a career vs raising a family is a perfectly valid option. Bonus points if you can do both, but there are trade-offs for any of the choices.
Also
encourage women to stay with their employer longer
Yeah, yeah, that's fine. "Encourage." Right up until the employer starts pressuring a woman into doing so and committing to her career before she can move ahead. For instance, unofficially giving preference to those who have done so when promoting/hiring. Might be a non-issue, as a woman could still choose to have children unless she's taken steps to remove that possibility.
the emotional and cultural payoff may be more valuable
<sarcasm amount="5000">Yeah, because clearly it's far more emotionally and culturally productive for a woman to focus on her career. Sacrificing a career to actually focus on family is a poor decision that clearly offers absolutely no valuable cultural benefits whatsoever.</sarcasm>
See, we have two people flaming that sentence for different aspects (but both because of the same general line of reasoning). In conclusion: shame on Dave Knott for writing that atrocious sentence.
Is this now something that will be added to my "required" healthcare coverage?
CAPTACH: circus
be more productive
I think this is referring more to maternity leave, 'women's problems', Etc. than just "oh you're a woman and therefore less good at things than men".
When someone says something like this, there can be good reasoning behind it; it's not inherently sexist or misogynistic.
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The war has begun.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"help women be more productive as human beings" is NOT the same as the result of this process.
What Apple et al are doing is helping women be more PROFITABLE FOR THE SHAREHOLDERS as work units, not as Human Beings.
Seriously, if "human being" really means "Work Unit" to these people, maybe it is time to find another employer.
I hope they enjoy raising autistic children.
I just sit and stare that that last sentence in the summary and shake my head.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
There's no need for balance! There's only work. And then dying. Now shut up and like it, dispensable interchangeable resource creature!
Seriously, our biologically best childbearing years are likely in the 18-25 range. Maturity wise, we're probably better parents often in the 28-35 range. Later than that, you're going to have some issues. Keeping up with agile, active kids at 35+ is more draining than it was at 18, 25 or even 30. The odds of complications are also higher. So are the odds of small families (the wear and tear of a pregnancy at older ages is higher and people want to have a second or third child less often as a result). That means kids get denied some of the social context they might have if people were having slightly bigger families (and starting younger). As an older parent, you also tend to be involved in fewer physical activities with the child. (I'm not saying in any event that some parents aren't able to keep up or aren't fully involved in sports and other activities, but on average, fewer older parents will be).
The companies are mercenary. They'll coddle you as long as they think you are useful and replacing you would be more expensive. They'll try to convince you to work hard, long hours and remunerate you not with what any objective standard thinks you deserve, but the least they can get away with (why you generally get more from moving companies). And they'll dispense with you rapidly if you show any signs of cracks from illness, stress or if your skillset simply no longer fits their needs or if their business case changes. Loyalty is a conveniently fostered illusion (a convenient fiction for HR types).
Also, your odds of getting sick or dying are higher as you age. This means the chance the kids lose their parents at vulnerable times in their lives goes up. If you are younger, this is less likely and your kids stand a better chance of getting to maturity and hopefully independence and emotional readiness before having to deal with the loss of a parent.
Our society is kind of backwards. I hate to say it, but those in Utah had some parts of it right. I had a friend from Corel go down as part of the team picking up the Word Perfect code base. He noted that down there, their universities and colleges were filled with late twenties women. They had elected to have kids in the 18-25 zone and had them up to school age by their late twenties so they could pursue a higher education and a career once the kids were in school. This model has all sorts of benefits biologically and statistically. (Again, not saying individual cases, and even a fair number of them overall, of parents of older ages don't work out just fine... mine did, albeit with many health scares and a lot less involvement in physical activities or sports).
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
"helping women be more productive human beings" More productive than a mother?
Yes, the "good reasoning" is that raising children is less important than corporate profits.
more of a comment on society as a whole.
They say the art of language is dead.
The asshole in me wants to tell you that you take that as a slap in the face because you already, on some level, believe that you are a less productive employee (person, citizen).
In reality, this is true in the sense that your company does not come first, your family does. Your time is split, and the profit of your employer is not your number one priority, your family is. (As it should be, I should add). There is no politically correct way to say, "we're going to offer you the option to delay your family obligations so it doesn't get in the way of your value to the corporation". Because, lets face it, kids are a selfish thing to do. You're going to spend half a million dollars and remove a good 20,000 hours of "work time" from the system, plus (statstically) cost the government another $150k in education just so you can have a child, when there are really too many humans on the planet already.
