Putting your family in suspended animation

[astra_nomer]

Here's a radical idea: freeze your eggs so you can have your career now, and family later.

I can see why this could be appealing for a competitive career like science, where you're expected to work like a dog until you get tenure. At the same time, is it really healthy for a mother to undergo pregnancy and labor in her 50s? or even 60s? Besides, if you're a downtrodden postdoc, you're unlikely to have the money to extract and freeze your eggs anyway.

Is it really so hard to balance family and career that you have to resort to such extreme measures? Possibly. But it shouldn't be that way.

Comments

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

I realize that the extreme case is 50's and 60's, but I think it's valuable in general.

I think it's a clever technology for women who plan on getting pregnant in their thirties. Freeze some eggs just after college when you know they're still fresh.

There are a lot of reasons besides career to know that you want kids, but that five years from now is better than now. (Medical issues, relationship problems, dealing with ailing relatives.) The insurance policy of knowing that if something happens to your body you've banked some eggs for later makes good sense to me.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Considering how expensive it is, it seems unlikely to be a viable option for most women right out of college. And it seems unfair for the woman to be bearing the brunt of the expense. Yes, I know women bear the brunt of the burden for childbearing in general, but this only seems to add to the burden, rather than lightening it.