“You feel like you’re fairly disadvantaged with an advert over your head saying ‘in final years of reproduction’”: social egg freezing, dating and the (unequal) politics of reproductive ageing

Abstract

Recent decades have seen an increasing gap occurring between the ‘desired’ and ‘actual’ family size of middle-class and professional women. This situation of ‘unrealised fertility’ and ‘incomplete families’ carries implications at a population, but also couple and individual level. This paper explores how middle-class professional women make decisions about partnering and parenthood and how these are shaped by a contemporary neoliberal feminist discourse which articulates the possibility of ‘having it all’ through engagement in careful life planning, appropriate self-investment, and by drawing on new technologies of reproductive biomedicine. Informed by semi-structured interviews with UK and US women conducted at two different points in time, it explores how they approach and experience the process of relationship formation in the face of age-related fertility decline. It also examines how the use of social egg freezing shape their romantic and family building expectations but also their interactions with (potential) partners. In doing so, it explores how gendered cultural dating scripts and unequal gender power relations shape the formation and progression of intimate relationships in a manner which can disempower women as they age. It therefore questions whether egg freezing may be the ‘great equaliser’ that some have hoped.

Keywords:

• Egg freezing
• reproductive timing
• intimate relationships
• older motherhood
• gender inequality

Introduction

Across all social class and education levels, motherhood remains an important aspect of women’s lives. Most people expect to partner and have children and desired family size is similar for women across all levels of socioeconomic status (Tichenor et al. 2017). Yet, when based on comparisons between early fertility goals and completed childbearing, highly educated women are more likely to be childless and have smaller families than they anticipated (Morgan and Rackin 2010). This unrealised fertility is often the result of the postponement of parenthood until later into the life course which, in some cases, sees conception thwarted by age-related fertility decline. Such under achievement of ‘fertility aspirations’ has implications not only at a population level where population growth or maintenance is desired, but also at the couple and individual levels (Habbema et al. 2015).

Research has shown how the mean age of first birth in the USA is rising and is higher for women with a college/university (28 years) or postgraduate degree (30 years) than those with lower level qualifications (25 years) (Guzzo and Hayford 2020). Evidence also shows that less educated women are also much more likely to have children out of marriage (Smith, Strohschein, and Crosnoe 2018). Indeed, as Wood (2017) has observed, whilst most first-born children in the USA are born to unmarried parents, 92% of college (university) graduates have their first child in the context of wedlock. UK evidence similarly shows that births to those in the highest social classifications in England and Wales (NS-SEC 1.1 and 1.2) are much more likely to occur within marriage/civil partnerships (73–75% in 2020) than those in other groups such as lower-managerial (NS-SEC 2) or intermediate (NS-SEC 3) occupations, where just 41–58% live births occur in such partnerships (ONS Birth Characteristics, 2022). Given the importance that financially and educationally privileged social groups seem to place on having a secure relationship (which may include marriage) prior to parenthood, marital delay may, for these groups be a cause of concern.

Demographic, political and academic concerns about delayed marriage or fears of a ‘retreat’ from marriage are not new, and research has explored the complex relationship between employment and economic uncertainty and delayed marriage (Lichter et al. 1992; Oppenheimer 1994, 1997; Smock, Manning, and Porter 2005). Since the turn of the last century, the complex, globalised knowledge economy has been shown to be not only highly interdependent but also volatile with significant periods of economic downturn which have affected birth rates (Cherlin et al. 2013). The shift witnessed in the Global North to older/delayed motherhood and later entry in to marriage may therefore be linked to a wide array of factors including economic uncertainty and market instability (Brauner-Otto and Geist 2018); the increasing inaccessibility of the housing market (Holme 2022) and requirements of a dual earning household to meet the rising cost of living; as well as the normalisation of multiple partnerships prior to marriage and the more frequent breakdown of marriages and relationships (Beaujouan and Bhrolcháin 2011; Mills et al. 2011). Indeed, whilst young adults may still aspire to marriage and parenthood, their ability to access the middle-class standard of living they believe is necessary for such transitions remains firmly out of reach (Wood 2017). Because of this, Wood’s (2017) has argued that it may not be that young adults are choosing to delay commitment, but that the process of partnering and progressing relationships has itself become more difficult and increasingly fraught.