It's true of employer sponsored daycare, too. They're really saying that you can't be a good mom and make us money, but we can take care of your kid so you can concentrate on what matters to us - productivity. Heck, it's been implied by all the corporations who (unabashedly) say, "we'll pay you enough so that your wife doesn't have to work," but what they really mean is we expect 100% from you and that means none of that pick-up-the-kids, go-to-every-little-league-game bullshit that keeps you from focusing on your work.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
And in 20yrs they'll be screaming that there are now tech workers.
Where did they all go?
Well back in 2014 you paid all the smart women not to have kids so....
Brilliant!
No, this is sexism against women.
First - freezing the eggs is simple, but getting them is not. It's not risk-free, and not at all a non-event. If you do not believe me, stab yourself in the balls with knitting needles 20 times after giving yourself a hormone injection every day for a few weeks.
Second. Signalling that healthy women should consider infertility treatment is just absurd. If they work so much now so they don't have time to find someone, is this really the solution to the correct problem?
Helping women (and men) with fertility problems is noble and good (maybe - it's also very hard to adopt children.) But pitched like this, it's just sick.
>> If they work so much now so they don't have time to find someone, is this really the solution to the correct problem?
Why do you presume they haven't yet "found the right man"? Maybe they just don't want to have kids yet, but realize that it's far better/cheaper/safer to extract eggs at 24 instead of 38?
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
"But the emotional and cultural payoff may be more valuable, helping women be more productive human beings."
Some people would assert that raising happy, healthy, well-adjusted and well-loved children makes a more "productive" and "valuable" human being than working at a law firm or technology company.
But hey, I'm old fashioned.
-Styopa
This is a pretty good example of a policy that, even if it's well-intentioned, kind of sends up a red flag about the company. This would tell me that employees who do not give over their souls to the company and complain about 90-hour death march weeks on projects will be replaced by the 100 other women lining up for their jobs.
The other thing all these hard-working 20something women need to look into is the actual amount of effort required to turn those frozen eggs back into kids. My wife went through 2 successful and a few unsuccessful rounds of IVF in our mid to late 30s simply because we didn't think we would have problems having kids after our lives stabilized a little. It is *not* a straightforward process. Fertility treatment, even if partially covered by insurance is insanely expensive. It's also invasive, painful and not guaranteed to work. Fertility clinics make huge coin on 40something executives who all of a sudden decide they want kids. Because of this, doctors charge rates on a similar scale to plastic surgery -- huge inelastic demand, high cost, and a self-selecting affluent clientele.
The fact that Facebook and Apple will pay for services like this isn't the problem -- the problem is the message it sends. I do agree, especially after being a dad of 2 kids, that people need to wait until their lives stabilize to some degree. People we know who had their kids earlier are perpetually in debt and miserable. (We're perpetually not in debt, but still dealing with huge fixed expenses, so I think we're at least a little better off. Plus, when you come home and both of them run up to you and yell "Daddy!!!!" you kind of forget that you don't have a ton of money saved outside of retirement.) But the corollary of this is that parents who wait until they're 40-plus will probably miss out on a lot of the "being a parent" experiences just because they're too old or still being workaholics.
That work-life balance that everyone seems so quick to want to get rid of needs to come swinging back towards the middle a little bit, in my opinion. I am not opposed to working hard, even for someone else. I regularly put in more than the required effort at my job, and have been rewarded for it by my employer. I am opposed to companies expecting (and getting) 80+ hour work weeks rather than staffing projects properly. Having those same companies tell their female employees to put off that messy child rearing thing until they have extracted their best work sets a very bad precedent.
The risks for the egg-removing is the same more or less, but the chance of a successful implant is decreased while the risks of pregnancy increases with age.
Technically, you freeze zygotes if you have a partner, but that's perhaps what they meant.
So, PRODUCING human beings isn't more "productive" than working, huh? Nice vocabulary you've got there.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If women want to take all of the jobs, I'm good with that. I'm looking forward to being a 1950's house wife in 2015 -- you know, with modern kitchen appliances, big-screen tv's, music in every room, and modern cleaning tools. I'll even throw in DIY home renovations if it means that I don't need to deal with commuting, clients, bosses, and, you know, actual work. We won't even discuss spending time with children.
