if i were a man, i would freeze my sperm
but i'm a woman and even though we're being marketed to by crazy cyrogenic companies, freezing eggs isn't the brightest idea. it's an insanely expensive, extremely invasive process and only 150 births have resulted from frozen eggs (not embryos) so far. and no long term studies have been done on the process and resulting offspring. it costs about 15k just to harvest the eggs and store them for one year.
on the other hand, frozen sperm has been safely used for decades, and is relatively inexpensive to store (and no needles involved, just some glossy magazines! you can even do it at home with a special kit that includes preservative). it's only 600 for the first year at top-end places, with 159 bucks for storage every year after that.
perhaps it's not as romantic* as conceiving naturally, but inserting defrosted sperm is easily done. (*is it even romantic to conceive? for some reason, a very specific scene plays out in my head when i think of people purposefully trying to have a child. the image is of a tom hanks-like actor gleefully announcing "let's make a baby!" to some permed '80s actress and throwing her on the bed. but i digress.)
so why would i freeze my sperm in the first place? because the ages of both parents greatly influence a child's predisposition towards autism, schizophrenia, and other diseases. before, it was believed that the mother's age was the major factor. but recent studies using hundreds of thousands of subjects are showing the father's age is just as important a variable, and in some cases even bigger, in the health of offspring.
essentially, with people having children later and later, freezing the age of 1/2 the dna just seems to make sense.
as mentioned, women are already being marketed to along these lines. and if women could freeze their eggs halfway as easily and cheaply, they totally would. i know i would and i'm not even sure about having kids. but men aren't being marketed to (yet) at all. and understandably so - most guys i know would never seriously consider doing this. they probably wouldn't do it if it cost 100 bucks just once.
the irony is, my male friends are getting into their 30s if they aren't already there. many probably do want kids - but not now of course, and that's the point. if they want them at all, they want them down the line. these are the kind of guys who will, once they have them, do anything to help their child's mental and physical health. they'll probably spend thousands of dollars on organic pickles for their lucky girlfriends/wives/lesbian friends, whoever will be their mothers-to-be. but none of them will even think about doing this, even after reading my poorly written post.
i joke that i'd like to market this towards neurotic new yorkers - to men and to their wives/girlfriends. the thing is, i actually don't think that this is a neurotic idea at all!
Autism Risk Rises With Age Of Father - Large Study Finds Strong Correlation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090400513.html
"When fathers are in their thirties, children have about 1 1/2 times the risk of developing autism of children of fathers in their teens and twenties. Compared with the offspring of the youngest fathers, children of fathers in their forties have more than five times the risk of developing autism, and children of fathers in their fifties have more than nine times the risk."
Father's age linked to schizophrenia risk
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6556-fathers-age-linked-to-schizophrenia-risk.html
Children born to older fathers are more likely to develop schizophrenia when they grow up, suggests the largest study of the issue to date.
A team of British and Swedish researchers have shown that for each extra decade in a father’s age at the time of his child’s birth, the child is almost 50% more likely to suffer from schizophrenia later in life.
The study of 700,000 people in Sweden suggests that over 15% of the schizophrenia cases in this group could be attributed to the patient having a father aged over 30 at birth.
“This is interesting when you have a society where the age of fathers when they have their first child has increased during the last decade,” says Finn Rasmussen at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, and a member of the team.
Having an older father is believed to increase a child’s schizophrenia risk - where there is no family history of the disease - because spontaneous mutations in the father’s DNA are more likely to occur in his sperm as he ages. These mutations can contribute to the overall risk of schizophrenia, as well as other diseases, in his children.
on the other hand, frozen sperm has been safely used for decades, and is relatively inexpensive to store (and no needles involved, just some glossy magazines! you can even do it at home with a special kit that includes preservative). it's only 600 for the first year at top-end places, with 159 bucks for storage every year after that.
perhaps it's not as romantic* as conceiving naturally, but inserting defrosted sperm is easily done. (*is it even romantic to conceive? for some reason, a very specific scene plays out in my head when i think of people purposefully trying to have a child. the image is of a tom hanks-like actor gleefully announcing "let's make a baby!" to some permed '80s actress and throwing her on the bed. but i digress.)
so why would i freeze my sperm in the first place? because the ages of both parents greatly influence a child's predisposition towards autism, schizophrenia, and other diseases. before, it was believed that the mother's age was the major factor. but recent studies using hundreds of thousands of subjects are showing the father's age is just as important a variable, and in some cases even bigger, in the health of offspring.
essentially, with people having children later and later, freezing the age of 1/2 the dna just seems to make sense.
as mentioned, women are already being marketed to along these lines. and if women could freeze their eggs halfway as easily and cheaply, they totally would. i know i would and i'm not even sure about having kids. but men aren't being marketed to (yet) at all. and understandably so - most guys i know would never seriously consider doing this. they probably wouldn't do it if it cost 100 bucks just once.
the irony is, my male friends are getting into their 30s if they aren't already there. many probably do want kids - but not now of course, and that's the point. if they want them at all, they want them down the line. these are the kind of guys who will, once they have them, do anything to help their child's mental and physical health. they'll probably spend thousands of dollars on organic pickles for their lucky girlfriends/wives/lesbian friends, whoever will be their mothers-to-be. but none of them will even think about doing this, even after reading my poorly written post.
i joke that i'd like to market this towards neurotic new yorkers - to men and to their wives/girlfriends. the thing is, i actually don't think that this is a neurotic idea at all!
Autism Risk Rises With Age Of Father - Large Study Finds Strong Correlation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090400513.html
"When fathers are in their thirties, children have about 1 1/2 times the risk of developing autism of children of fathers in their teens and twenties. Compared with the offspring of the youngest fathers, children of fathers in their forties have more than five times the risk of developing autism, and children of fathers in their fifties have more than nine times the risk."
Father's age linked to schizophrenia risk
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6556-fathers-age-linked-to-schizophrenia-risk.html
Children born to older fathers are more likely to develop schizophrenia when they grow up, suggests the largest study of the issue to date.
A team of British and Swedish researchers have shown that for each extra decade in a father’s age at the time of his child’s birth, the child is almost 50% more likely to suffer from schizophrenia later in life.
The study of 700,000 people in Sweden suggests that over 15% of the schizophrenia cases in this group could be attributed to the patient having a father aged over 30 at birth.
“This is interesting when you have a society where the age of fathers when they have their first child has increased during the last decade,” says Finn Rasmussen at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, and a member of the team.
Having an older father is believed to increase a child’s schizophrenia risk - where there is no family history of the disease - because spontaneous mutations in the father’s DNA are more likely to occur in his sperm as he ages. These mutations can contribute to the overall risk of schizophrenia, as well as other diseases, in his children.