By drawing on the accounts of women who underwent the process of social egg freezing to ‘preserve’ their future fertility, this paper will explore how some of these women described the difficulties of finding and progressing ‘suitable’ intimate relationships, the impact this had on the timing of motherhood, and the risk of potential unwanted childlessness. However, prior to this, a brief examination of social egg freezing is provided alongside an introduction to the concept of neoliberal reproductive citizenship which is explored and drawn upon in more detail throughout this article.

Social egg freezing and the neoliberal citizen

The last decade has seen the emergence of a novel application of technologies of cryopreservation organised around the extension of female fertility with the aim of allowing women the possibility of conserving genetic relatedness for deployment later in their reproductive lifespan than may otherwise be achieved naturally. Whilst a well-established technology, social egg freezing is not without controversy with critics voicing concerns about the cost of the procedure and its funding (De Proost and Johnston 2021; Mayes, Williams, and Lipworth 2018; Van De Wiel 2020); the likelihood of success in the typical user (Agarwal et al. 2021); the medicalisation of otherwise healthy women’s bodies (Martin 2010); as well as controversies over storage limits on frozen eggs (Jackson 2016), the advertising and marketing of the technology (Barbey 2017), and the fact that currently very few women who have frozen eggs have yet returned to use them in fertility treatment (Gürtin et al. 2019).

Research has consistently shown that the typical users of social egg freezing (henceforth, SEF) tend to be unpartnered professional, middle-class, women in their late 30s with the financial resources to afford to pay for the high cost of the procedure (and subsequent fertility treatment) (Inhorn 2023; Pérez-Hernández and De Proost 2023). These women most often cite the lack of a suitable partner, the desire for more time to become ready for motherhood (Brown and Patrick 2018), and a fear of future regret motivating their engagement with the technology (Baldwin 2019; Inhorn et al. 2018; Waldby 2019). Academic inquiry into SEF has explored topics such as ideologies of parenthood (Myers 2017; Waldby 2015), fears of risk and blame, as well as how notions of individual responsibility, and fear of future regret coalesce to produce a particular type of neoliberal reproductive citizen who takes personal responsibility for their fertility and acts in a way to maximise their future chance of optimally timed pregnancy (Carroll and Kroløkke 2018; Rottenberg 2017). The notion of the responsible reproductive citizen has been explored at length by Carroll and Kroløkke (2018) and, I suggest, when brought together with contemporary neoliberal feminist discourse, articulates that the possibility of ‘having it all’ is desirable and realistic if the neoliberal subject engages in careful life planning and appropriate self-investment.

This paper seeks to extend the discussion of the good neoliberal citizen and demonstrate how the pressure to ‘have it all’ presents new challenges and obligations for middle-class and elite women that are not confronted by their male counterparts. Furthermore, it shows how a process of self-investment and optimisation starts well in advance of the use of SEF and how (highly classed) sex and gender-based inequalities in the process of relationship formation and progression exacerbate the difficulties some women experience in the process of partnering and parenting as they age. Finally, this paper discusses how the use of SEF may enable some of its users to deploy their reproductive potential at the most optimal time in their life course, but how the disclosure of having frozen eggs and having a desire for motherhood can work against some women in the process of partnering.

Methodology

The data presented in this paper are drawn from two sets of qualitative interviews examining women’s experiences of SEF in the UK and USA. The first set come from a project involving 31 users of the technology who froze their eggs between 2006 and 2012 with qualitative semi-structured interviews (Brinkmann and Kvale 2018) taking place in 2012–2013. The second set derive from a qualitative longitudinal investigation seven years after the initial interviews with nine of the original, and two ‘new’, participants. The participants in the first study were recruited through online fora (n = 20), from two British fertility clinics (n = 7), and through participant referrals (n = 4) using a snowball and purposive sampling method (Miles and Huberman 1994). The accounts of these women provided some of the first qualitative insights into the experience of SEF (Baldwin 2019) yet to date there has still been very little qualitative follow-up of such women. The second study employed a longitudinal approach by revisiting several of the original research participants (and two new participants) (Hermanowicz 2013). The two central research questions which guided this project were: how does social egg freezing shape women’s reproductive trajectories and subsequent intimate relationships; and how do women perceive their frozen eggs and how, if at all, do they report the experience of using them to attempt to conceive?