Men, it's time to let women work hard and pay for everything. I'm ready to stay home and cook -- I love to cook.
Your post was a joke, but my post is not: I would be extremely annoyed, as male, if I were working for one of these companies, that I would be unable to take advantage of that offer. I would love to be a father at some point, that point not being anytime soon, and we both have to work. Would drive me crazy knowing that if I were the female, the problem would be solved, but being male, not so much.
I don't work for either of them anyway, I work for a much smaller company that is rather unlikely to offer any such thing, anyway, so whatever. Just too bad we weren't born a little later - I feel like this technology is going to become commonplace (and therefore affordable) in the reasonably near future, but not probably reasonably near *enough*. Oh well.
The reality is that balancing a career with being a parent is typically much more difficult for women. In most relationships, it's the woman that take's on the greater responsibility when it comes to child care, - whether she is working full time or not.
Given that, choosing to be a parent can have a bigger impact on a woman's career than a man's. Even as a man I've made career choices that I wouldn't have made if I didn't have my responsibilities as a parent to consider. It's worse for women.
So while I think it's great that companies are trying to give women more flexibility as to when in their lives to have kids, I question whether delaying it beyond their normal child bearing years is a good idea anyway. It just creates more problems later on. If you wait until your 40's to have kids, now you're approaching or are at retirement age when they are just getting out of college. This creates some potential financial issues if you're not careful. Were you saving for their college education and your own retirement? Also by the time they are having kids of their own, you are now approaching an age where they might also be helping taking care of you, - all while trying to juggle a career. Sucks to be them.
From this article on the subject:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/20...
The last sentence is key. You can bet we are inching towards this $10,000 elective procedure being mandated by American health insurance, which means men will be the ones paying for it through taxes as demonstrated here:
http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/1...
The sheer fact Apple and facebook are doing this is a "slippery slope". Give feminists an inch, and they will take a mile, and then blame you for not giving two miles. And the idea of giving $10,000 to a man to start a family? Nahhhhhhhh.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
So, if you leave the company or are terminated, will they continue to hold these eggs for you until you want them at no charge? Will they pay for the implanting and provide maternity benefits even though you're no longer an employee - which they would have had to do if you had chosen to get preggy while you were working for them?
"Oh, sorry, you're over 40, but we terminated you because "your skills are now outdated." Thanks for saving us a lot more than if you had decided to have a child earlier on, sucker. And good luck trying to find and keep a job as a 40-something pregnant woman with "outdated skills."
Allowing women to have "a more productive life?" Only if you mistake your career as "your life."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
As a male, I would have loved to have this type of coverage through my employer for my spouse. When my wife and I decided to have a baby, we had to go the IVF route due to a condition my wife has. Since we knew we wanted to have a second, but the odds of doing so naturally were very low, we chose to freeze/store the extra eggs they retrieved as part of the procedure. My employer's health plan had a maximum lifetime coverage of $25,000 for fertility services, but it does not cover the cost to freeze and store eggs. Freeze and storage cost us $1200/year. When money was really tight, you really start to weigh your options as to whether you keep storing and pay that high price, or quit and free up the cash.
I think my anecdote also highlights a different use case for egg storage. While the summary, and most of the comments here focus on using the egg storage as a means of delaying having children, this can also be vital to whether you can have children at all or how many you can have. But I'm not surprised at the narrow focus of discussion. This seems to be the case with most controversial women's health issues. The birth control coverage issue I found particularly irritating. The argument was solely about whether employers should be "subsidizing a promiscuous lifestyle" yet hardly ever made mention of the fact that a large minority of women take birth control for a wide array of other reasons that are directly related to their health and well being. But that's mostly related to a woman's period, hormones and disorders/diseases that affect a woman's reproductive system and "that's totally disgusting. Shut up and go away!"
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Exactly. As healthy lifespan increases, as a society we need to either have fewer children or start having them later in life. Having children later in life is particularly appealing to anyone who spent 4-8 years getting a BS/MS/PhD, significantly offsetting their productive, earning years. We're effectively going through our lifecycle much slower now then 1000, or even 100 years ago. In the (maybe not so) far off future, it may be that people routinely live healthily into their second century and are thinking about starting a family at around 60 or 70. Technologies like freezing eggs (though I realize this is only a tiny piece) will enable that future.
