What if your company paid you to freeze your eggs?

By Rachel Joy

I recently heard a discussion on the radio that tech giants, Facebook and Apple are offering to pay female employees up to $20,000 to freeze their eggs. The discussion got me thinking about how women must choose between starting a family and their career. We, as women, really can’t have it all.

A majority of women dream about finding the perfect mate and eventually settling down and having a family. But for many this is not a reality. Most haven’t found the right mate or are caught up in their careers, with little time left to date. In today’s fast-paced world, women are waiting later and later in life to have children.

So, what does this say about our society? Are we progressing by being more liberal and allowing women time to reach their career goals, or are we just delaying the inevitable by pushing back motherhood?

The process of freezing eggs has only been around the past ten years and with the advances in medicine, pregnancy rates using frozen eggs are approaching those using fresh eggs. But there’s still a sad and desperate stigma attached to it: whether it’s a joke on a sitcom or a mother telling her single daughter to freeze her eggs because she isn’t getting any younger.

While this is an option, it’s not a guarantee that it will work when the time comes to use those eggs. And it doesn’t stop the ever-ticking biological clock for some women.

Do we really want a company to make this very private decision for us?

While it offers some protection for women, it’s a strange approach to keeping them in the workplace just a little longer. It also raises a question, will this become common practice at large companies that already demand so much when we become employees?

What do you think? Should we applaud this or leave it as a private decision?

Related article from TIME: http://time.com/3509930/company-paid-egg-freezing-will-be-the-great-equalizer/

Rachel Joy lives in Los Angeles with her son and husband. She has worked at several film studios including Disney and Warner Brothers as an advertising executive. She currently works in commercial real estate and spends her downtime playing golf, hiking with her dog and son and enjoying the SoCal lifestyle.

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