5 ms·

Ask HN: Does your work offer to freeze your eggs? What are your benefits?

9 points by uptownfunk 8y ago

What $ amount does your work offer, do they pay for other services for families (childcare, breastmilk shipping, birth control, etc.)

Spooky23 8y ago
My employer pays up to $50k for fertility services like this and IVF. You need pre-approval and many costs are waived if you use a designated center of excellence.
copperx 8y ago
I'm not a woman, but I'm single and middle age (36) and want to have healthy children eventually. Are sperm freezing services offered to men as part of work benefits anywhere?
- Spooky23 8y ago
  It is not necessary in most cases — your counts drop but most men can father children into their 70s. Don’t wait... the career impacts you fear are mostly myth. The one regret I have in life is waiting for the “right” moment to have kids and thus waiting too long.
  - copperx 8y ago
    You can still be fertile, but the quality of the sperm decreases. There's a high risk of autism if you're fathering over 40.
    - burfog 8y ago
      I think I'm safe. I won't be fathering over 40 unless I get several more wives.
  - matt_the_bass 8y ago
    Before.i had kids, a friend of mind told me “there will never be a convenient time to have kids, so have them whenever you want”. He was so right.
burfog 8y ago
This is just another way to get you to prioritize work (them) over family (you). Putting things off for later tends to mean putting them off forever. You aren't getting any healthier. Running after little ones isn't easier when you are old. Maybe you freeze a few... but is that enough? Maybe you will really like having kids. Also, freezers fail. I think it was just a few months back that a large facility had a huge failure that wiped things out for a huge number of couples. Oopsie, so sorry! Getting a refund is unsatisfying when you were expecting a child born of your own flesh and blood.
- jxub 8y ago
  Maybe there's a niche in the market for an egg freezing company with multiple availability zones, like AWS or GCP. Hope they adopt good SRE practices and don't screw up their uptime ;)
  - whatsstolat 8y ago
    Back up your DNA. Will for on a USB drive and you could store it in multiple zones. Or outsource the DNA production and birth delivery for no cost by adopting.
drakonka 8y ago
I don't think so; we do get about a year of parental leave though, when someone wants a kid they just have one and their employer doesn't really have a say in the timeline.
BjoernKW 8y ago
I can't answer the question and I certainly don't want to judge someone else's family planning. However, I think this particular perk raises some interesting questions: My first thought was that this is the ultimate in deferred life plans. However, it also allows people to keep their options open and not sacrifice one opportunity for the other. Perhaps, it's even a good counter argument to rationalising judging people by their sex rather than skill ("She can get pregnant so we better hire the male candidate."). Nevertheless, it's in some way representative of a traditional work culture that values time over outcome and that considers time spent outside of work as something inherently bad or at least questionable. It shows that the employer in this case exerts some degree of control over not just your working life but your life outside of work as well. At the very least because freezing your eggs brings about the expectation that you won't get pregnant all the same.
- kat 8y ago
  There are a lot of other reasons for wanting to freeze eggs besides wanting to put your career first. I know women who have gone through chemotherapy, and froze their eggs before their treatment. I imagine there are a lot of other drugs and medical produces that adversely effect eggs and aren't covered by traditional health insurance. There's also family obligations, rather than career 'obligations', or simply working now to save money for family later. I don't think this benefit is a one-sided item.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  The encouraging of egg freezing is a cynical play. It’s offering young women a way to put what they want on hold, and few understand the risks. IVF success rates start nosediving at 40, and implode depending on different risk and health factors. End of the day, it’s better, cheaper and lower risk for everyone to be in healthy relationships and have kids in their 20s-30s. Sacrificing that to generate more shareholder value is gross. Having been through something like 15 fertility procedures, I wouldn’t recommend the process to anyone who can do it the fun way.
itronitron 8y ago
I would think that employers would prefer to hire people that already have children if they now have to subsidize their employees ability to procreate.
thisone 8y ago
So instead of doing the work to figure out how women and men can have the families they want and also the work they want without losing status (for lack of a better word), these companies are throwing money at a social problem and saying 'fixed!'?
segmondy 8y ago
Freezing is no guarantee, it was on the news a few months ago, but a few facilities that stored frozen eggs messed up and lost thousand of eggs. https://nypost.com/2018/03/09/fertility-clinic-disaster-may-have-destroyed-thousands-of-frozen-eggs-embryos/ https://nypost.com/2018/03/09/fertility-clinic-disaster-may-... https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/11/freezing-failure-at-s-f-fertility-clinic-eggs-may-be-damaged/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/11/freezing-failure-at-s...
- abledon 8y ago
  the Seveneves (neal stephenson of snow crash fame) story has a great plot dealing with this matter

9 points by uptownfunk 8y ago

What $ amount does your work offer, do they pay for other services for families (childcare, breastmilk shipping, birth control, etc.)

