This morning on NPR I listened to a story about a business in Manhattan which provides an egg freezing service for women planning to have children but aren’t yet “ready”.
I’m not a opposed to the technology, and I’m certainly not one of those “this isn’t the natural way” type of guys. In theory, I think this is an excellent service with some probably very positive ramifications.
However, near the end of the story they interviewed a couple of the women signing up for the the service, and it put me off a bit. It just seemed that the use of this service is indicative of the flawed idea that “having a family one day” is about making you happy. As if a baby is like a sail boat or an elective hair removal treatment.
“Yeah, that’s something I’d like to have one day, when my career and personal ambition dictate that I’m ready”.
In my limited experience with parenthood, and being married to a strong woman who works in the birthing field, this seems like an ass backwards way to look at having kids. A person’s drive to start a family shouldn’t (in my humble opinion) stem from some sort of goal-driven desire for personal achievement. Like “my ovaries say now, but I need to get promoted one more time so I’ll have science step in and give me 8 more years.” Having a baby is creating a life, not sky diving or climbing Everest. A family isn’t something you should start based on the propensity it has to make YOU happy. A child is something you take on when you have so much love in your heart that it’s going to spill out all over and you just HAVE to pour it onto someone. And if you feel like that sort of love is yet another time-sensitive goal, then I don’t feel like whatever your going to achieve between 28 and 40 is going to suddenly make you say “Okay, I’m CEO now. I finally love myself enough to give my love away to a thankless, screaming poop-machine.” And, quite frankly, if that does happen then maybe take on one of those kids who was easily and unintentionally conceived by an overly-fertile 14 year old and was then abandoned.
I don’t know. I’d never tell any woman what to do with her body or her eggs. Again, I don’t think the procedure in and of itself is evil or wrong. I just think that, in a supply-and-demand capitalist culture, the spirit that demands this service be supplied is very possibly a generational pitfall to a relatively productive and functional family experience.
