This has been a huge topic of conversation for my wife and I for the past few years. Our entire social circle is the exact target demographic: early thirties, highly educated, career focused, etc etc. We got married earlier than nearly all our friends (age 28). We've had two kids before most of our friends are married. Our friends are now closing in on 35 and now thinking about how to have a family is becoming a serious concern. We were a generation raised being told consistently that a woman should be career focused, pursue as much education as possible, and that you don't have to ever worry about finding a partner and having kids until you're ready. And now we have friends freezing eggs, considering how to start a family without a partner while they can still easily have kids, etc. It just feels like the pendulum has swung too far in terms of my generation's expectations (or maybe naiveté). You can't change biology. It will be interesting to see what kind of advice I give my daughter when she's an adult, but I'm hoping her generation has a bit more of a middle-ground approach to thinking about the balance between career and starting a family.
I don't disagree with most of your post, except this part: "You can't change biology."
We can already 3D print organs, rewrite DNS using viruses, and just today discovered we can reverse Alzheimer's almost entirely using ultrasound within the brain. It is dangerously naive for us to think we cannot change our own biology. It's simply a matter of time and resources.
If you want to get married and have kids, you should just do it. My wife and I had our daughter while we she was still in law school and I had just graduated. Taking care of a kid is a lot of work while both working long hours at big firms, but why that's what grandparents are for. There is no good time to be sleep deprived for months doing night feedings. At least in your 20's you have the energy and your parents are young enough to help out!
The previous generation experienced massive pressure not to return to the workforce after having children, so it makes sense that the pendulum would swing to having career success before children. Hopefully the future actually involves flexibility about career/job breaks required for having children as well as the care situation afterwards.
The biology of the situation doesn't just relate to fertility though, life spans have an impact on the probability of seeing your children and grandchildren reach certain ages.
Family and career both require massive amounts of time and energy. It should be acknowledged that there is no way to fully commit to one without taking away from the other. So you'll have to make a difficult choice.
The hugely surprising fact of the article, for me, was:
"Just 2,000 babies have been born from cryogenically frozen eggs in the world"
That's crazy to me; this all sounds like a huge bet on complete unknowns.
I also wonder if this is going to be the end of grandparents in affluent circles - if people wait until their 40s for kids, and their kids do the same...not much time to hang out with grandma and grandpa.
This issue has been weighing heavily on me. My Dad was 36 when I was born and is now 70 years old. My fiance and I are both professionals and have our kids planned for 2018 when she is done working 80 hour weeks. By then my Dad will be around 74. Considering my grandfather died at 85, that doesn't leave a whole lot of time left to have a big impact. Plus, that likely means I won't have much time with my potential grandchildren either if my children also don't have kids until their late 30s and assuming quality lifespan doesn't increase dramatically.
This, by the way, is largely a myth. Obviously fertility decreases with age, but it's a gradual tapering off until menopause, not a cliff at 37 (or 35 or 40 or any other red line). ~80% of women aged 35 to 40 can still conceive within a year.
There may not be a cliff, but if you look at http://www.advancedfertility.com/ivf-age.htm you can see that the IVF success rate is halved going from 30 years old to 40, and then halves twice more by age 44. If you are going to need help with fertility -- and lots of women do -- you are vastly better off discovering it at 30 than at 40.
(Re: the article, the interesting question then becomes how much of that decline is due to reduced egg quality. If that's a major issue, then freezing eggs at 30 might be a huge win.)
Yup! My brother and I were born when my mom was 44 and 42, respectively. Apparently my mom had made an appointment with her OB-GYN to talk about fertility treatment options. At that appointment they also did a routine pregnancy test and she discovered that she was pregnant with me. :D
Are couples so egotistical that they can only imagine having a kid that is genetically theirs? If you want to delay family life and work on your career, why is it not an obvious option to adopt when you're ready?
Also, I do think companies need to start offering 6-month packages for parents, both the father and mother. There's too much wealth floating around for this to still not be a thing.
You make a good point, although you phrase it very provocatively. Genetics can be a big deal, for many reasons. At the basic level, the desire to have children is a desire to promulgate one's genes.
I agree with you in that I don't care, myself; but I don't think it's fair to judge the people who do care.
