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impromptublue comments on Mistakes repository - Less Wrong Discussion
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On the other hand, waiting until you have your Ph. D. to begin breeding carries other risks. In this case, one should find an advisor that understands the stress maternity involves. It's entirely possible in some schools and disciplines to be practically done with classwork after the second year of study, and in some places it's possible to take a semester of unpaid leave without forfeiting the program.
Just freeze your eggs. Far cheaper than having children during the crucial early-career-building phase of your life.
It honestly blows my mind that people rearrange their whole lives around having kids early instead of doing this.
It's not surprising to me that it blows your mind, since you've reduced a complicated decision with multiple dimensions of considerations to a single criterion.
My comment was very (perhaps overly) vehement. That said, the two main problems arising from increased maternal age that are most typically cited are:
both of which become very significant after age 35.
By saving youthful genetic material, egg freezing solves these problems. However, in almost all online and in-person discussions I've participated in on the subject of maternal age, egg freezing isn't even brought up as an option and (this is more common in-person) people are either unaware that it exists or unaware that it is an established and reliable medical procedure rather than a fringe experimental one.
Of course, the processes of retrieving the eggs and implanting them can be unpleasant and stressful, but I really do think that this is on a different order of significance than "if you don't get pregnant before a certain age your body may become unable to conceive a healthy baby." There are also a host of other lifestyle concerns, such as the desire to have children early when one is more youthful and energetic. However, those tend to apply to men as well as women, and again are more a matter of preference rather than a universal and insurmountable thing on the level of infertility after a certain age. Egg freezing isn't a solution for everyone, sure, but when I see women planning their whole lives around having children before 30 I do get frustrated when they haven't even considered egg freezing.
It's kind of like mini-cryonics!
And you don't have to take its efficacy on faith!
It's pretty expensive: $20k+. I'm not sure if that's expensive enough that most women should dismiss it out of hand, but it's enough that most who would want it can't afford it.
Does it really help your long-term income? I mean, if you're taking years off for family, does the choice of doing so at 20 or 35 make much of a difference to your income in your peak-earning 50s? Also, IVF is expensive in its own right, as well as being invasive and unreliable. Plus you're still left with raising kids at an older age, when you're less able to keep up with them.
Taking care of kids can be physically demanding (carrying them around, chasing them down, etc.) and I expect it's a lot easier when you are younger.
It's also a lot easier when you can afford assistance.
Wealth isn't an automatic consequence of age (or of a PhD for that matter).
Absolutely true.
Neither is the ability to perform physically demanding tasks an automatic consequence of youth. We're talking about expected values, not guarantees.
And I would certainly agree that someone who doesn't expect their career to increase their earning power over time would have a completely different expected-value calculation around impromptublue's suggestion than someone who does.