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'Perhaps too much emphasis has been placed on women, at the expense of the reproductive equation' (Sex and the City, HBO)
“No woman goes running with thrill into egg-freezing,” says Professor Marcia Inhorn. “A lot of these women would rather not be doing it.”
And yet it is the fastest growing fertility treatment in the UK. Between 2019 and 2021, egg-freezing cycles surged by 64%, making it the fastest growing fertility treatment type in the UK. In 2011, there were just 373 cycles; by 2021, there were 4,215. Nor is it now uncommon for women at gold-plated companies to receive extensive “fertility benefits”: Spotify gives female employees £40,000 towards treatment, while Apple and Meta subsidise egg-freezing for up to £16,000.
However, as appealing as it might be, this narrative of career-focused women delaying motherhood barely scratches the surface of a much deeper societal shift. Contrary to popular discourse, recent data reveals a startling statistic: approximately 70% of women who freeze their eggs are not motivated by career ambitions. Rather, they’re either single or struggling to get their partner to commit to parenthood.
To understand this social phenomenon, Dr Inhorn, a medical anthropologist at Yale University, embarked on a decade-long study that looked beyond the fertility clinic and into the changing dynamics of modern relationships. “We’re seeing a growing disparity between ambitious and educated women, and the availability of equally educated and committed male partners. It’s creating a demographic crisis that few are talking about,” Inhorn tells me. Her study of 150 women, later developed into a book published last year, found that many were either in relationships for several years and tried to get their partners to commit to fatherhood, or were single because they were not able to find a partner of equal educational or earning status. According to her research, at the time of freezing their eggs, 82% of the women were single at the time of freezing their eggs; meanwhile, 18% were with a partner when they went through the process, but had relationship issues and were not able to get them to commit to fatherhood.
This shift, largely overlooked when exploring social egg-freezing, points to a phenomenon Inhorn calls “the mating gap”. This refers to the disparity between men and women in terms of relational, and eventually reproductive, expectations. While the women in the study, on average in their mid to late thirties, were ready to make a commitment to a partner, settle down and have children, they found a misalignment with the men they were dating. These men weren’t interested in the responsibility that comes with committed relationships and fatherhood — they wanted to play the field and live as free agents for as long as possible.
As Inhorn notes, “there is a lack of eligible, educated and equal male partners” for college-educated women, who now outnumber men in the labour force, not just in the US, but across developed nations. This pattern of course means a substantial number of women will not find a partner with a similar educational background. And even those who found partners were not always satisfied. “While most of the women in the study were highly educated women who were not able to find a partner of equal status, some of the women were actually in relationships, and tried for several years, but couldn’t get the person ready,” Inhorn notes. “Other women were married, who had hung in there, and got to a make-or-break moment where they were like what do I do?”
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SubscribeSpeaking as a man, what this really means is that they considered the woman good enough for their current relationship (whatever that was) but did not want to be tied to her for the next twenty years or more. Or else they did not see the relationship as viable long term.
They might still see having children as positive – just not with this person. And with high rates of divorce, mostly initiated by women, the man has much to lose. If he sees red flags, like emotional instability, narcissism etc he is going to be cautious. It may even be that although the woman wants to have children, he thinks she would not make a good mother.
Marriage has huge financial costs for the man if it fails
Even if the failure is in the side of the women, most men lose out financially then because the broke man that no one wants to date
Many such cases
I don’t think anything can be read into it because there isn’t enough information there. The women spoken to are giving their own rationalisation of the events, this may be accurate or it may not be.
It does not look like a sophisticated analysis to me. In fact, I would suggest it looks like conclusion bias.
Yes I agree. And the women may simply be repeating an established narrative they have heard.
A sample of 150 with some clear ideological bias. Sounds like we need some serious research which does not simply rule out ideas which may be relevant as “misogyny”. Someone who is perhaps less focussed on having a book to flog!
I was also struck by that comment. Credibility points drop to zero.
Exactly. She interviewed 150 women, no men, and then cried misogyny when someone had the temerity to present a possible man’s perspective.
It might simply be that men are making simple cost benefit and risk analyses and deciding a serious relationship and children is either not worth it, or not worth it with the woman they are with.
if you want to know why men are making the choices they make you have to look at what’s in it for them, compared to the costs and risks. And if they don’t settle with miss wrong at 30 what risk do they face? With women desperate for relationships they might find a 30 year old miss less wrong by the time they are 40. And who knows, they might find miss right.
There is plenty on this on the internet, (which is not saying much, given that there’s plenty of everything on the internet).
