The Real Reason Women Freeze Their Eggs
10th August 2026
But according to one researcher, clear patterns emerge when you look at why women decide to freeze their eggs. And no, it’s not because they are all trying to “girl boss” their way to the corner office and don’t want to risk the distraction of babies.
Yale University professor Marcia Inhorn, who focuses on anthropology and international affairs, conducted a study of 114 women who chose to freeze their eggs for her 2023 book “Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs.”
Of those 114 women, exactly one did it “specifically for career-planning purposes,” writes Inhorn.
Instead, “[d]espair, or the loss and absence of hope, is a running theme in many women’s egg freezing stories.” Women who choose to freeze their eggs are largely not doing it because their first choice is to have kids later in life.
Inhorn writes that “heterosexual relationship troubles” are the driving force behind egg freezing, and that the “vast majority of women I interviewed found themselves in their late thirties without partners.”
These women spent their lives becoming the men they were looking for, none of whom wanted to marry a quasi-man, and so in their thirties they hit the wall … and their biological clock kept tick tick ticking away.
Of course, as with all such articles, It’s All The Men’s Fault:
Obviously, many women want kids, but life isn’t working out as they hoped it would. Rather than focusing on egg freezing, we’d be better served by creating a culture that encourages men to become great husbands and dads and embrace raising families.
No, what we need are women who aren’t focused on being a professional Boss Babe and are willing to become the sort of women men are willing to marry. “Where are all the good men?” they cry; to which the answer is “Back in your twenties where you left them.” Men who want marriage and children aren’t going to be interested in starting that process with a woman in her thirties, much less her forties.