To wonder why more parents don't encourage daughters to freeze eggs?

You can keep them frozen for 55 years now

Great msg. That's the thing
We're going to sit with tons of women with breast cancer for example because their parents thought they were giving them a gift. I think even stating that an invasive medical procedure should be standard shows a huge lack of insight on your side op.

Exactly!

Bloody hell @alesndra I read this and I thought you must be 30s/40s with a looong history of TTC. So your rather mad question is borne from frustration. But it turns out you're only late 20's and you have a child already.

You've clearly been brought up in a rarefied atmosphere. It it mean to say that this may well have buggered up your critical thinking skills?

I reckon we have a biological clock for a reason.
If my daughters wanted a career and pushed kids back until 45, then that's their prerogative, but I don't think it's healthy to have 4 kids then.
It is going to be harder to have kids at 35 /40 than 25. That's life and everyone should know that.
I think we often play with our biology and most of it has come out as not as harmless as we initially thought.
Even something like birth control. Jeez we thought it was the best thing yet and used it like sweets.
Only now are we starting to figure out that it maybe wasn't that good for all the girls' health to be kept hormonally 'pregnant' for 20 years. (From 16 to 36)

I think this whole egg freezing and ivf is going to have a similar trajectory.
Sounds great that woman now have the option to focus on the careers and have babies later. Only to figure out that maybe you werent supposed to have your babies at 38, 40 and 42.
That maybe being 60 and having a teenager isn't that much fun.
Or whatever we will figure out

Because a surgical procedure is not widely regarded as a desirable gift, especially when it's to cure a problem that probably does not exist.

I have every sympathy with infertility and I support a woman's right to pursue whatever medical treatment she is comfortable with, but personally had I not been able to have children naturally i would have either fostered or adopted, or failing that taken on a shit load of rescue dogs that need serious rehabilitation and aren't suitable to be around children. There's no way me or my Mum would have ever dreamed of freezing my eggs in any circumstances that's just off the table for me.

Egg collection is painful, invasive, and unpleasant. It can also carry significant health risks. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer my surgeon and oncologist both told me that having IVF was likely to be one of the major contributory factors to having developed my cancer, along with other unnatural hormone use such as the pill and the Mirena coil.

Because most people don't need it.

Because I wouldn't interfere to that extent in my daughter ( or son and his wife’s) life.

This

Yes. And I have realised OP is going through infertility so some of the responses are a bit harsh ( including earlier ones of my own). I think she is casting about feeling a bit helpless.

That said, I’m not sure that would have been the answer op, and, happily, I suspect some of the better possibilities are still open to you. Good luck 🤞

It's got a very low rate of success in a live birth. I read somewhere that's it's something like 10% to 30% depending on the age of the woman at the age of egg retrieval. A lot of women who consider it don't realise it's more likely it won't work. Also, at the time when it might be optimal age to freeze eggs, you might be focusing on other things and not planning for imaginary future children.

What would have been far far better would be that Facebook were to pay their female workers a decent maternity package so they could have children earlier, instead of pretending to value their employees.

They are embryos, not foetuses. They are just a few cells when frozen.

Because the chance of having a child using a frozen egg is absolutely tiny.

I think once you need fertility treatment, and know the statistics of infertility, you see things very differently. Most of the responses here are from people who have not had to go through infertility treatment so you aren’t going to garner much support. I sort of agree with you insofar as I think more women should be made aware of how common infertility is at a younger age when they might want to consider a round of egg freezing, unless they know they want to start trying in their early 20s. However, I wouldn’t go as far as suggesting everyone should automatically do it.

Some people are not biologically "past it" in your sense--some people have to have chemotherapy at a relatively young age and have their fertility messed up as a result. Indeed young women who go through chemo are often asked (at least in the US) whether they would like to go through this procedure before their treatment starts. A little kindness and much less shortsighted moralization, please!

I am so sick of hearing about women's biological clock. I get it. We only have X number of years to get pregnant.

If my mother or father suggested egg freezing to me when I was 18, I would have been horrified.

There seems to be so much societal neurosis around women in their 20s and 30s not having kids. Perhaps the world is going to have to change in order to accommodate a higher number of childless women, rather than constantly putting pressure on them to reproduce.

The thought of going through a miserable, expensive egg-retrieving process with a high failure rate- just so I might be able to slightly extend my fertility in a decade's time seems rather pointless.

Sorry, a nerve was hit.

I am genuinely sorry for anyone who really wanted children and was unable to have them. Egg freezing is not the solution.

Yes- youre missing the very real point that the vast majority of women are able to reproduce without needing IVF, that they should be able to have children when they are at their most fertile but that in today’s society women in careers have to be seen to devote their lives to the job instead of taking time out to have a family.
You’re in e position of benefitting from having wealthy parents who’ve paid out a small fortune to make your life easy. Most women are not in your position.

Because it's completely fucked up.

I’ve read some weird dystopian shit on MN and this is vying for the top of the table.

OP I find the idea of making egg freezing to become a societal norm very strange.

Yes it’s expensive, also an unpleasant procedure, conception success rates are waaaay higher than IVF, you’d be selling a dream that might not happen. Why not have open conversation about fertility decline with aging instead?

One of the weirdest posts I have seen. Ever.

A much better question is why don’t parents contribute to children’s pensions more regularly… and the answer is the same - parents focus on helping children at their current life stage.

Most people who want children won’t have trouble conceiving so it’s seems unnecessary to routinely pay for egg retrievals. However fertility tests at a young age might be useful as this might better inform when women choose to have babies.

From a hierarchy of needs perspective, it’s probably also not that sensible to start planning for a baby until you have secure housing hence the flat deposit first.