One US commentator (a woman, as it happens) says that for US men, avoiding marriage is purely rational based on the statistics.
Thus: c. 50% of marriages end in divorce, c. 75 to 80% of divorces are initiated by women, and nearly always the wife gets custody of the children, the family home, and likely an attachment of the husband’s earnings.
You do the math.
Seems a pretty gloomy assessment to me, but that’s her line.
Half of marriages do not end in divorce. That stat is skewed by people divorcing being far more likely to divorce again. So a small group of serial marriages are making the numbers look worse. The odds are with you for your first marriage. That said, your concern is still valid. The risk is higher for men if a marriage goes badly.
It’s easy to talk stats, but an even tinier % of men are responsible for the bulk of rapes and murders.
Women will still happily talk about how “men” are responsible etc.
Most women have never met a rapist / murderer.
Most men have met or viewed multiple such divorce cases where a man has been cleaned out for no fault.
Their risk assessment is spot on.
At the very least it will make men more cautious, and more picky. There’s a whole industry out there about spotting red flags.
Shocking lack of thought or emphasis on what men might actually be wanting. Or the very visible tranche of men who don’t get a partner at all.
Yes – almost invisible. As if their only role in life was to deliver on the particular fairy tale these women had settled on.
“When the contraceptive pill was introduced in the Sixties, we couldn’t have known it was going to lead to hook-up culture and a new sexual revolution of non-committal relationships.”
There are a great deal of men who never participated in hook-up culture. Imagine one of those men being approached by the 38 year old woman referenced above with the proposition that now that she has established her career, hooked up with who knows how many men, and wants to have children before she gets too old, she’s looking for a good man to settle down with and is he interested (‘settle’ is the operative word here)? A good man might look at this offer and think, wait – you spent your best sexual years chasing a career and hooking up with the exact type of men that I am not, and now you want to settle down with me just as you age out.
I get to be that special guy?
Wow. What man could resist an offer like that…
“Men need to stop being intimidated and to change the way they think about these things,” she (Dr Inhorn) explains.
It’s not intimidation, Dr Inhorn. There’s a very different emotion involved here.
Excellent comment.
Thank-you.
May I add: that “good man to settle down with” has many cogent reasons to be wary. He knows from observing his married mates that he will gradually have to give up his long term male friendships; his extended family will come second to hers; his dreams, and hopes and aspirations will be gradually compromised away. He knows that the chances of divorce are statistically 50/50. He knows that if he becomes divorced and has had children he will lose them, first through the court system and subsequently in a concerted effort by his ex, who will take advantage of her disproportionate access to alienate the affections of his children and demonize him. He knows that his erstwhile achievement-oriented ambitious wife can with divorce morph into a passive financial sponge who will demand a punitive chunk of his lifetime assets.
The Democrats have gone in hard on all these policies under the motto of reproductive health.
How are policies designed to give women all the reproductive freedoms they want working out for these women?
I doubt many women, including liberal want to feminize men, but that’s another argument. I think the choices men and women make when choosing a mate goes back many thousands of years. A woman back then chose a man who was strong and could protect her and their children. A man was looking for a woman who was more likely to be fertile, for example wide hips. Even though things have changed a great deal, I think there are still elements of those choices. A well educated woman obviously wants a man who can financially protect her and their children. Even women without a college degree seek men who are financially stable. Some of the ancient choices are still around, although we’re not conscious of them.
Yes, I think you’re right UnHerd Reader.
This “women/men should do this or that” isn’t particularly helpful, despite the attempted rationalisations; in matters of love we’re very much led by instincts imbedded by millions of years of evolution.
Mind you the essay, you’ll note, doesn’t even consider love.
Indeed, today Tina Turner might sing: “what’s equity got to do with it?”
Instead of her technocratic conclusion that there is a “need for a new co-operative and collaborative blueprint for dating, courtship and relationship formation” Ms Prendergast might consider how to work with, rather than against the irrational forces of love – young fertile woman and eager young man fall in love, marry in love, procreate in love and find themselves at age 38 with a family of two or three children rather than just an apartment, Audi, MBA and a batch of frozen eggs.
It seems, to borrow Gloria Steinem’s phrase, that the fish are finding the bicycles scarce, and of poor quality.
I remember enjoying the late 90s and early 2000s immensely, as an employed and apparently appealing enough bachelor.
I’m uncertain if my long term relationships – I had several that lasted over a year – felt the same. But I also had no desire to be ground up by family courts, lawyers, or an unstable, unpleasant spouse.
Women seem to only want men who can easily date other women. Those men, in turn, have no great motivation to commit. Why would they?