My college educated wife chose to stay home. Some of her friends and family view this as a deliberately provocative anti-feminist choice, and we're in the midwest. I can only imagine those sentiments would be even more common in SV.
$20,000 is roughly the cost of childcare for the year. It would be better spent on letting parents use that money towards that, allowing both partners to work.
With a large enough population you could probably open an on-site care facility for children, which buys you better employee satisfaction, since you could integrate it with their workplace IT.
That said, the $20k is a one time cost to freeze eggs, whereas the $20k you would give (to a partner or other childcare) would cover just one year. The egg freezing seems like the more economical choice, from Apple/FB's point of view.
Or offer day care, life balance, work from home etc.. Honestly, having a kid puts you out of the office but not necessarily out of work, especially tasks amenable to remote work.
Funny thing about using the $20,000 benefit for IVF: a clinic charges a lot more, like 2.5 times more, for the same service when going through insurance than when self-paying. With the $20,000 benefit you will end up out-of-pocket paying 50% of the self-pay amount. That is better than nothing but the service is not covered in full.
I was offered egg-freezing before beginning one of those "sterilizing" chemotherapy treatments. While it was great to have the option, the last thing I wanted to put my already dying body through was hormone therapy and surgery...
Years after treatment, I was in "menopause" and not a candidate for fertility treatment (fsh > 50 AMH = .17). My only hope was a donor egg.
My husband and I naturally conceived in July and our baby boy is coming in a few weeks.
I share this not because I think every woman can have babies, but because our science is still limited in understanding conception. There is a lot more to creating life than what we can "see" at the moment.
> Similarly, Noyes’ team, surveying 183 egg-freezing patients on why they were delaying childbirth, found that just 24 percent cited professional reasons, while 88 percent cited lack of a partner.
Are they more likely to find a partner as they get older? That bet could be as large as a bet on the viability of the frozen eggs. Finding a partner and raising a child on one's own both become harder as time goes on. My bet is that most eggs frozen will by younger women for themselves later in life will not be used.
I feel like I'm uniquely qualified to comment on this, as I'm going through the IVF process with my wife currently.
> Are they more likely to find a partner as they get older?
Possibly. Maybe not, but you're essentially paying for insurance.
> That bet could be as large as a bet on the viability of the frozen eggs.
Frozen embryos are extremely viable, as long as you were able to observe their cellular division 3-5 days after fertilization. As long as you can confirm they're viable before freezing, you're almost assured they'll be viable when thawed at a later data in the future (this isn't only from my pubmed research, but also from the top fertility doctor in the Chicagoland area we're using).
> Finding a partner and raising a child on one's own both become harder as time goes on.
Disagree. In most cases, you're further advanced in your career when older, giving you more income, thereby more purchasing power. You may not find a partner, but daycare is easier to afford, or a part time nanny. Delaying childbirth most likely affords you opportunities not available to those who cut their career prospects early to have children (or who left their career entirely because they had a partner to rely on).
Also, more resources available to you means you can be more discerning about your partner selection.
> My bet is that most eggs frozen will by younger women for themselves later in life will not be used.
Its possible, but like I said above, its insurance. My wife is 30. Whatever eggs we freeze now that we don't use, they are essentially her eggs at 30, and could be used by her at any date in the future. She even has the option to use those eggs with someone else if we're not together at some point in the future (life is long).
TL;DR Freezing your eggs is an insurance policy against the future.
EDIT: Due to reasons I'd rather not make public beyond what I've shared above, I've contacted institutions who are doing research in coercing stem cells into egg or sperm cells. I expect in the next 10 years for this to be a solved problem, and the egg retrieval process to be deprecated in favor of a quick blood draw and incubation period to coax stem cells to reproductive cells. But unfortunately, this isn't solved yet.
"Are they more likely to find a partner as they get older?"
Even if not, it's still a good thing to hope for. It is a psychological effect that gave birth (no pun intended) to a market. After finally acquiring wealth in exchange for one's prime years of life, there aren't many further things worth exchanging those gains for but another dream.
I disagree that finding a partner is harder as you get older -- at least in the upper third or so by income of white-collar workers, which is the demographic that is being targeted here.
I mean, past a point, sure. Probably it's a lot harder to find a partner at age 45 than it is at 30. But I think it's easier at 30 than at 25.
