The typical woman freezing eggs

I posted some Attacks on artificially assisted reproduction, and here is who is doing it. New York writer Jillian Dunham writes a personal essay on The Real Reason Women Freeze Their Eggs. She tells of many romantic boyfriends, and how she always wanted to have a kid, but somehow marriage never quite worked out.

That morning, I was single and 37 years old, almost precisely the average age at which women freeze their eggs, although I didn’t know that then. Of my close friends in New York, most did not have children, but a handful did. ...

There were no men. We all appeared to be in our 30s or early 40s. Most of us were white, but not all. I noticed that every woman in the room was attractive, dressed for work in the way that successful, self-possessed New York women dress for work: appropriately, but with some signal to the world about who we were — a worn leather jacket, an unusual ring. ...

“There’s something wrong with the men in your generation,” he said. I was stunned. Here was a doctor who had just been talking about the importance of considering statistical significance, and now he was chalking my dating problems up to the broadest of generalizations. But he was articulating two forms of truth: the mathematical and the personal.

“It isn’t you,” he said. “All day long, I see patients like you. You’re smart, beautiful, accomplished, nice. It makes no sense. I go home to my wife and I say, ‘There’s something wrong with the men in this generation. They won’t grow up.’”

The egg-freezing can prolong her fertility by 5 or 10 years. She has that much time to find a father for her child. Or she can just give up, get a sperm donor, and go it alone.

Is there something wrong with the men? I do not think so. Her story is a byproduct of changes to our society that have been brought about by women, not men. 50 years ago, she would have married a beta man in her 20s and been happy. Women have gotten the freedom to date a long series of alpha men (aka jerk boys) who are not interested in marriage, and the freedom to walk out of marriage. Now she wants a kid but those beta men are not good enuf for her. The feminism that was so liberating to her 10 years ago does not look so good anymore. She is not likely to admit it.