
The real reason women freeze their eggs - urahara
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/16/the-real-reason-women-freeze-their-eggs-fertility-career-family
======
ThrustVectoring
The article completely avoided talking about the elephant in the room: Family
law. If I sire children in the state of California, BATNA for figuring out how
to make our lives work together is "I get the state to take half a million
dollars from you in spousal and child support".

This is a _huge_ ask for trust. It's something that I will flat out not
consider unless I've known someone for at least four years. And guess what? If
this is the timeline it takes to build the trust necessary for starting a
family, then 22 year old women are two failed relationships away from being
single in their thirties.

Much like how it is the retail consumer that pays sales tax, it's young women
that pay for the increased levels of trust required for starting a family. Men
can wait, and are under almost negative time pressure. Like, if I have a long
enough time horizon, I'm probably better off working until I'm 50, saving up
$3M or so, moving somewhere with sane family law, and then trying to make a
family work with a significantly younger woman.

~~~
igammarays
I think you're absolutely right about one thing: that the level of trust we've
come to require for marriage has skyrocketed due to family law, but what's the
alternative? Sire children and leave the the burden on women? Furthermore,
it's simply crazy to think that you require 4 years to know if you can trust
someone. Evidence actually seems to suggest the contrary: longer pre-marriage
dating periods are associated with higher divorce rates. Anyway I think it's a
mistake to assume that you "know someone" after 4 years or even after 40.
People are not static beings, and there's no reason to expect that the longer
time you spend with them, the less risky of a choice it will be. In fact that
extended period of indecision may actually contribute to eroding trust. And
so, as the article seems to argue, the problem is that men are not willing to
"be the man", trust themselves and their partner, and embark on a family
project with a firm resolve to stay loyal and make things work no matter what.

~~~
snvzz
>be the man, trust yourself and your partner, make things work no matter that.

You're telling us to man up and play russian roulette with 5/6 holes
populated. Except that would actually be a nice proposal, when put against
family law and divorce rates.

------
matt_wulfeck
> _New research confirms that women are not, as a rule, freezing their eggs
> for career reasons, but instead because they don’t have a partner._

I have a feeling it's more linked than we want to admit.

As men we've taken advances in productivity and technology and thrown it in
the trash by working longer and harder. More free time is filled up
increasingly by more work. Finding a partner and staying together takes a lot
of _time_.

Now women are being pulled into the same trap/punishment as men, and finally
we can include them in our own destruction.

Even in ancient times when invaders razed a city they would kill any fighting-
age men but often spare women. In Silicon Valley nobody is spared.

~~~
chongli
When women entered the workforce, became successful, and married working men
they set the real estate market on fire. The _" American dream" 2 kids, 2
cars, and a white picket fence_ went from single income, blue-collar
affordable to dual income, white-collar struggling to make the down payment.

It's not all the fault of feminists, though. Automation, immigration, and the
rise of China have all played a big part.

~~~
fastball
I was with you until you suddenly got racist for no reason.

Why does economics immediately become a zero-sum game when immigrants are
involved? What does China have to do with America's changing culture?

~~~
jorvi
Dude.. [1]

People have become waaaay to adept at pulling the victimhood card as soon as
something either doesn't fit their narrative or disadvantages them. It needs
to stop.

[1][http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1564426/original.jpg](http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1564426/original.jpg)

~~~
fastball
A. I was talking about the "immigration" bullet point, and when modern
Americans talk about immigration, they don't mean "white Europeans coming to
America", like they did back in the day with Irish and whoever. I have not
seen an anti-immigration argument in decades that didn't have racist
undertones.

B. Not really sure what China's middle class has to do with America's middle
class, but OK.

C. I think the modern leftist victim complex is a load of hogwash and I don't
think immigrants are always a good thing.

------
mynewtb
Save you the click: _New research confirms that women are not, as a rule,
freezing their eggs for career reasons, but instead because they don’t have a
partner._

The rest is a weird mix of 'male culture' blaming and anecdotes. Nothing lost
by skipping this...

~~~
Tycho
And the reason they don't have a partner is...

~~~
Thriptic
Is probably more complicated than guys suck because they're unwilling to be
serious or commit and women are perfect.

People are feeling less stable financially and career wise. Dating is also far
more complicated than it used to be and people have unrealistic expectations.
This inevitably leads to prolonged dating, delayed marriage, and delayed
childbirth. Freezing eggs is a pretty natural hedge against this problem.

------
sidlls
Women seem to have it a bit harder when it comes to everything, including
dating. However, one thing I did when I started looking for an actual partner
was to jot down what I was looking for (my "standards") and really evaluate
how realistic they were given my appearance, social status, education and
personality. It has a rough analogy to how employers in tech complain of a
"talent deficit" when in reality it's a "talent deficit at the price we're
willing to pay": there is a "partner deficit" in some way in the sense of
"deficit at the standards we apply."

Not to say obstacles and actual deficits don't exist, but I've found that
often when concerns about partner suitability come up the standards involved
aren't given as much attention as they merit, or that frequently there are
standards being applied the person isn't aware of or doesn't want to admit to.

~~~
marcoperaza
> _Women seem to have it a bit harder when it comes to everything, including
> dating._

In what world is this? Younger women are outperforming men in just about every
metric, economic and social. They're also legally privileged, in family law
and criminal sentencing. And despite all this, they still have half of the men
in the country advocating for even more special privileges for women.

