Apple will soon join Facebook in covering the costs associated witih egg-freezing for female employees, even for non-medical reasons.
Starting in January 2015, Apple will join Facebook in covering the cost of egg freezing for female employees, hypothetically allowing them to work further into their childbearing years with less fear of reduced fertility. As NBC News reports, although many employers cover eggfreezing for women who are about to undergo chemotherapy, Apple and Facebook will be the first major firms to cover the technique for elective use. The firms will each offer $20,000 in coverage, enough for two harvesting rounds per employee.
“‘Having a high-powered career and children is still a very hard thing to do,’ says Brigitte Adams, an egg-freezing advocate and founder of the patient forum Eggsurance.com.”But don’t worry, that only applies to women.”
Adams told MSNBC that when companies pay for their employees to freeze their eggs, they are “investing in women” by giving them the opportunity to have a career now and a family later. Supposedly, this will then allow women to compete better in largely male-dominated fields because they will not be concerned with their children. Philip Chenette, a fertility specialist in San Francisco, views “covering egg freezing… as a type of ‘payback’ for women’s commitment” to their careers.
It is the 21st century and we’re still talking about how women can balance careers and families… but not men. Grr. I mean, yes, it’s hard. Being a parent is a “second shift,” and yes, it’s absolutely exhausting, but when I say parent, I mean parent, not just mom.
Maybe it’s just that it’s easier for men to have children throughout their lives, whereas women go through menopause, but it’s not like the actual act of child-rearing gets any easier as you age. It probably gets harder. And yet men haven’t been included in this conversation of balancing work and family life. Remember all that feminist outrage when Matt Lauer asked the GM CEO how she managed the balance, without considering he pulled it off just fine? Well, it’s still valid today. Somehow we manage to progress without progressing. If men can do it, “we can do it.”