Reading on the Run: Articles of Interest to Working Moms (Egg Freezing Benefit Packages, Part I)

Successful working women keep track of important matters in the news. However, we are not one-dimensional. Some of us also want to keep up with celebrity gossip and fashion news too. Even in the era of the Internet and 24 hour news shows and E!, it can be challenging to keep up with everything.

Fortunately for you, I make it my job to keep up on articles of interest and resources to working moms and when I find notable ones, I share them with you. Below are two that sparked my interest. They focus on the topic of egg freezing benefit packages being providing to employees by some technology companies.

Nearly every working woman wonders about the best time to have a child

The price you pay for being a woman is that at some point you have to address the question about when/whether to have a family.  My blog focuses on issues relevant to working mothers. So, you know what path I chose. I took the path most traveled by many women before me. I decided to procreate and that has made all the difference. (Get the Robert Frost reference?!)

For women, when you decided to try to become a mother matters because of a condition known as age related infertility.  Basically this means that at some point, a woman becomes too old to bear children. "Too old" varies by the person. However, if you were unaware, after 35 many physicians start billing you as a "geriatric pregnancy". So, that gives you a hint at what they're the insurance companies are thinking.

Many professional women have long lamented that the time for building a good résumé and a family occurs at the same time. That conflict is what has lead to the whole "having it all" discussion. Well Facebook and Apple have decided to help their female workers fight the fertility/résumé building conflict with more ammunition.  They are paying for them to freeze their eggs.

Although it seems like a really generous gesture on the face of it, I have some concerns about what it means more broadly.
Are the companies really telling women to lean in, pursue their work and delay motherhood to a time that is more convenient for their employers?

Certain Company Policies Seem to Encourage Women to Delay Motherhood

Apple and Facebook recently announced that they will cover the elective egg freezing by their female employees.  

       On October 14th, Brian Williams reported on the NBC Nightly News, "Apple and Facebook appear to have become the first big American companies to pay for women who elect to freeze their eggs."

        USA Today and The Los Angeles Times both reported that Facebook and Apple will cover up egg freezing costs up to $20,000 for their female employees and will offer "adoption and surrogacy assistance and 'a host of other fertility services for male and female employees,' the company said via e-mail." Apple's benefits include "egg freezing and storage, extended maternity leave, adoption assistance and infertility treatments." Such coverage by both companies "is part of a growing trend to beef up employee perks at Silicon Valley companies to recruit new hires," particularly women.

        Also covering the story are Bloomberg News (10/15, Frier, Higgins), the Wall Street Journal (10/15, Weber) "At Work" blog, Reuters (10/15, Farr), the Huffington Post (10/15, Matthews), the ABC News (10/15, Newcomb, Cole) website, the CBS News (10/15, Firger) website, the NBC News (10/15, Friedman) website, CNN's Money (10/15, Rooney), the Daily Caller (10/15, Brown), Forbes (10/15, Bessette), the Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard (10/15, Axelson), New York Magazine (10/15, Davis), the New York Post (10/15, O'Neill) and the New York Daily News (10/15, Taylor).

Additional Articles

To check out Part II of this discussion click here.