It's a lot easier to sell something when you frame the issue as one of loss avoidance.
"You should do X, because if you don't do X right away, then this bad thing may happen in the future! By the way, it only costs $N0,000... But your baby's life is on the line!"
I can't think of a much more convincing sell for this target market than that if I tried.
Something about this feels off to me. When viewed in the right light, this almost looks like blackmail, or extortion.
A lot of people who do not understand fertility (female fecundity -- the ability to conceive) and others give wrong info from comments I've seen here.
The Amerian Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) the doctors orgninzation of fertilty doctors (called Reproductive Endocrinologists) says that women are most likely to conceive in their 20's to early 30's. Elite egg donor agencies that offer $20,000 for donor eggs in Ivy League student newspapers want donors under 29 or 28. Studies show that 3 out of 4 men and women overestimate by five years the rapid decline in fecundity believing that it is 40 when it is in fact 35.
The ASRM does not yet recommend egg freezing for delaying childbirht but rather for situations such as chemotherapy for cancer which would destroy the eggs in the ovaries.
Fertility speicalists (S. Silber and others) recommend that if women expect to wait beyond 30 to have children they should have an antral folllicle count ultrasound at age 25. Other fertilty speciialsts have recommended other tests at age 25 (eg, FSH, or anti-Mullerian hormone).
There are no non-invasive tests to test for ovarian reserve which varies from woman to woman. Unfortunately, studies shiow that doctors (include those internetists that might write birth control medication perscriptions) don't have any better understanding of ages of female fertilty than the general public. Obstetricians do know but they don't always discuss the age issues with their patients.
In summary, women should consider getting a test for their ovarian reserve (antral follicle count ultrasound or above mentioned laboratory tests sooner rather than later) so that they can make informed decisions. The article listed above and its references will provide a lot of information. * Consult reproductive endocrinologists for correct information about fecundity.
The intensity of pain and grief one can feel when they or their spouse have fertility issues is tough to convey. Most people have no idea what a hell this fertility thing can be. It's such a lonely condition, no one wants to talk about it, and no one wants to hear about it.
And when someone makes a juvenile joke about eggs, wombs, etc. around me and my wife or if we get some dumbass comment like "when are you going to have another kid?", I can tell you that that person is PERMANENTLY tainted with the #asshole hashtag and we're probably going to have a tearfilled conversation that night. If you fancy yourself a comedian and you want to make some jokes about procreation, don't be shocked when friends fall away from you.
I don't know if egg freezing should be recommended, whether it might lead to birth defects or developmental issues, etc. But, if it were available to me and my wife early in our marriage and we knew we might have troubles, I think we might have sprung for it.
Here's my PSA: age 35 is when egg quality and quantity starts to decline precipitously for most women. If you're interested in doing this egg freezing or embryo freezing thing, plan to get it done well before age 35 (like age 30, just to be safe.)
Makes me wonder if/when the market for this grows, if we'll start to see financial products built on this (maybe to help offset the costs of such, or to hedge risks for a company that may solicit in relatively financially risky behaviors?) à la egg futures[0] concept Hanson discuses?
Reproduction is not just a biological act where a male gamete meets a female gamete.
The hardest part of the process is finding the person with whom you want to have a child and who will be your partner in life for this incredibly complex challenge that is raising children.
I question the ethics behind relieving thousands of dollars to affluent women while making them believe it will somehow solve their existential need.
There is no way around balancing work and life if you want to have children.
Nobody talks about this but fertility rapidly declines in your 30s especially after 35. Egg freezing should be done as early as possible, aka in your 20s, even then the odds that you will have a live birth after thawing are low. That being said, there is the viable alternative of using an egg donor which relies on fertile young women.
[+] [-] dougmccune|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|11 years ago|reply
We can already 3D print organs, rewrite DNS using viruses, and just today discovered we can reverse Alzheimer's almost entirely using ultrasound within the brain. It is dangerously naive for us to think we cannot change our own biology. It's simply a matter of time and resources.
