Marcia C. Inhorn, PhD, MPH, is the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs in the Department of Anthropology and The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, where she serves as Chair of the Council on Middle East Studies. A specialist on Middle Eastern gender, religion, and health, Inhorn has conducted research on the social impact of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Arab America over the past 35 years. She is the author of six books on the subject, editor or co-editor of thirteen volumes, founding editor of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies (JMEWS), and co-editor of the Berghahn Book series on “Fertility, Reproduction, and Sexuality.” Inhorn has received more than a dozen awards for her books and scholarship, and along with her colleague Sarah Franklin of Cambridge University, is the recipient of a major Wellcome Trust Foundation grant for a global project on “Changing (In)Fertilities.”
Inhorn’s newest book, Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs (NYU Press, 2023) draws upon interviews with more than 150 American women to explore their use of egg freezing as a fertility preservation technology. Their stories show that, contrary to popular belief, egg freezing is rarely about women postponing fertility for the sake of their careers. Rather, the most-educated women are increasingly forced to delay childbearing because they face a mating gap—a lack of eligible, educated, equal partners ready for marriage and parenthood. For these women, egg freezing is a reproductive backstop, a technological attempt to bridge the gap while waiting for the right partner. But it is not an easy choice for most. Their stories reveal why egg freezing is logistically complicated, physically taxing, financially demanding, emotionally draining, and uncertain in its effects. Yet, for many “thirty-something” women, egg freezing offers the future hope of partnership, pregnancy, and parenthood.
She has served as president of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), and director of Middle East centers at both Yale University and University of Michigan. Inhorn is also the recipient of a National Science Foundation grant for her project on oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing) for both medical and elective fertility preservation. This is the topic of her next book, as well as a series of scholarly and media articles.
Announcements
Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs
NYU Press, May 1, 2023
“Extremely rich in nuanced analysis, Motherhood on Ice vividly portrays the experiences of women—of various racial and religious backgrounds—at every stage of this oftentimes fraught process. Inhorn addresses a critical societal issue with conviction and grace.” Chantal Collard, Concordia University
“Passionate, empathic, and rigorously researched, this book will be popular amongst audiences ranging from single, well-heeled thirty-something professional women considering egg freezing to public health, medical anthropology, and gender studies academic audiences.” Rayna Rapp, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, New York University
“Simply outstanding. This book will surely garner attention and cultivate widespread appeal.” Rosanna Hertz, author of Random Families: Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings and the Creation of New Kin
Why are women freezing their eggs in record numbers? Motherhood on Ice explores this question by drawing on the stories of more than 150 women who pursued fertility preservation technology. Moving between narratives of pain and empowerment, these nuanced personal stories reveal the complexity of women’s lives as they struggle to preserve and extend their fertility.
Contrary to popular belief, egg freezing is rarely about women postponing fertility for the sake of their careers. Rather, the most-educated women are increasingly forced to delay childbearing because they face a mating gap—a lack of eligible, educated, equal partners ready for marriage and parenthood. For these women, egg freezing is a reproductive backstop, a technological attempt to bridge the gap while waiting for the right partner. But it is not an easy choice for most. Their stories reveal the extent to which it is logistically complicated, physically taxing, financially demanding, emotionally draining, and uncertain in its effects.
In this powerful book, women share their reflections on their clinical encounters, as well as the immense hopes and investments they place in this high-tech fertility preservation strategy. Race, religion, and the role of men in the lives of single women pursuing this technology are thoroughly explored. A distinctly human portrait of an understudied and rapidly growing population, Motherhood on Ice examines what is at stake for women who take comfort in their frozen eggs while embarking on their quests for partnership, pregnancy, and parenting.
Marcia C. Inhorn is the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Yale University and author of Cosmopolitan Conceptions: IVF Sojourns in Global Dubai.
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Lots of Successful Women Are Freezing Their Eggs. But It May Not Be About Their Careers.
In the years since, many more women across the world have frozen their eggs. Many are highly educated. But the decision may have very little to do with work, at least according to a new study. In interviews with 150 American and Israeli women who had undergone one cycle, careerplanning came up as the primary factor exactly two times.
Instead, most women focused on another reason: they still hadn’t found a man to build a family with.
[read more=”Read More” less=”Close”]“The stereotype that these ambitious career women are freezing their eggs for the purposes of their career — that’s really inaccurate at the present time,” said Marcia Inhorn, a medical anthropologist from Yale University, and one of the authors of the study, which was presented Monday at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology’s conference in Spain.
Most of these mid-to-late 30s women were already established in their careers by the time they got to the clinic, the study found.
“They weren’t freezing to advance; they were facing the overarching problem of partnership,” she said. This was the case, even among those who worked for companies that offered to pay for the procedure.
Though a single woman, headed toward 40, may feel like a freakish anomaly as she freezes her eggs because she hasn’t found a partner, she’s not. This finding echoes other studies in the United States and Britain that have similarly found that it’s the absence of a partner that drives most women to freeze their eggs.
The subjects in this particular study, which has not yet been published, came from seven different fertility clinics. In the United States, the women generally lived in cities along the East Coast or in the Bay Area. They ranged in age from 29 to 42, with three-quarters falling between 35 and 39.
The research approach taken by Dr. Inhorn and her co-authors Dr. Pasquale Patrizio, director of the Yale Fertility Center, and Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli of the University of Haifa, involved asking women — both single and those who had partners — to share their egg freezing stories and then analyzing their responses to try to understand their primary motives.
Of the participating women, 85 percent were single and most were heterosexual. For about half of these single women, it was uncertainty about when they would meet a man to build a family with that brought them to the clinic, they told the researchers. The next largest group was driven there by a divorce or breakup. (Egg freezing was actually covered by several of these women’s divorce settlements.) This was followed by a smaller group of women who were deployed overseas and felt it was wise to freeze their eggs first and then a handful of women who were preparing to have a baby on their own. Career planning was the least common reason.
Among the 15 percent of the subjects who were in relationships, the reasons for freezing their eggs were not unlike the single women’s: though they had a partner, he was not yet ready or not interested in building a family.
Why are so many women having a hard time finding men to have children with? One hypothesis that researchers often cite is that it’s related to demographics. Women in many developed countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain, Japan, Norway and Australia, are now more educated than men. This could be creating a dearth of appealing male partners for these women.
An American doctor in Dr. Inhorn’s study voiced this concern, saying “Most men don’t want relationships,” and are willing to date uneducated women, whereas most educated women will not. “So I think I have about a .09 percent chance of meeting someone.”
While a number of her subjects seemed to feel empowered by their decision to freeze their eggs, this sense of frustration was common.
“Why me? Why did I end up this way?” was a question that came up a lot. Yes, they had focused on their careers — but they had relationships over the years as well. Neither they, nor their friends, had expected to find themselves without a partner at this stage in their lives.
“It’s not something you’ve done,” Dr. Inhorn said she found herself wanting to tell them. “It’s you and thousands of other women.”[/read]