Holding Out Hope: Relationship Status, Delayed Childbearing, and Engagement with Elective Egg Freezing

• In Event: 215 - Regular Session. Fertility 2

Abstract

Drawing on survey and interview data collected with women who had electively frozen their eggs and whose eggs had gone unused for at least two years, I address two fundamental questions: (1) What motivates women to undergo elective egg freezing and (2) why do so few women return to use their frozen eggs? I find little support for the popular media frame of young, high-powered career women proactively freezing their eggs so that they can relegate family formation to the backburner. Instead I find a consistent pattern of preference for partnered parenthood, active pursuit of normatively timed family formation, and relationship dissolution leading to life course disjuncture from birth cohort, which produces intense feelings of time pressure and precipitates engagement with elective egg freezing. My findings suggest that high levels of relationship and occupation instability—rather than higher than average career-focus—tracks this subset of professional-class women into postponed and (potentially) foregone fertility.

Author

• Kit Myers, University of Southern California