Motherhood on Ice, Marcia C. Inhorn
Motherhood on Ice, Marcia C. Inhorn
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Motherhood on Ice
The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs

Author: Marcia C. Inhorn

Narrator: Elisabeth Ashby

Unabridged: 14 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/27/2023


Synopsis

Why are women freezing their eggs in record numbers? Motherhood on Ice explores this question by drawing on the stories of women who pursued fertility preservation technology. 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. 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. 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.

About Marcia C. Inhorn

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sarah

An academically rigorous ethnography of 150 women who have frozen their eggs, “Motherhood on Ice” develops a provocative thesis: women don’t freeze their eggs because they want to “focus on their career,” they do so because they have tried and failed to find an adequate partner and are trying to sec......more

I had a keen interest in this book due to a family history of infertility and struggle that I sought deeply to understand, and with it came a pleasant entertaining source of knowledge and a new outlook. It helped disprove some beliefs I had towards egg-freezing, something that, as I am a minority my......more

Goodreads review by Zoe

repetitive and didn’t really get much deeper than the introduction......more