Social Freezing: The reason is not the career

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

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Do women who want to make a career before they have children simply put their eggs on the ice? What is often suspected, however, is rather the exception. Most women who decide to take this step simply have no partner by their side who could be considered a father. This is the fate of single women as well as those whose partners are not ready for fatherhood.

Since egg freezing became possible, more and more women are using it. The procedure is called "social freezing" when it is not health-related - such as before chemotherapy. Resourceful employers even subsidize the method in order to keep their young employees engaged longer and to say goodbye to maternity leave later rather than early.

The right partners are missing

But the career argument is apparently less attractive than many believe: "Most of the time it is because they lack a stable partnership with men who are willing to take on responsibility for a child," explains Dr. Marcia Inhorn from Yale University.

The scientist conducted in-depth interviews with 150 women who had egg cells frozen in a fertility clinic. 114 of them came from the United States and 36 from Israel. The researchers asked them in detail about their situation in life, their ideas about having children, their motives, their hopes and fears.

85 percent of those questioned were without a partner at the time of vitrification, as the extremely rapid freezing of egg cells is called. They were single, divorced, divorced or separated. Some were single mothers of their own free will; others chose to take this step before going abroad.

The 15 percent who had a partner gave the following reasons: that the partner was not yet ready to become a father or that he completely refused to become a father, that the partnership was still too new or too insecure, or that the partner had other partners.

Career planning is rarely the reason

The least common motivation in both groups was career planning. “Most of the women were in their late 30s. They had completed their training and achieved their career goals, ”says Inghorn. "These women hope to later meet a suitable partner or to become a mother through artificial insemination," says the scientist. Freezing their eggs continued to give them the chance to have a child.

No guarantee for a child

However, the preservation of egg cells is no guarantee of offspring. This is shown by a current evaluation by the Brussels Center for Reproductive Medicine. Only a good third of the fertilized and implanted egg cells actually resulted in pregnancy. Whether it works also depends on the age at which the women decide to take this step.

A large part of these egg cells, which were obtained under stressful circumstances and preserved at great expense, never get that far anyway: Only 7.6 percent of the 563 women have resurfaced so far and have had their egg cells fertilized and inserted. How many of the other women will do this in the future is an open question.

Gentle shock freezing

Egg cells contain a lot of water. When frozen, it can form crystals that damage the egg. In the past, slow freezing was used for cold preservation. The egg was slowly frozen and water was withdrawn at the same time. However, with this method, only half of the egg cells could actually be used after thawing.

This has changed with the development of so-called vitri fi cation: the egg cells are shock-frozen at 196 degrees Celsius. In doing so, they immediately change to a glass-like state. In this way, they remain intact for many years. 95 percent of the unicellular organisms obtained in this way are suitable for planting.

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