Spooky23 8y ago

My employer pays up to $50k for fertility services like this and IVF. You need pre-approval and many costs are waived if you use a designated center of excellence.

copperx 8y ago

I'm not a woman, but I'm single and middle age (36) and want to have healthy children eventually. Are sperm freezing services offered to men as part of work benefits anywhere?

Spooky23 8y ago
It is not necessary in most cases — your counts drop but most men can father children into their 70s. Don’t wait... the career impacts you fear are mostly myth. The one regret I have in life is waiting for the “right” moment to have kids and thus waiting too long.
- copperx 8y ago
  You can still be fertile, but the quality of the sperm decreases. There's a high risk of autism if you're fathering over 40.
  - burfog 8y ago
    I think I'm safe. I won't be fathering over 40 unless I get several more wives.
- matt_the_bass 8y ago
  Before.i had kids, a friend of mind told me “there will never be a convenient time to have kids, so have them whenever you want”. He was so right.

burfog 8y ago

This is just another way to get you to prioritize work (them) over family (you). Putting things off for later tends to mean putting them off forever. You aren't getting any healthier. Running after little ones isn't easier when you are old. Maybe you freeze a few... but is that enough? Maybe you will really like having kids. Also, freezers fail. I think it was just a few months back that a large facility had a huge failure that wiped things out for a huge number of couples. Oopsie, so sorry! Getting a refund is unsatisfying when you were expecting a child born of your own flesh and blood.

jxub 8y ago
Maybe there's a niche in the market for an egg freezing company with multiple availability zones, like AWS or GCP. Hope they adopt good SRE practices and don't screw up their uptime ;)
- whatsstolat 8y ago
  Back up your DNA. Will for on a USB drive and you could store it in multiple zones. Or outsource the DNA production and birth delivery for no cost by adopting.

drakonka 8y ago

I don't think so; we do get about a year of parental leave though, when someone wants a kid they just have one and their employer doesn't really have a say in the timeline.

BjoernKW 8y ago

I can't answer the question and I certainly don't want to judge someone else's family planning. However, I think this particular perk raises some interesting questions: My first thought was that this is the ultimate in deferred life plans. However, it also allows people to keep their options open and not sacrifice one opportunity for the other. Perhaps, it's even a good counter argument to rationalising judging people by their sex rather than skill ("She can get pregnant so we better hire the male candidate."). Nevertheless, it's in some way representative of a traditional work culture that values time over outcome and that considers time spent outside of work as something inherently bad or at least questionable. It shows that the employer in this case exerts some degree of control over not just your working life but your life outside of work as well. At the very least because freezing your eggs brings about the expectation that you won't get pregnant all the same.

kat 8y ago
There are a lot of other reasons for wanting to freeze eggs besides wanting to put your career first. I know women who have gone through chemotherapy, and froze their eggs before their treatment. I imagine there are a lot of other drugs and medical produces that adversely effect eggs and aren't covered by traditional health insurance. There's also family obligations, rather than career 'obligations', or simply working now to save money for family later. I don't think this benefit is a one-sided item.
Spooky23 8y ago
The encouraging of egg freezing is a cynical play. It’s offering young women a way to put what they want on hold, and few understand the risks. IVF success rates start nosediving at 40, and implode depending on different risk and health factors. End of the day, it’s better, cheaper and lower risk for everyone to be in healthy relationships and have kids in their 20s-30s. Sacrificing that to generate more shareholder value is gross. Having been through something like 15 fertility procedures, I wouldn’t recommend the process to anyone who can do it the fun way.

itronitron 8y ago

I would think that employers would prefer to hire people that already have children if they now have to subsidize their employees ability to procreate.

thisone 8y ago

So instead of doing the work to figure out how women and men can have the families they want and also the work they want without losing status (for lack of a better word), these companies are throwing money at a social problem and saying 'fixed!'?

segmondy 8y ago

Freezing is no guarantee, it was on the news a few months ago, but a few facilities that stored frozen eggs messed up and lost thousand of eggs. https://nypost.com/2018/03/09/fertility-clinic-disaster-may-have-destroyed-thousands-of-frozen-eggs-embryos/ https://nypost.com/2018/03/09/fertility-clinic-disaster-may-... https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/11/freezing-failure-at-s-f-fertility-clinic-eggs-may-be-damaged/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/11/freezing-failure-at-s...

abledon 8y ago
the Seveneves (neal stephenson of snow crash fame) story has a great plot dealing with this matter