I do feel bad for that poor woman who froze her eggs at 39 and discovered years later that they were useless. Still, this degree of self-infantilization and this extreme consumerism probably mean she isn’t ready to have a child even at 46.
Of course, eggs harvested at 39 will probably be bad. If you want to freeze, freeze at 25.
At 25, many women hope to get married and give birth soon.
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I understand but biology is what it is. Denying the reality of the human body isn’t useful and leads to personal tragedy.
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“Denying the reality of the human body isn’t useful ”
If men and women aren’t biological categories then neither can fertility exist…. it’s all about will and desire…
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I have a friend from grad school who did this at 40 or so. She is in mid-40s, apparently not yet ready to have kids. She is extremely defensive about any hints that it’s too late or that it might not work. The delusion of people about biology knows no bounds. The dangerous disconnect between physical realities and wishes, being widened by rampant consumerism.
I was eating dinner with an old friend of mine several years ago. She was early to mid thirties and was looking to move back to our hometown. I can’t remember how we got on the subject, but she was under the impression she could freeze her eggs and have kids when she wanted, I got the feeling from what she was saying she was wanting to wait till somewhere probably around the mid 40s. She had absolutely no idea that each egg had a 12% chance, and the next one didn’t go up to a 24% chance, but was also a 12% chance. She was horrified to find that out, and that wasn’t even taking into consideration the cost to freeze or inseminate each egg. She had been putting off marriage and kids to focus on her career thinking she could just freeze her eggs and have kids whenever. The next thing I knew she had moved back to where she was, convinced her ex-boyfriend to marry her, and had a kid on the way all within a year and a half.
I’m quite happy for her, but it was a bit of a wake-up call for me. I knew intellectually that a lot of young women had been misled into thinking they could put off kids and a family till their late 30s early 40s without issues. However that was when it hit home that a lot of girls had actually believed it hook line and sinker.
Good for her that she at least figured it out in time.
God, even if the embryos survive and take, the next step is to carry to term. Then give birth. Then realize that at 40 whatever symptoms you had during pregnancy are going to destroy you after birth because they get worse. Then wake up 6 times a night for a newborn. And so on and so forth. An infant doesn’t care how hard it was to push her out. She needs every ounce of everything mom has right now.
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And to think it used to be something reserved for young cancer patients to give them a chance at having children when they grow up.
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I think the women who freeze their eggs want to be mothers above all things, it’s just the perfect man doesn’t present himself when they are younger, so career is their escape. Freezing the eggs helps them keep the dream alive. If you are a serious contender in the rat race you never take breaks, you just keep going. Why would 40s be different than early 30s?
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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