You can but it is medically pointless. Men can (almost) always produce sperm even when they're 90+ years old. Women run out of eggs somewhere between their late 30's and early 50's.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I believe there *are* companies out there where you can make it the main focus of your life, working for them, and actually have some justification for doing so.
In the current tech sector, there are really only a few that come to mind. I'd say Google would be one. Apple would be another. Facebook tries to be yet another, but I have mixed feelings on whether or not they've really "arrived" in that way.
I'm talking about companies that have earned a lot of respect for continuously doing things that make people's lives better. There are so many of us who go through life lacking "purpose". People get up every day and go to a job, just because that's what you're "supposed to do", come home and do a lot of little, relatively pointless stuff, pay the required bills... rinse and repeat.
Whether male or female, I can understand why some people would find that sense of purpose in working for one of these companies that's actually changing the course of society's future. (I mean, if you're talking about communication tools alone -- look how different things are today with the advent of the smartphone. Look how much easy access we have to music thanks to the digital music revolution. Look at what cellular data connected tablet devices allow people to do.) You can say what you will about Apple, Google, or even Intel or Microsoft ... but working on the right projects for one of them HAS to be more rewarding than working as a gas station attendant, a retail sales person at a clothing store, or any number of other misc. jobs out there.
So yeah... it's not for everyone, but I get why *some* people would actually want the work/life balance tipped heavily towards their work. It's just not something you want to feel is FORCED upon you, and probably not healthy at all if your job isn't one of the real "movers and shakers" that actually accomplishes major things.
True.
But as long as it's not being forced on anyone (which I'm sure will, unfortunately, happen), it's their choice. I don't see a problem with that.
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Or is it illegal for a company to found a kindergarden and afternoon care and offer its service to the employees?
This egg freezing sounds retarded, how long is a woman supposed to postpone having children?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
This was discussed a while back; it isn't married women who are freezing their eggs. Most women who want to freeze their eggs do so because they don't want to be single mothers. Finding a husband comes first, the frozen eggs are an insurance policy in case that doesn't happen when they're still young. Although one could make the argument that working too much limits their social life, that doesn't seem to be the problem. The real problem is that once they graduate from college "All the good men are married or gay".
A friend of mine had her eggs frozen because she was going to go through chemo.
She was married, one kid and diagnosed with breast cancer.
Before she started chemo, the doctors told them that there was a chance of infertility afterward.
So she had her eggs frozen (after fertilizing them - apparently they do better that way)
She had a masectomy and chemo.
And now she's had a 2nd kid. (I don't know if they used a frozen egg or not. I don't think there's a polite way to ask that question, and it doesn't matter)
My understanding is that this policy would have helped her pay for the procedures.
I think that a lot of other insurance coverage plans it wouldn't be covered. And instead the family would have to look at how to pay for it out of their pocket.
They're on the path to being sued anyway. Where's the $20k option for males? Sperm collection costs about $2... for the specimen cup.
(Note: this has come up many times before, and is why men get the same "maternity" leave options as women just about everywhere.)
As i said, more of a comment on society as a whole rather than the corporation itself.
I would guess that most people who put off having kids until later end up having fewer kids anyway. If couples have two kids or less, statistically that will result in long term population decline. Looking at actual trends show that population is flat or declining in many parts of the world while exploding elsewhere.
Declining populations are problematic in several ways as well since many economic systems are designed around growth.
I don't disagree that unchecked world wide population growth isn't good, but draconian methods to keep women from having kids in regions where there is little if any population growth anyway isn't the answer.
Will be to offer surrogate mothers - if you offshore childbearing its "win win" in the latest MBA text books.
Tat Tvam Asi
Ovary good. Very good indeed.
And what about the kids that will eventually be made with those eggs? How are apple and fb going to compensate them for the lost time with their parents?
Yes, it's basically a blatant admission that they're sweatshops, and that the way to get ahead at both companies is to work long hours and not take vacations, rather than to actually be productive and do quality work.
Seriously? Are you implying that mothers are not productive human beings, and they they can be productive by having paying jobs? What Evs!
More productive human beings? What is more productive than bearing and raising well adjusted, intelligent, moral children? We have truly lost sight of what's important in this world.