[+] [-] rayiner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greendestiny|11 years ago|reply
The biology of the situation doesn't just relate to fertility though, life spans have an impact on the probability of seeing your children and grandchildren reach certain ages.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zaccus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patmcc|11 years ago|reply
"Just 2,000 babies have been born from cryogenically frozen eggs in the world"
That's crazy to me; this all sounds like a huge bet on complete unknowns.
I also wonder if this is going to be the end of grandparents in affluent circles - if people wait until their 40s for kids, and their kids do the same...not much time to hang out with grandma and grandpa.
[+] [-] chriskanan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpatokal|11 years ago|reply
This, by the way, is largely a myth. Obviously fertility decreases with age, but it's a gradual tapering off until menopause, not a cliff at 37 (or 35 or 40 or any other red line). ~80% of women aged 35 to 40 can still conceive within a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility#Female_fertility
[+] [-] Domenic_S|11 years ago|reply
Risk of having a child with Down Syndrome:
At age 20, 1 in 1,441
At age 25, 1 in 1,383
At age 30, 1 in 959
At age 35, 1 in 338
At age 40, 1 in 84
At age 45, 1 in 32
At age 50, 1 in 44
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_maternal_age#Risk_of_b...
[+] [-] refurb|11 years ago|reply
I think the other states on the wiki page make more sense. 66-44% of 35-40 yr olds will have conception resulting in a live birth within a year.
[+] [-] colomon|11 years ago|reply
(Re: the article, the interesting question then becomes how much of that decline is due to reduced egg quality. If that's a major issue, then freezing eggs at 30 might be a huge win.)
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] civilian|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jarjoura|11 years ago|reply
Also, I do think companies need to start offering 6-month packages for parents, both the father and mother. There's too much wealth floating around for this to still not be a thing.
[+] [-] irremediable|11 years ago|reply
I agree with you in that I don't care, myself; but I don't think it's fair to judge the people who do care.
[+] [-] ido|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkot|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsxwolf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bentcorner|11 years ago|reply
With a large enough population you could probably open an on-site care facility for children, which buys you better employee satisfaction, since you could integrate it with their workplace IT.
That said, the $20k is a one time cost to freeze eggs, whereas the $20k you would give (to a partner or other childcare) would cover just one year. The egg freezing seems like the more economical choice, from Apple/FB's point of view.
[+] [-] sjg007|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s73v3r|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway03951|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msoad|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindfulgeek|11 years ago|reply
Years after treatment, I was in "menopause" and not a candidate for fertility treatment (fsh > 50 AMH = .17). My only hope was a donor egg.
My husband and I naturally conceived in July and our baby boy is coming in a few weeks.
I share this not because I think every woman can have babies, but because our science is still limited in understanding conception. There is a lot more to creating life than what we can "see" at the moment.
[+] [-] Domenic_S|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golemotron|11 years ago|reply
Are they more likely to find a partner as they get older? That bet could be as large as a bet on the viability of the frozen eggs. Finding a partner and raising a child on one's own both become harder as time goes on. My bet is that most eggs frozen will by younger women for themselves later in life will not be used.
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|11 years ago|reply
> Are they more likely to find a partner as they get older?
Possibly. Maybe not, but you're essentially paying for insurance.
> That bet could be as large as a bet on the viability of the frozen eggs.
Frozen embryos are extremely viable, as long as you were able to observe their cellular division 3-5 days after fertilization. As long as you can confirm they're viable before freezing, you're almost assured they'll be viable when thawed at a later data in the future (this isn't only from my pubmed research, but also from the top fertility doctor in the Chicagoland area we're using).
> Finding a partner and raising a child on one's own both become harder as time goes on.
Disagree. In most cases, you're further advanced in your career when older, giving you more income, thereby more purchasing power. You may not find a partner, but daycare is easier to afford, or a part time nanny. Delaying childbirth most likely affords you opportunities not available to those who cut their career prospects early to have children (or who left their career entirely because they had a partner to rely on).
Also, more resources available to you means you can be more discerning about your partner selection.
> My bet is that most eggs frozen will by younger women for themselves later in life will not be used.
Its possible, but like I said above, its insurance. My wife is 30. Whatever eggs we freeze now that we don't use, they are essentially her eggs at 30, and could be used by her at any date in the future. She even has the option to use those eggs with someone else if we're not together at some point in the future (life is long).
TL;DR Freezing your eggs is an insurance policy against the future.
