Freezing Eggs
A report on the BBC's Inside Out featured women in their early 30's who were freezing their eggs - 'as insurance.'
One women in her early 30's talked about how she hadn't found Mr. Right yet and wanted to freeze her eggs so she would be able to have children later.
Interestlying, it turns out that only 3 children have ever been born in the UK using frozen eggs!
The presenter, Miram Stoppard commented that she felt it was a risky strategy to adopt.
I do find it interesting as it does again relate to this discussion. One of the women interviewed said she felt that we are leaving everything later and later, we continue our university years into our late 20's and then think about settling down - when it might be too late.
Then again, are stories like these just designed to scare women even further? Is it related to Susan Faludi's point she made in the article I mentioned before that the fertility industry is scaring women into retreating to child-rearing? As Miriamm Stoppard pointed out, she had a child when she was 35 and didn't think anything of it.
One women in her early 30's talked about how she hadn't found Mr. Right yet and wanted to freeze her eggs so she would be able to have children later.
Interestlying, it turns out that only 3 children have ever been born in the UK using frozen eggs!
The presenter, Miram Stoppard commented that she felt it was a risky strategy to adopt.
I do find it interesting as it does again relate to this discussion. One of the women interviewed said she felt that we are leaving everything later and later, we continue our university years into our late 20's and then think about settling down - when it might be too late.
Then again, are stories like these just designed to scare women even further? Is it related to Susan Faludi's point she made in the article I mentioned before that the fertility industry is scaring women into retreating to child-rearing? As Miriamm Stoppard pointed out, she had a child when she was 35 and didn't think anything of it.
Comments
Because I believe statistics are complicated and difficult to interpret, I decided to go with how my body felt. And I felt fine. There's a big element of luck here, I know, but the sad truth is that even young, fit, healthy-living women can have difficult pregnancies.
A lot of the horror stories about older pregnancies are just about filling space in papers. It's natural to be interested in babies, pregnancies and mothers. We all want to minimise avoidable risk in our lives.
The mistake is to expect newspapers to interpret the statistics and then to apply rigorously that interpretation to the decisions we make.
I'd be interested to hear if an actuary applied statistics to her 'baby planning'. Mind you, she'll have spent so long studying she'd be older anyway.
I found this post ver interesting. Personally I don't think it matters if you have your child at 25 or 45. It is very important to do the things in life that make you happy. If going to school or getting to a certain point in your career is what you want to do before having a child, then go for it! Once you have children all of those things are harder to accomplish. Not impossible, but harder.
If it is just a case of them not wanting to miss out on motherhood, I don't see why they don't make it a priority to get pregnant.
I wonder if some women think they are supposed to want to have children because that is the mainstream message... but they don't really want to do it.
So freezing eggs might make them feel like they can do what they want, but still be seen to want babies.