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

[alesndra]

I know , I know - money! But there's so many more parents that help out their children by buying them housing or contributing large sums towards the wedding. Why isn't egg freezing a more common "gift"?

For example, I grew up quite comfortable and my parents wanted to help me build up a safety net. When I finished uni they bought me a flat in central London (for which I am immensely grateful) and paid a substantial amount towards my wedding (again, very very thankful for this). So they clearly have money and were willing to use it to help me out in life. Similarly now, I've mentioned we might do IVF and parents have said if they can help out financially they are very willing. So... why is it that so few girls are encouraged by their parents at age 18-25 to freeze eggs by their parents? Why, among all of my friends, even ones who went to private school and come from super rich backgrounds, have none of us been "gifted" an egg freezing round but many got flats etc? Not ungrateful but just wondering why culturally it's not as common when it could save so many tears, stress and even money down the line to be used on unsuccessful IVF rounds as egg quality declines?
I feel like this is 100% something I would "gift" my daughter, ahead of for example cars or flats. Or am I missing something?

I think you sound quite entitled

This is the most ridiculous thing I have read. So I should’ve asked my parents about egg freezing when I was 18-25….thats incredibly young. I also had a child by 24 and now have three. Why on earth would I go through that expensive unnecessary process when I had 3 successful pregnancies. Perhaps if I got to my 30s and circumstances were different but 18-25? You have to be joking.

This. And yabvu because you are missing several 'somethings'! No doubt outlined by subsequent posters in their multitude

And this!

Your PARENTS encouraged you to have children in your 20s?? What's it got to do with them?

I think it's a strange idea!

Maybe in a world where it's 'normal' for your parents to buy you a central London flat, and pay for your wedding, it'll be 'normal' one day for them to encourage and fund fertility treatment at a young age. For most people none of those things are a given nowadays.

Um, don’t loving parents want their children to have the best opportunities and all the outcomes they want in life? My parents also encouraged me to get child-bearing out of the way before 35, if I wanted them at all (didn’t work out that way, but they did!!). Like we all know now (but wasn’t so well known back then), they knew that chances of successful conception and healthy pregnancies decrease with maternal ageing. They also knew that child-rearing is exhausting and better do it when you have max energy. Really not a big deal!

How the other half live! As soon as I went to university my parents chucked out my bed and made my old room into a study because they assumed that was the end of their responsibility towards me.

Lots of reasons spring to mind. It’s a lot of money for something that is more likely to be unneeded than needed. It’s a bit weird and handmaid’s tale-y to focus so intensely on fertility when women are young and probably still deciding about whether they even want children. It’s applying pressure on daughters to undergo an invasive medical procedure because their parents want to preserve their fertility options. It’s more about what the parents want than what their daughter wants.

I have had 3 egg retrievals. Luckily now have my little boy and another on the way.
My memory of all the injecting etc day in day out and the procedure itself is nothing short of traumatic. This procedure for many is done as a last resort/no alternative. I cannot imagine doing it all as a starting point or a 'just in case' to then find out it was totally unecessary.

Egg freezing is a last resort to give a small amount of hope, in cases of cancer and similar. It isn't a life style choice. It is very unpleasant and rarely works. It would be an irresponsible thing to encourage. HTH

At the point when your parents were buying your flat you weren't thinking, I'd rather they pay for my eggs to be frozen, nor when they paid for your wedding, it's likely your circumstances now are making you think about the younger eggs that could have been frozen.
I think if that had been offered to me instead of a flat, I'd think they were bonkers.
You're being subjective rather than objective

@alesndra I wish my parents had encouraged/offered me this. In my 20s it didn’t even cross my mind. Now, with poor egg quality and failed ivf attempts, I so desperately wish I had frozen my eggs when I was younger.

Because it shouldn’t be the norm perhaps??? !!! 🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️

If my parents had “gifted” me a round of egg freezing, I’d have told them to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.

Creepy and telling their daughter what she should do with her body. So weird.

When you look at the number of women who actually want IVF compared to the number of women who conceive normally plus those who don't want children, the chances your expensive, painful 'gift' is probably going to be a waste of money. Also I wouldn't have volunteered for it as a teenager /20 year old even if it had been offered!

@twopercent it has quite good success rates now and personally I didn’t find the process traumatic at all.

but as the only person on this thread who seems to have frozen their eggs no one seems to be listening to my own experience 😂

as I said, there are of course very real health risks that should not be ignored. But a lot of the emotional trauma of IVF comes from the heartache of experiencing infertility - which is a different context to egg freezing

but whilst it was positive for me - I think there are bigger questions about its wide spread use

Do you actually need IVF? As your post makes it sound like you choose it? And if you are still dependent on your parents in your 40s why didn’t you have a child earlier or why are you not self sufficient yet?

My thought exactly.

Do you know that you can only freeze eggs for 10 years? So if a girl got this as an 18th birthday present the eggs would be destroyed when she's 28, maybe long before she's ready to use them. But can you imagine the stress that this would cause? It's not because of quality, it's just an arbitrary date.

Because it would involve assuming your daughter wanted a child, wasn’t going to conceive one via the ordinary route, and then spending a lot of money in a complex, invasive medical procedure with a not-great chance of success, in pursuit of a goal it’s far from certain the giftee even wanted?

You can store them for 55 years now

Thanks! That change totally passed me by, I'm so pleased it's changed, it seemed quite a cruel requirement, having listened to a programme on the radio about people affected by it.

Because it is nothing to do with them and would be a wildly inappropriate attempt to coerce another adult into a likely unnecessary invasive medical procedure.

WTF
are you seriously saying that !!!!