By Karey Harwood
For as long as I have been thinking and writing about egg freezing, its characterization as “a technological solution to a social problem” has adumbrated a core criticism: egg freezing falls short because there is a deeper problem it doesn’t solve. Egg freezing may help the individual woman who can afford it, yes, but not much more. The deeper problem is generally assumed to be workplace norms molded around men’s life cycle. Pushing hard to advance one’s career during one’s 20s and 30s does not cost men the opportunity to father children, primarily because their fertility does not decline precipitously after age 35. In addition, stay-at-home wives have historically played a supportive role in freeing up men to focus on work. By contrast, women have a more limited window of fertility and are not as likely to have a stay-at-home partner who can take primary responsibility for childrearing.