During the first interview encounter, participants were asked if they would give permission to be recontacted for future research, all the participants except for one consented for their contact details to be used for such purposes. Seven years later, I sought to recontact 28¹ of the eligible 30 participants, however as authors such as Farrall et al. (2016) have noted, attrition represents a significant obstacle to overcome in any longitudinal research project. Of the 28 original participants just less than a third (n = 10) never responded, three declined to be involved, five were uncontactable (the emails bounced) one agreed to be involved and then never responded, and nine took part in an interview. It was at this point that two ‘new’ participants were recruited to the study; these participants had undertaken egg freezing at a similar time to the initial sample of participants and were therefore suitable for inclusion in the study.

The second set of interviews were conducted face-to-face (n = 5) and online (n = 6), determined by the participants location/preference but also by the COVID-19 pandemic. The information reported here combines data from both sets of interviews² to provide an exploration of the participants experiences of reproductive timing and relationship negotiation as younger reproductive age adults right through to their accounts of being peri/menopausal.³ All of the women in both studies described themselves as heterosexual and were in professional occupations. Nine of the 11 women in the follow-up study described themselves as White, one participant described herself as South Asian and another as mixed-race American. At the time of the second interview 6 of the participants had children. Of these, two had conceived with a partner naturally, four had attempted to use their frozen eggs to conceive, two of whom had been successful in doing so with a partner (n = 1) and via donor sperm (n = 1). The two participants who had not had success with their frozen eggs ultimately conceived using donor eggs with their partners. Of the remaining five participants, one had chosen to live childfree with a partner, one was in relationship that they hoped may lead to motherhood, and three were single.

Participants were educated to degree level and beyond with higher-than-average levels of disposable incomes and had, or currently, lived in large cities. The participants worked in highly professionalised fields, most owned their own homes, and many had spent tens of thousands of pounds on fertility treatment. These women therefore had a significant (but varying degrees of) financial and social privilege.

Ethical approval for the study was given by De Montfort University Research Ethics Committee (Ref: 3299). The interview data from the first data set were analysed initially in 2013 but were revisited in 2021 and 2022 in the light of the new data collected in the follow-up interviews in 2019 and 2020. The interviews were analysed via thematic analysis and coded flexibly with the use of open, axial and selective coding (Strauss and Corbin 1998) assisted by NVivo software. Beginning with initial open coding (Saldaña 2013) the early analysis of the data was guided by the research questions, this then moved on to seeking to construct a pattern or themes from the codes via axial coding and then selective coding to help form overarching themes and findings. Major themes which were developed from this analysis included: intimate relationships; reproductive timing; risk and loss; hope and expectations of the future; and clinic experiences. The data and findings presented here focus predominantly, though not exclusively, on the first of the two research questions guiding this project and identify key themes of: Preparing for motherhood; Dating and the search for the right partner; Managing the disclosure of eggs, and Desire for motherhood.

Findings

Preparing for motherhood: investing time

Contemporary feminist discourse has produced a highly classed and new form of neoliberal governmentality for middle-class and elite women which is not only based on the management of current and future risks but also upon the notion that it is possible to ‘have it all’; both a fulfilling career and an intimate life complete with a high-quality romantic partner and children, both of which are achievable only through careful sequencing and smart self-investment. This idea of careful reproductive planning was key to many of the participants’ accounts. Women explained that by having children at an older age they would be better mothers as they would have the emotional, financial and relational resources (they believed) they needed to parent according to their own (largely middle-class) standards.

Women often described how they had avoided becoming a mother at what they saw as the ‘wrong’ time, this included whilst in unstable or new partnerships, when they were ‘too young’, or whilst studying. Equally women very commonly described wanting to avoid having a child with the wrong partner, which they noted could happen both now as well as when they were younger. It was therefore of paramount importance to women to spend their time wisely and choose the right partner with whom to have a child. For some, egg freezing enabled this ‘better’ choice.