EDIT: Due to reasons I'd rather not make public beyond what I've shared above, I've contacted institutions who are doing research in coercing stem cells into egg or sperm cells. I expect in the next 10 years for this to be a solved problem, and the egg retrieval process to be deprecated in favor of a quick blood draw and incubation period to coax stem cells to reproductive cells. But unfortunately, this isn't solved yet.
[+] [-] restalis|11 years ago|reply
Even if not, it's still a good thing to hope for. It is a psychological effect that gave birth (no pun intended) to a market. After finally acquiring wealth in exchange for one's prime years of life, there aren't many further things worth exchanging those gains for but another dream.
[+] [-] aetherson|11 years ago|reply
I mean, past a point, sure. Probably it's a lot harder to find a partner at age 45 than it is at 30. But I think it's easier at 30 than at 25.
[+] [-] gcr|11 years ago|reply
"You should do X, because if you don't do X right away, then this bad thing may happen in the future! By the way, it only costs $N0,000... But your baby's life is on the line!"
I can't think of a much more convincing sell for this target market than that if I tried.
Something about this feels off to me. When viewed in the right light, this almost looks like blackmail, or extortion.
[+] [-] davidf18|11 years ago|reply
A lot of people who do not understand fertility (female fecundity -- the ability to conceive) and others give wrong info from comments I've seen here.
The Amerian Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) the doctors orgninzation of fertilty doctors (called Reproductive Endocrinologists) says that women are most likely to conceive in their 20's to early 30's. Elite egg donor agencies that offer $20,000 for donor eggs in Ivy League student newspapers want donors under 29 or 28. Studies show that 3 out of 4 men and women overestimate by five years the rapid decline in fecundity believing that it is 40 when it is in fact 35.
The ASRM does not yet recommend egg freezing for delaying childbirht but rather for situations such as chemotherapy for cancer which would destroy the eggs in the ovaries.
Fertility speicalists (S. Silber and others) recommend that if women expect to wait beyond 30 to have children they should have an antral folllicle count ultrasound at age 25. Other fertilty speciialsts have recommended other tests at age 25 (eg, FSH, or anti-Mullerian hormone).
There are no non-invasive tests to test for ovarian reserve which varies from woman to woman. Unfortunately, studies shiow that doctors (include those internetists that might write birth control medication perscriptions) don't have any better understanding of ages of female fertilty than the general public. Obstetricians do know but they don't always discuss the age issues with their patients.
In summary, women should consider getting a test for their ovarian reserve (antral follicle count ultrasound or above mentioned laboratory tests sooner rather than later) so that they can make informed decisions. The article listed above and its references will provide a lot of information. * Consult reproductive endocrinologists for correct information about fecundity.
[+] [-] EdSharkey|11 years ago|reply
And when someone makes a juvenile joke about eggs, wombs, etc. around me and my wife or if we get some dumbass comment like "when are you going to have another kid?", I can tell you that that person is PERMANENTLY tainted with the #asshole hashtag and we're probably going to have a tearfilled conversation that night. If you fancy yourself a comedian and you want to make some jokes about procreation, don't be shocked when friends fall away from you.
I don't know if egg freezing should be recommended, whether it might lead to birth defects or developmental issues, etc. But, if it were available to me and my wife early in our marriage and we knew we might have troubles, I think we might have sprung for it.
Here's my PSA: age 35 is when egg quality and quantity starts to decline precipitously for most women. If you're interested in doing this egg freezing or embryo freezing thing, plan to get it done well before age 35 (like age 30, just to be safe.)
[+] [-] cinquemb|11 years ago|reply
[0] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/10/why-not-egg-futures.ht...
[+] [-] shin_lao|11 years ago|reply
The hardest part of the process is finding the person with whom you want to have a child and who will be your partner in life for this incredibly complex challenge that is raising children.
I question the ethics behind relieving thousands of dollars to affluent women while making them believe it will somehow solve their existential need.
There is no way around balancing work and life if you want to have children.
[+] [-] M8|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sjg007|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] needacig|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tiatia|11 years ago|reply
Do you know the best thing about having a kid in your 50ies?
You don't have to worry about college costs since you will be dead....
[+] [-] Sophistifunk|11 years ago|reply