~~~
sidlls
In the real world where negative cultural stereotypes about body/image issues
are more pronounced for them, and where they are at much higher risk of sex
abuse in childhood, rape (at just about any age, and especially by their
boyfriends and male acquaintances), harassment, and employment discrimination.

------
ravenstine
> It’s not the man’s fault – [...]

> [...]the issue that drives the success of the egg freezing industry has
> never been employer’s attitudes to motherhood, but instead, men’s. Even if
> it’s something that only strikes us as it becomes a reality, women know
> there is a time limit on our fertility. But it’s as if men are encouraged to
> ignore this icky truth, to look away as if from something obscene.

I fail to recognize how it's somehow a man's responsibility to recognize a
woman's "time limit". It seems like this author is pining for some kind of
Patriarchy Lite where men's primary goal in dating is to inseminate a woman
for the sake of her eggs, and not so much for his own benefit. Just like
nearly every one of these sorts of articles I've read, it fails to take into
account the perspectives of men in the "man deficit". I can speculate to
almost no end on why women might believe that there's a "man deficit", but I
won't because plenty of men perceive a deficit of women, both in terms of
archetypes and availability.

In summary, the author is sexist and views men as failures for not providing
enough sperm for women's eggs, failing to take into account how in any way how
such a setup benefits(or fails) men or why men would even agree to get married
in the first place. The view that women have of fatherhood that this author is
implying is much more twisted than how she thinks men view motherhood.
Seriously, I'm supposed to take pity on women in the dating pool because their
biological clock is ticking and therefore sacrifice my own desires? Hah.

> And here you have the men who learned at school to lose interest in a girl
> if she texts back too quickly.

I've never heard of this. Has anyone else here? Maybe this is specific to the
UK? Seems pretty bizarre as I can't imagine boys in school teaching each other
not to get together with girls.

------
avenoir
I'll spare you the read. Women are freezing their eggs because men "lose
interest in a girl if she texts back too quickly" and men "assume they'll
[women] be wanting kids within the year" or men are "unable to commit". Men
are the problem. Let's not take responsibility for anything here.

------
autokad
"Come 35, it’s common for women to knock a year or two off their age on dating
apps, having seen interest plummet as men assume they’ll be wanting kids
within the year. .... but these are women who want to wait for a partner,
someone who will go all in and plan for a future."

its hard to make any meaningful comments without actual data, but it feels
many of these people have become picky yet want Mr perfect, when they are far
from perfect.

~~~
urahara
More often it is just about trying to find someone who is at least not 'worse'
than she is. There are multiple stats and evidence on how women are
discriminated by society in many ways, so it's pretty obvious that their
'dating market' is times more narrow as these attitudes also take place on
personal level.

------
conductr
> ... you have the women in their 30s, beautiful, confident, independent and
> hilarious, spending their flat deposit on a single hope, because there is
> nobody there at night ...

And where did their 20s go? Probably dedicated to their careers

~~~
jylam
So ?

~~~
conductr
I'd seek the root cause of why women are more likely to be unmarried in their
30s if I were to write this article.

~~~
urahara
Frankly, with current stats of disadvantages women experience in society, it
seems a miracle they still marry at all.

~~~
khedoros1
That turns around easily: With all the risks that marriage imposes upon men,
it seems a miracle that they still marry at all.

------
skore
I think Jordan Peterson had one of the best takes on why successful women
struggle to make both a family and a career happen and why so many screech
their careers to a halt when they hit 30:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV2yvI4Id9Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV2yvI4Id9Q)

------
spodek
> _these are women who want to wait for a partner, someone who will go all in
> and plan for a future._

Men who just wait will end up waiting for a long time, maybe forever, too.
Equality also means responsibility. Today, finding a partner means taking
initiative, not just waiting, for both sexes.

~~~
urahara
Sure, but women still get punished for initiative due to long standing
cultural norms. For women from countries with strongly conservative cultures
it can be times harder to not only find a suitable potential partner, but also
establish a contact with him without scaring him away with initiative.

~~~
guskel
Welcome to the dating world for men.

~~~
urahara
These 2 worlds are very different. If you meant that men are also punished for
initiative in some similar way - no, general social/cultural contexts and
punishments on the dating market are completely different for men and women.

~~~
khedoros1
I strongly prefer women who take the initiative, because there've been too
many times that I misinterpreted some signal as being indicative of interest.
I decided that the friendships were more important than the possibility of a
romantic relationship, so I stopped asking for a long time. When the reverse
happened, it never meant the end of a friendship. Things just tended to go
smoother.

I don't know if most men just decide "screw those friendships" and go for the
gusto, or what, but that never made sense to me.

------
mattgreenrocks
Current cultural assumption is that your twenties are an extended adolescence
where dating is to be casual/fun and you figure out what you want to do with
your life, but your thirties is where all the adult stuff happens. I don't
agree with that at all. If you want to be happily married with a family, you
need to start moving toward that in your twenties in order to ensure you have
a good chance of it. Fertility is not a given, nor do you know how long it
will take to find a worthwhile partner.

(I'm ignoring issues of kids vs career that women have to make here, which is
a sucky thing indeed.)

------
technofiend
Garfunkel and Oates cover the dilemma some women find themselves in related to
suddenly realizing you have no partner and no prospects
[https://youtu.be/H-gfxjAaZg0](https://youtu.be/H-gfxjAaZg0)

------
Balgair
Just a quick reminder folks, marriage is a cornerstone, not a capstone. You
build your lives together.

------
sitkack
If I were a sociologist, I'd post these stories to different forums just for
the resulting discussion. Twenty-something startup bros, keep chattering, this
freak'n gold.