I did not feel pressured just to find someone so I could have a family. I had known a handful of people that had done that, and they had kids, but they also ended up getting divorced…I didn’t want to sacrifice one for the other, like oh I will just marry this yahoo over here so I can have a baby. (Melanie S2, 44 yrs, Married)

At the same time, many women described how the fear of dwindling fertility could lead them to make the ‘wrong’ decision when choosing a partner which could have negative ramifications for their own and also their children’s happiness. Patricia explained:

I rushed into my relationship with him because I really wanted to have a child. So, we didn’t have time to go through some of the processes that you might have gone through if there was no rush. And I think we have suffered because of that… We are co-parenting but we are not really together. Patricia S2, 47yrs, Married

Spending a longer period single and searching for the right partner, was seen as valuable time spent both in terms of self-enjoyment and self-development but it was also viewed as useful time spent invested in finding the right conditions for motherhood which in the longer term would benefit themselves, their partner and their potential future child.

Dating and the search for the right partner: negotiating and wasting time

All the participants described difficulty in finding a suitable partner who they believed shared the same values and intentions as them regarding partnership and parenthood. Some women found themselves engaged in reproductive negotiation with their partners hoping they could persuade a partner to change their mind about commitment or parenthood but, in most cases, and sometimes after several years, these relationships broke down. The time spent in these failed relationships which did not result in motherhood, or time spent single without a partner at a time they would have preferred to have been trying to conceive, was experienced as wasted fertile time. As a result, women described how they sought to avoid wasting time in relationships, or even on dates, which they thought would be unlikely to result in their goal of a committed relationship with the possibility of motherhood.

A lot of people out there that are just dating casually…and never take anyone seriously. And so those guys are ones you eyeball them and stay away from if you are looking for the next step because they will just waste a lot of precious energy. (Stephanie S2, 40yrs, Single)

That was part of my dating strategy for Tinder; I never met anyone in person unless I talked to him on the phone first because I felt if they can’t carry on a phone conversation, I am not going to sit out in public with them. I was just into saving as much time as possible. (Melanie S2, 44yrs, Married)

Women also described the difficulties of dating in a large city: firstly, due to the high density of potential romantic matches; and secondly, in trying to move relationships beyond a casual setting. Stephanie explained:

Dating in an urban environment is very casual. It’s really hard to advance a relationship from casual dating or them dating multiple people to exclusivity. It’s like a major conversation… having that kind of exclusivity conversation is a big step.

She added:

It’s too many choices, it’s having options that you can meet someone new every single night of the week that makes you not decide on anyone. You might meet someone you really click with, you are really attracted to, that you really like, then you are like well [you think] what is behind the next door? (S2, 40yrs, Single)

As a result, it was very common for participants to describe how ‘awful’, ‘tedious’, ‘brutal’ and ‘exhausting’ they found the process of dating, with many women attributing this in part to the proliferation of online dating websites and apps.

I think, essentially, it’s partly living in a big city, where there is, it is, there’s so much choice. And now, with Tinder, it’s just a million times worse actually… because on the one hand, yes, you think, oh it’s so much easier to meet people because you can do it all online for free…but actually, there is a mentality of you know what, people just treating it very casually… (Hayley, S1, 38 yrs, Single)

Negotiating relationship formation and progression in the face of fertility decline

A key challenge for women appeared to be negotiating the dating ‘market’ as a reproductively older woman. Women explained how they believed men perceived women their age as less than desirable because they anticipated that they would soon want to marry and have children. Many women explained that they believed men instead sought relationships with younger women who would be in less of a rush to commit.

[Men] think you want to hurry up and marry them and have kids and so they are less likely to make it to date three than if you are younger and probably not thinking about marriage, kids and rushing those decisions. (Stephanie S2, 40yrs, Single)

Participants observed how unlike themselves, men were able to pursue parenthood much later in their lives which meant that they found themselves on differing timelines to the men they met. Furthermore, they noted how men could more easily seek relationships with younger women and put off commitment and fatherhood.

And the guys they just don’t want to date someone who is in their thirties because of those pressures. And so, I felt like I was competing a lot with the 21-year-olds… It was a disadvantage because guys don’t want to think about that… and that’s why they go for the younger girls because they don’t have to talk about it [having children]. They have more fun, and they can get pregnant later in life. (Stephanie S2, 40yrs, Single)

Olivia too explained how her age went ‘against her’ in the search for a partner.

