Cryogenically freezing sperms has always been a possibility, but it wasn’t until the 1999s when flash freezing procedures were introduced which finally enabled fertile eggs to also be stored for later use. In 2012, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine announced that freezing women’s eggs was no longer something which was the realm of experimentation. This means that women could now store their eggs for possible use later in their lives.
Facebook soon declared that it was extending one more employee benefit to all female employees – namely, egg freezing to retain their valued employees. It seems high profile technological companies are always at the frontier of accepting completely radical and bizarre concepts.
And the egg freezing benefit actually makes a lot of sense. Women who are on the cusp of their career by the time they hit their mid 30s, usually end up becoming stay at home moms and abandon their career in droves. This represents a massive loss of talents for companies – talent which they spent valuable time hiring and grooming is now leaving because of childbirth.
But the entire episode creates a dilemma for companies. Why provide financial incentives for women to get pregnant when they’ll end up paying even more out of their coffers to provide maternity leaves? The answer again comes down to retaining talent. While SMEs (small and mid sized enterprises) might not be able to afford this ordeal, corporate giants such as Facebook and Apple definitely can.
Disadvantages
As with anything involving medical science, there are a few disadvantages associated with social freezing.
- A large age gap between mothers and their children can lead to poorer child rearing
- Children face the increased likelihood of losing their mothers to old age.
Facebook did come under some scrutiny on account of the rather pricy $20,000 employee benefit for women, but no one could challenge them for long and soon embraced the technology. The idea of deferring their child bearing age just so they could dedicate their lives to careers does place a bit of a social burden on them.
The desire to become mothers at some point in their lives will mar their careers with regret which could eventually result in crippling depression. If these career oriented women were somehow given the guarantee that the possibility of having a child will never be ruled out even when they reach their 70s or 80s, they might just continue climbing up the corporate ladder instead of abandoning it midway.
This also gives a strong head start to younger women who will no longer need to undergo expensive fertility treatments when they finally do start craving motherhood. This means that women who are ‘married to their career’ rather than committed to a family will never be deprived of the hope of one day becoming mothers.
The market for social freezing has been on the rise, which means that Facebook and similar tech companies have deployed a good strategy for recruiting highly sought after and accomplished academics.
While social freezing might work as a temporary problem for those women who abandon their careers, companies should try making their employment policies more favorable, so their female employees wouldn’t drift away from their careers.
