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Freezing Eggs: Progressive Perk or Free-Range Corporate Control?

The recent announcement by Facebook and Apple that they will cover the cost of freezing the eggs of female employees who choose to preserve them for child-bearing at a later time has caused a stir in the benefits world.

Some are hailing it as a progressive move toward leveling the professional playing field by allowing women to postpone having children while they are building their careers alongside male counterparts. Others see it as a form of corporate handcuffs dictating a policy of when employees can or should give birth while demanding corporate loyalty. Still others hold that helping young female staffers preserve their eggs during peak fertility years could save these organizations considerable sums in terms of costly fertility treatments and other pregnancy costs often incurred by middle-aged women who want to have children.

Compelling arguments can be made for all of the above, and a certain element of skepticism is to be expected when a corporation introduces a new – and costly – benefit; i.e., the organization must want something in return.

Wall Street firms have long included the promise of annual bonuses that often far exceed a high-earner's base salary to reward exceptional performance and encourage retention. Now, freezing eggs doesn't fall into the category of a six- or seven-figure bonus, although women are encouraged by most fertility experts to freeze about 20 of their eggs, preferably during their prime fertility years in their 20s, at a cost of roughly $20,000; plus annual storage fees that aren't cheap.

Then, when the women are presumably ready to have a child (assuming they haven't yet become parents through a more traditional method and are still employed by Apple or Facebook), the companies have agreed to cover the costs of in-vitro fertilization necessary to implant fertilized eggs, which, to be fair, some insurance plans already cover (though fewer and fewer). The costs continue to add up.

Big Brother in the Delivery Room?

A female columnist for the U.K.'s The Telegraph newspaper sees corporate sponsorship of egg-freezing as simultaneously an innovative step toward allowing women to focus on their careers instead of going on the proverbial "mommy track" and slowing their progress up the corporate ladder, while also being told when and how they should conduct their family planning.

The writer, Emma Barnett, sums up her "1984"-esque viewpoint as follows: "These businesses may provide beautiful environments and enviable perks for their staff – but they have also massively blurred the lines between life and work for them too...Women and men must take the decision about when to have a child based on when it's right for them – not when it suits the company they work for.

For Silicon Valley, One More Curve to Be Ahead Of

At the same time, technology companies birthed in Northern California have, in many ways, reset the corporate-trend button since the dot-com boom of the late-1990s and have helped redefine the very nature of American industry for the millennium.

Many once buttoned-up Wall Street firms and Madison Avenue ad agencies long ago shed their suits and ties for khakis and Topsiders – though not all or all the time, of course. Facebook, Apple, Google and their ilk have always been known for their worker-friendly, health-oriented environments, replete with basketball courts and other athletic facilities, healthy choices for meals and snacks, on-site daycare facilities, and even comfortable places to spend the night when it becomes necessary. So reports Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

The high-tech world has always catered to a workforce that skews young and millennial, and offering an option like egg-freezing is, for Apple and Facebook, merely an extension of family-planning and parenting benefits that far exceed the national norm. Granted, it's a low bar, given that only about 15% of large corporations offer little, if any, paid maternity or paternity leave (according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).

By contrast, most European countries provide new parents with at least a year of paid time off following the birth of a child. For their part, Facebook and Apple see egg-freezing as extensions of family-planning benefits they already provide – under their surrogacy and fertility programs, respectively.

Facebook also rewards new parents (whether biological or adoptive) with a $4,000 stipend to be used however they see fit, as well as on-site nursing facilities and subsidized daycare. It also covers in-vitro fertilization, legal fees associated with adoption, and other parenting benefits.

Retention Wars Play a Part

Part of the kerfuffle surrounding freezing eggs for future parenting use is that it is a relatively new technique. Like most cultural trends that start on the West Coast and migrate east, the word is starting to get out, and the Facebook and Apple initiatives are rumored to be spreading to law and investment firms, and possibly other industries as well. That underscores an important point that HR professionals know all too well: Corporate perks and offerings are most often in response to workforce demands for them, and egg-freezing is no exception.

With competition for the best and the brightest in Silicon Valley as keen as it's ever been, some industry observers see this latest offering as just another method of encouraging employees (notably females, always in relatively short supply) to maintain a career continuum with an organization that supports their preferred lifestyle. Also, encouraging young women to freeze their eggs now for potential use down the road may make pregnancy easier, less risky in middle age, and perhaps more cost-effective. At the end of the day, with all their wellness benefits and offerings – Facebook and Apple are businesses; and big businesses, at that. So reports NBC News.

But, at the very least, the debate over egg-freezing has restarted the conversation about gender equality, work/life balance, and the increasing desire of professional women to not have to sacrifice having a family in favor of a successful career. And the conversation's hardly over; in fact, it's barely begun.

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