Women complain at the moment that they have this fertility barrier that men don’t, and so in the context of internet dating you have a load of women in their late 30s and the guys their age want to meet women who are 5 or 10 years younger and the women feel very resentful…if someone is scrolling through a load of profiles they will look at 38 year old woman that doesn’t have children and think ‘she will want kids, NEXT!’ I think so, so you feel like you’re fairly disadvantaged with an advert over your head saying, ‘in final years of reproduction’. (Olivia S1, 37yrs, In-relationship)

While most of the women had a strong desire to find a partner and pursue motherhood, they described having to be careful how they communicated this to potential partners. Furthermore, it seemed having their eggs frozen was also not a simple solution, not only because SEF did not guarantee a live birth in the future, but also because disclosing the procedure to partners did not simply signal that the pressure to try and conceive was reduced, but, as some of the women found, could be interpreted by men as meaning that the transition to parenthood could be further delayed.

Managing disclosure statement of eggs and desire for motherhood: redeeming and (p)reserving time

Since freezing their eggs, all the women had pursued relationships. Many of them had tried to conceive, and thus had the experience of disclosing the existence of their frozen eggs and the desire to have a child to a partner. Some women described how, as they aged, the process of discussing a desire for motherhood in (potential) intimate relationships became much more consequential and how they had to find a balance between communicating an openness to motherhood and not appearing too keen. Discussing the desire to be a mother, or the fact they had frozen their eggs, seemed somewhat taboo and risky. As Hayley noted:

I was really hesitant about telling guys generally, about what I’d done, because…I think that if I started going on about it, you’re, essentially, wearing that t-shirt again that says, desperate for a baby, you know.

She added,

You don’t know what is going on in their minds, you don’t know…it’s [usually] one of two things, I think. It’s kind of, oh my god, she is desperate for a child and so there’s, you know, she’d be wanting to get down to it really quickly, or it’s like, oh wow, that’s, you know, that’s great it means that we could mess around for a few years, you just don’t know…I think the older you get, the more it’s a red flag that says, ooh she really wants kids desperately. (Hayley S1, 38yrs, Single)

There was a fear by many of the participants that by disclosing their eggs men could be put off pursuing a relationship with them, and several women did report negative responses from men. Because of this, talking about their eggs or desire for motherhood was often difficult.

It’s a really tricky scenario, I have to decide whether I like the person or not and if I like the person too much, I typically don’t tell them unless they start off as a friend first… I have seen guys freak out and never talk to you again. (Stephanie S2, 40yrs, Single)

I remember going on a date with particularly one guy I had met, this must have been when I was in my late thirties…I don’t remember particularly going on about children but obviously I had said enough about it for him to say you kept talking about children and for that reason I am not going to see you again… You can’t really ask those questions or talk about those things too much up front because men are going to be scared off by that potentially. Johanna S2, 48yrs, Single

Whilst fearing and encountering negative responses from men was sometime distressing, some women did report men responding very positively.

I had no problem having it [a conversation about their eggs] and he was very happy about it, because it just you know, he also really wanted children. (Emily S2, 50yrs, Married)

Furthermore, as Melanie explained it was important for her to explain ther situation to avoid wasting time with relationships that were not right. Indeed, disclosing her frozen eggs helped her ‘filter out’ unsuitable matches and brought her closer to the goal of motherhood.

I was very upfront with people…I was like ‘look I want to have a family one day, I am not saying you need to know right this minute if you want to have a family with me but I want to have a family so if that’s not something you are interested in its totally OK. But I don’t want to date you for 2 or 3 years or 6 months and then find out. Can we just talk about it on the first or second date. And then if we don’t want the same things that’s fine, we can each go our way.’ But the other part of it I also learned was when I was telling people about egg freezing and if their reaction was kind of like a negative one or I don’t want to talk to you any more type of reaction it was actually good for me, it weeded people out. (Melanie S2, 44yrs, Married)

At the point of freezing their eggs, some of the participants were still unsure about whether they wanted to become a mother and their parenting desires were sometimes contingent on the attitudes of the men they expected to meet. Egg freezing seemed to allow women more time to become sure of their own desires. Some participants became happy to live childfree with a partner who did not want children and were then able to decide for themselves that this was a life choice they were willing to make, rather than a decision made for them by the end of their fertility. Importantly, for some, egg freezing provided more time to become ready to become, or consider becoming, a single-mother-by-choice.

