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Synchronizing the Biological Clock: Managing Professional and Romantic Risk through Company-Sponsored Egg Freezing


 Increasingly, major U.S. employers in industries notorious for work-family conflict are beginning to offer egg freezing as an employee benefit. Proponents celebrate the inclusion of this technology into company-sponsored health plans as empowering professional women to “have it all” by postponing motherhood in favor of their professional pursuits, while critics voice concerns regarding its implications for reproductive autonomy and gender equality. Through 40 interviews with child-free women of reproductive age who work in industries that sponsor egg freezing, I investigate how work and career concerns shape professional women’s engagement with elective egg freezing. The dominant narrative established in earlier research on women’s motivations for undertaking the procedure downplays the significance of career pressures. However, this article finds that egg freezing manifests as an attempt to manage risks inherent to women’s intentions to form families in a professional landscape that is resistant to motherhood and family. Egg freezing suggests a potential reconciliation of future motherhood and professional work by adjusting women’s reproductive timelines to “perfect” the timing of reproduction to synchronize with career trajectory.