14 DAY TRIAL // According to a recent study presented at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine held in New Orleans, career women prefer freezing their eggs in order to have them in vitro fertilized later in life. Most of the women who resort to this method stated that the decision comes from their wish of eliminating all pressure of searching and finding Mr. Right to naturally fertilize their eggs and be willing to form a family.
Even if the study was carried out on a rather reduced number of women - 20 - it gives clues about how modern women see/plan their lives and motherhood on the overall. Female subjects in the study had an average age of about 38.6 and most of them admitted they plan to form a single-parent family in future.
All the twenty volunteers resorted to the Reproductive Medicine Associates, a New York IVF clinic, to have their eggs frozen. Moreover, all subjects were single and reported they had had their eggs frozen for social reasons, as there were no medical reasons - such as going through chemotherapy or radiotherapy for cancer - which would have destroyed their eggs and ovaries.
Which leads to the conclusion that clever, highly-educated, career women nowadays are not going to sit around and wait for Mr. Right to leave them pregnant - instead, they take their lives in their own bare hands and decide to form a single-parent family and raise their offspring(s) on their own.
The research was carried out by a team of scientists led by Alan Copperman of Reproductive Medicine Associates in New York. They explained: "A number of women said they were interested in egg-freezing to take the pressure off the search for relationships. Cryo-preservation meant the freedom to wait, and to not settle for a mate because they were in a rush to conceive."
Out of all single women participating in the study, who had had their eggs frozen, 40% reported they were definitely decided and ready to become a single parent, 40% were unsure whether they wanted to be single parents or wait until they met a partner first and only 20% said they would not give birth to a baby until they have not found a partner to share love and responsibilities.
Commenting on the study and its findings, Francoise Shenfield, Consultant Gynecologist at University College Hospital London disapproved the volunteers' decision of having their eggs frozen and becoming single parents: "These women were all graduates and they knew it was less and less likely they would find a partner quickly and press them into having children. But I feel that it is the wrong way to think about becoming a parent. It is never going to be convenient. All career people face the same problem and they need to think about it in their early thirties. Men, too, need to think about their partners."
She also added that the technology used for freezing eggs is not 100% safe, taking into account the fact that the eggs were not quite young: "To freeze your eggs at 38 cannot give you a good outlook. These are not young eggs. People have to be reminded that they have to make compromises between children and career. It is not only a medical problem, it is a political one."