I think the process of freezing my eggs, one of the things it did for me is also just solidify how much I wanted a family…it just felt like what happened in those three years I shifted from really feeling like I needed a partner, and I needed a certain kind of partnership and a certain kind of family structure in order to become a mum, to just feeling like you know what I want to become a mum and it doesn’t really matter to me so much anymore how it happens. (Katie S2, 46yrs, Single)

Similarly, having access to a frozen reserve of eggs meant that women hoped they could avoid making the wrong choice or have limited options available to them about how they pursued motherhood; they hoped that whilst time might pass, time was not lost but could in some way be redeemed by making the ‘right’ choice for themselves as well as for their future offspring.

I think I would have felt much more pressure with people that I wasn’t necessarily on the same level within a relationship to continue the relationship to get what I ultimately wanted which was to be a family. So, I think it kind of saved me from making poor decisions or rushing decisions or accepting something that may not have been the best for me. (Melanie S2, 44yrs, Married)

As had been the case for Melanie, finding the right partner in her husband rendered the time spent single and in the wrong relationships meaningful and this (potentially) wasted time was compensated for by still having reproductive options to draw upon in a’right’ partnership. Melanie said:

There was something when I met him that clicked that made me go oooh this is why those people didn’t work out because of him, because this guy was waiting for… something that clicked that all of a sudden made all the other broken relationships make sense of why they were broken.

For a small number of the participants, particularly those who had had lots of eggs frozen, SEF enabled them to quieten the otherwise omnipresent ticking biological clock by reassuring themselves that even though they might age, their fertility had been preserved. Importantly this allowed some women the confidence to walk away from relationships that were not right and to search for more suitable relationships where they could deploy their eggs.

That’s what I am allowing myself to do is give myself the opportunity to change my mind or give myself the opportunity that if this relationship isn’t the one that I can start over and be in the same spot and know that my eggs will always be 33 years old or always be 35 years old. I have so many choices now.

She continued,

I spent seven years freezing. It equals seven years of preparing for future motherhood someday which I am so thankful I did…But I also felt like I got more picky about who I was willing to meet. (Stephanie S2, 40yrs, Single)

Stephanie’s preserved eggs became a significant asset which she was reserving for the right partner, and which would not (she hoped) be drawn upon in the less than right circumstance even if that took her several more years.

Discussion and conclusion

This paper has explored some of the ways in which ‘elite’ middle-class professional women approached and experienced the process of relationship formation in the face of age-related fertility decline and how their use of SEF shaped not only their romantic and family building expectations but also their interactions with (potential) partners. Women in this research had spent years constructing a life which they believed could be suitable for childbearing. Unlike less economically privileged women these more middle-class women were less willing to risk the opportunity costs and negative economic and personal ‘fallout’ of early or ‘mis-timed’ motherhood as they had more to lose. This was in part because they had more invested in a life trajectory of self-investment, improvement and the acquisition of cultural ‘goods’ deemed essential for middle-class mothering. As Rottenberg (2017) has observed, delayed childbearing has become a central part of neoliberal feminist discourse which requires women who wish to (‘successfully’) combine motherhood with career and personal success, to spend time first investing in themselves, building and accumulating a portfolio of resources and experiences to enhance their suitability/desirability in the marketplace of marriage. However, what hampered these women’s pursuits was the lack of a suitable partner with many of the participants describing having experienced significant, highly gendered and age-based, inequalities in the pursuit of such a long-term relationship – thereby encountering a situation which was further complicated by highly gendered cultural scripts which worked to disempower women at a critical stage of their reproductive lives.