It also hasn’t escaped my notice, after several decades in corporate America, that well over half of all middle managers, project managers, marketers, HR reps, attorneys, and business analysts are women. Naturally, they’re all purportedly “well educated,” or have what passes for educations these days.
What few fellow men I encounter at work are either STEM workers on foreign visas, the odd American with noteworthy technical skills, or highly assertive sales types (this last type is that sort of popular fellow everyone, including young women, adore).
Either way, the majority of people I encounter at work are female, and certainly the majority of well compensated employees are female, as well, excepting the very upper echelon of executives, who are in their late 40s or 50s.
So of course women can’t find “suitable partners.”
Most men were kept out of a game that’s heavily rigged against them, and are therefore rendered “unsuitable” now.
The “tell” line was buried deep within this rather rambling piece: “As Inhorn notes, she didn’t interview any men in her study.”
That’s quite an omission: when attempting to understand a situation with two people participating, would one not wish to obtain both perspectives? Would that not be a precondition of obtaining reliable conclusions? I agree that there’s a problem but I don’t think it’s as simple as portrayed here.
But it is a problem for sure, and it’s going to affect us all in the long term.
absolutely! And, in the meantime, too many women are being “encouraged” to freeze their eggs at great expense and great profit for the industry providing the service. We are living in a post reliable contraceptive and post freedom through choice (too many choices?) society in the west. Babies are no longer the next step along the way in adult relationships, nor is marriage, but that seems a moveable feast today. The long term impact could be truly problematic, on the other hand, there may be a shift back to the previously accepted nuclear family format…. the future is truly a foreign country.
‘When I asked Inhorn about the relevance of this theory, she dismissed it as socio-biological and, thus for her, misogynistic.’
‘As Inhorn notes, she didn’t interview any men in her study.’
So wilfully ignorant and gynocentric? Gotcha.
‘“Men need to stop being intimidated and to change the way they think about these things,” she explains.’
No.
“And women need to expand their view of what an appropriate partner is.”’
God, nature and necessity will grant you that and nothing else.
Meh
Times change, and they certainly have in this area.
How about we hear from some women on this?
How do you know that “UnHerd Reader” isn’t a woman?
I didn’t ask to hear from “a woman”.
In specifying “women” i was looking for a variety of female opinions.
Very easy.
The best way to “hear from women” is to look at dating agency sites- anecdotal evidence, stats, women talking about their experiences on social media.
The few things that you would commonly hear:
A. They only care about marrying “up”, i.e. high earning men, top 20% etc – to the extent that any man in the bottom 70-80% (i.e. not just the trash, but even “above average”) – don’t want to hear.
B. Typically lack of seriousness until they are 30 or even 35.
C. They constantly over rate themselves. So, even low to middle ranking woman, not only expects a man out of her league, but they think they are doing him a favour.
In summary, what you will hear is, a lot of women who are frustrated with the lack of eligible men – top 20% of the pool, who believe in “gender equality” but are also bringing more money to the table and willing to have far less rights over his kids, who are happy marrying a 38 year old who has slept around and is now looking to “settle”, but of course with the risk free (for her) option of divorce.
And hence the subject of this article.
Exactly, hypergamy is a very real thing.
I recall a couple of years ago a female friend, of average looks, showing me plenty of men on a dating app, but, despite my mentioning that some of them appeared quite attractive, none of them fitted her ideal.
Consequently, she’s now a fifty something single with umpteen cats.
Ok LL, here’s one female opinion for you: the reasons researchers give for declining birth rates are many and various, from climate change worries, to gender politics (left females, right males), to the ability to get a mortgage and afford a house. They probably all have some validity.
However, for me, its always “the economy, stupid” (not you LL). In the UK private renting is not a secure form of accomodation so house buying is necessary for security (more than a partner if you can afford one without the other). So on the whole – if you’re not model-level attractive enough to bag a Murdoch, a Stone or a footballer – women who would like to have kids have a choice between the relative freedom of working and having a place of one’s own or becoming a bride of the state. For this reason, working is an necessity for most. In the event of a divorce, the majority of men don’t earn enough to support two households so you will have to work and look after the kids – there just isn’t enough to go around. Both I and my partner’s parents split up (some decades ago and of course the law changes), both our Mums had to work and both were financially far worse off than before.
To sum up, women, like men, who are considering having a kid and are reasonably thoughtful and considerate of that future kid’s needs, value financial security very highly. So ask, what is the economy telling these future parents to do?
There’s a lot in that, of course, but in the past people raised families with even less financial security. Perhaps women simply expect too much – or worse, feel entitled to it.
