Apple and Facebook Pay for Egg Freezing: Support for Women or Is It?
Joann Paley Galst, Ph.D.
Yesterday, both Apple and Facebook announced on NBC (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/perk-facebook-apple-now-pay-women-freeze-eggs-n225011) that they are offering to pay for their female employees to freeze their eggs if they choose. They are doing this ostensibly to attract and keep top female talent to these traditionally male-dominated Silicon Valley firms in an ongoing Silicon Valley “perks arms race.” Already both companies admirably offer benefits for fertility treatments and adoption and Facebook gives $4,000 to new parents in “baby cash” to use however they wish.
In my previous blog (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fertility-factor/201405/egg-freezing-modern-fertility-conundrum), it was made clear that egg cryopreservation offers a valuable option to women, although one which does not come with a guarantee that any of the frozen eggs will result in a live birth when the woman is ready to use her eggs. Thus, I am thrilled when I hear of companies’ awareness of how career demands compete with family building, particularly for women, and for women being given additional opportunities and choices in their reproductive freedom. However, my gut reaction was ambivalent to this news, as I saw it as corporate America continuing to ignore problems in the U.S. workplace that lead to women having babies later in life, not addressing the need for societal support for working mothers (and fathers), continuing to give less support to families regarding maternity and paternity leaves, and contributing to the United States’ ongoing lag far behind most industrialized countries in this regard.
Reflected in my most cynical light, I wonder if this is just a ploy to entice women to sell their souls, and their potential future children, to their employer, sacrificing their childbearing years for the promise of raises and promotions. Egg freezing necessitates a healthy woman exposing herself to high levels of ovarian stimulating hormones and high technological intervention to have a child. In addition, it may carry the false expectation of a secured family building option down the road when it certainly does not offer a guarantee of successful pregnancy or the birth of a healthy child, though many women believe it does. This offer may also pressure women into postponing pregnancy until advanced maternal age will which result in children being born to older parents. This raises issues both for the medical risks to the woman during such a pregnancy and for the health and long-term welfare of the child.
To what must women agree in order to take advantage of this perk? Must they agree to work at a company for a specified period of time to recoup the employer’s investment, much like an indentured servant? Does it send a message to young women, already woefully uneducated regarding how fertility actually works, that fertility can be postponed indefinitely and turned on at will? Might it not also decrease corporate America’s support for women who wish to have children at younger ages? And, doesn’t this enticement also continue the trend of fertility advances being available primarily to the affluent while less advantaged women face obstacles in building a family with no financial support?
While I commend Apple and Facebook in considering the conflicts which women face in confronting career and family-building decisions, I would emphasize the importance that women be given all of the facts, both the pros and the cons, about later-life pregnancy and parenting before making the decision to freeze their eggs. To make informed decisions, they need realistic present-day success rates by age for egg freezing as well as information about the medical intervention and risks that they will undergo both to freeze their eggs and to undergo fertilization of their embryos and future transfer of embryos. In addition, I hope that conversations about what we prioritize in our society and in the workplace continue and that we are able to increase the support of all people with families at any age in the workplace.