In her research examining the relationship practices of university graduates Wood (2017) found that women were more motivated to prioritise the search for a long-term life partner in the same time period when heterosexual men were the most ambivalent about doing so. Similar to Wood, this research suggests that such a significant disjuncture between the relationship and parenting ambitions of some unpartnered women and men may continue, and perhaps intensify, through age. Whilst the women in both this and Wood’s research described seeking an egalitarian relationship with a partner, both studies identified highly gendered cultural scripts at play in the process of relationship negotiation and progression. Participants in this study described a difficulty in progressing relationships and reported feeling disempowered in advancing these relationships towards marriage and motherhood and fearful of being seen as ‘desperate’ or needy. Serewicz, Claire, and Gale (2008) have previously observed how, in contrast to the more egalitarian dating experiences of gay or queer singles, and despite the liberalisation of sexual mores that have previously governed heterosexual pairings, the scripts that heterosexual couples rely on to organise love, sex and romance remain highly gendered often to the disadvantage of women. Several studies have found highly gendered cultural scripts which position men as the agentic partner who assumes responsibility not only for asking women out, paying for dates, and initiating sexual contact but also broaching commitment at each step of a relationship, from initiating exclusive couple formation right through to marriage (Lamont 2021; Sassler and Miller 2011). In contrast these cultural scripts often position women in a more passive role, for example several studies (including this one) show women in heterosexual couples wanting to marry sooner than their partners but waiting, often for years, for their male partners to propose marriage rather than either proposing themselves or seeking out a different partner (Baker and Elizabeth 2013; Lamont 2021). Such a perceived unequal distribution of power in intimate relationships which sees men having more control than women may persist due to fears women have of undermining men’s tacit authority in this realm, or due to concerns of being seen as desperate or emasculating (Baker and Elizabeth 2013; Lamont 2021). However, it may be because women, particularly those of an advanced reproductive age, have more to lose in these scenarios than men.

Negotiations involving the progression of intimate relationships towards marriage or motherhood often see women who wish to have a genetically related child as having more at stake than their male counterparts. This is because women face a dual double standard in ageing, which sees their reproductive and sexual capital decline as they grow older whilst their male counterpart’s reproductive capital stays the same or increases. As women biologically have a narrower window than men to pursue genetic parenthood when in relationships, men hold greater reproductive capital (and thus power) which they can choose to deploy in their current but also future relationships with relative ease. By contrast reproductively older women have less chance of conceiving with a new partner should they leave their previous/current relationship due to the impact that their age has on their fertility.

The findings from the limited amount of research examining the reproductive intentions of single or partnered men have repeatedly shown how men’s extended reproductive timeline allows them more time to pursue fulfilment and opportunities outside of the ‘confines’ of partnering and parenting (Prior et al. 2018). Research also shows that men, when asked, almost universally express a desire for parenthood (Hammarberg et al. 2017) but equally make their reproductive and other decisions in the context of a neoliberal rationality which prioritises autonomy and self-realisation. Because of this, it is therefore perhaps unsurprising that some men are unwilling to work to a similarly aged female partners timeline where planning is less flexible. By entering into a relationship with a woman of a similar age, these men would likely need to consider relinquishing some freedoms in the pursuit of fatherhood. However, unlike their female counterparts, they were not only under less social pressure to adhere to normative expectations of parenthood but were more able to ‘put off’ such a transition to a later date or even different partnership.

The problem which therefore emerges is one of conflicting social and biological deadlines which are driven by a neoliberal individualist ethic, shaped by highly gendered and classed perspectives on family-life planning which sees women disproportionately shoulder the burden of ensuring ‘appropriately timed’ parenthood (Littlejohn 2021; Yopo Díaz 2023). This occurs in a an unequal partnering context where their male counterparts have more enduring sexual and reproductive capital and where heterosexual gendered cultural dating scripts afford men greater power and dominance which works to disempower women as they get older.

While women with economic resources may be able to draw upon SEF in a bid to level the playing field in terms of reproductive parity, this technology may not be the ‘great equaliser’ that some may have hoped it to be. This is because egg freezing tends to be available only to a subset of the middle-class financial elite, carries physical and emotional risks, and offers no guarantee of a live birth, but also as this study has indicated, the disclosure of having frozen eggs is often made within a dating context underpinned by sexism and ageism. While one of the limitations of the present study may be its heteronormative focus, I suggest that more research examining the mundane but important practices of partnering/parenting needs to be undertaken both at the couple level and at the individual level, together with more research examining the procreative consciousness of heterosexual men.

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Additional information

Funding

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Notes

1 Two of the participants’ accounts I considered largely ‘complete’ as they had already frozen and thawed/or lost their eggs at the point of the first interview.

2 The codes S1 (study one) and S2 (study two) are used when presenting data excepts to indicate the timepoint of the participant contribution.

3 In the first study, the participants were on average 39 years of age (Range 34 and 49 years of age) and by the second study were on average 45 years of age (Range 38 and 50 years of age).