The problem in the article was largely about women being unable to find men willing to commit to them – rather than women avoiding marriage and having children.
In the past having kids or not wasn’t a choice – it tended to happen if you had sex.
The requirement for financial security and the moral obligation to care about your kids are inseparable. Ergo, if you care about your (potential) kids, you have to ensure a stable, financially viable, home for them. How many women have that in their twenties?
I realise that is deliberate hyperbole – but it also points to part of the problem: too high expectations. Sure, you need the above if you want the dream house, the dream car, the dream holidays and the dream nanny – as well as the dream kids.
But if you are prepared to muddle through a bit and settle for a bit less it’s still doable for most people. Hard at times, but doable, which is how it’s always been for most people.
Ok, reverse it, suppose you’re a (straight) young man wanting to have kids.
Would you choose to have them with a woman who said she wouldn’t mind her kids being homeless, just so long as she got to have the pleasure of being a parent?
It’s fallacious reasoning. You’ve jumped from doing without the dream nanny etc to homelessness.
This sounds like grooming!
This has been a very important topic for a long time .
But, while accepting that any piece has only so many aspects of a question that it can address, there are at least two points that I think need to be considered.
1. What about the needs of the children? If they are to have proper parental attention, then the parents will have to do less earning-work. The traditional way of achieving this is for the mother to stay at home with them. Is this in the contemplation of highly-educated, ambitious women who may be at a significant point in their careers? (Or do they plan to have the children and then farm them out to nannies and nursery schools so they can get back to their careers?)
2. What about societies in general? Low birth rates in my mind point towards slow ‘national suicide’. It’s as though a country has just decided to give up. Either a country eventually collapses for lack of younger generations, or the population must be sustained by people coming in from other countries.
On point 1, no.
Women (and parents in general) spend far more time than historically with their children, including working women. We hothouse them and don’t allow kids unsupervised time outside or witg each other. Cars, low-trust societies, screen use and “health and safety” have all been blamed for this.
There are plenty of men but plenty of women who over value their own worth
Instead of looking for a gentle, loyal man who will look out for them and protect them, they look for the 1% that every other woman is chasing
Often these men are faced with such choice that they town out not to be very suitable at all
The real winners are the women who know their worth and choose a mate early in life, based on values , not material worth
The rest are chasing a pool of failures and unworthy men
“perhaps too much emphasis has been placed on women, at the expense of the reproductive equation………..” I can’t believe someone actually said this!!
I think the point is that all equations have two sides. And for reproduction to happen, both sides of the reproductive equation have to be considered – mens wants and needs as well as women’s.
the equation in this instance can’t possibly be of equal proportions.
Need to edit the edits out…
How much care should these companies take about the clumps of cells they have frozen?
Why did this get published with the editor’s notes still present in the final text?
I was wondering that. Interesting though.
Interesting, now that women are advancing past men on the career spectrum, suddenly it’s all about making sure you find someone equally “educated”, or who is making a similar amount of money. Of course, people are allowed to have preferences when it comes to dating, but I don’t see how either of these traits actually matter when it comes to a fulfilling relationship. No, I’m not talking about a woman falling for some single-celled moron.
For example, I am a CNC programmer in manufacturing. My education is a high school diploma, but I’m good at my job, and I make pretty decent money. What a shame that a perfectly compatible woman, with similar values, would spurn me because she has a masters degree and makes more than I do.
Why did you say “… but I’m good at my job…” You should say “and I am good at my job.”
The point here is if she is in her thirties dont waste her time. Tyre kickers are time wasters and time is precious
Let me tell you my experience of egg freezing. It was before I learned about transhumanism and Mary Harrington. I was 35. I’ve wanted kids since I was 14 and in love for the first time. At different periods of your life, you are interested in different kinds of men. And yearning for a home and baby was always related to meeting someone and being in the first year of the relationship, I believe this is very instinctual. The argument that women will hook up with jerks and then late in life settle for the nice guy is a myth I’d really love to bust but that is an essay for another day. I’ve been in long term relationships with irresponsible and good guys, but children are a “choice” these days and both men or women postpone this decision. I would have loved to have them in my teens but this society does not value this. I never actually dated up. I mostly dated down and eventually dated much older men in the hope it would go somewhere. It did not and the same is true for my friends, the guys we know do not want children. My expectations are low, I don’t need someone as educated as me or muscular. Yet things are my fault as well, I stayed with men for years at a time lovingly even though I knew they couldn’t offer me a future. Why? Because I’m bad with decisions, yes. But also, because I attach, strongly, and love deeply, and leaving is hard when you’ve made a home. I just wish would want to make homes too.