Women Increasingly Freezing Their Eggs To Pursue Their Careers 342
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.'"
Re:Obligatory (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.
Or foregoing kids altogether (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:why not just have a baby earlier? (Score:5, 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
Re:Making a Safer World... (Score:0, Interesting)
It's stupid. get your kids out of the way when you are young. It's already proven that the genetic stock of a male sperm is severely deteriorated as you get older. best time to sire your kids is in your 20's because they are out of the house in your 40's and you get to live a great life with your spouse kid free, unless you are one of those nutjobs that has 3 or more and dont know what birth control is.
FTFA: "typical profile" (Score:5, 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.
Parenting is a marathon, not a sprint (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Making a Safer World... (Score:5, 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.
Re:Making a Safer World... (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.
Re:Making a Safer World... (Score:4, Interesting)