There are many reasons why women would choose to freeze their eggs. A study revealed a new reason why single women choose to freeze their eggs for non-medical reasons. These women are trying to avoid “panic parenting”.
“Panic parenting” is described as: entering an unwise and/or unwanted relationship with a partner the woman is not enthusiastic about in order to have a genetically related child.
The study was done by Dr. Kyle Baldwin and Professor Lorraine Cully at the Center for Reproduction Research at De Montfort University. They interviewed 31 women who had frozen their eggs for “social reasons”. (In other words, the decision was not made for medical reasons.)
A total of 84 percent of the participants were single. When asked about their reasons for freezing their eggs, the majority said it was because they lacked a partner, or that they had a partner who was unwilling to commit to fatherhood.
Several of the women in the study said that they found the process of freezing their eggs to be emotionally difficult. This was because they did not want to freeze their eggs. They would have preferred to have been perusing pregnancy (and motherhood) with a committed partner.
The women in the study said the clinics they went to were unable to provide them with an estimate of the likelihood of a future live birth with their frozen eggs. The women said there was a lack of detailed discussion with doctors about the post-freezing process and outcomes.
The average age of the women in the study was 37. The study found that the doctors did not give these women clinic-specific or age-specific information.
Dr. Baldwin said “Clinics providing this technology have a responsibility to support informed decision-making by providing women who enquire about egg freezing with detailed information about the likelihood of achieving a birth specific to their age at freezing.”