為什么越來越多成功女性冷凍卵子？

“Freeze Your Eggs, Free Your Career,” announced the headline of a Bloomberg Businessweek cover story in 2014. It was the year that Facebook and then Apple began offering egg freezing as a benefit to employees. Hundreds of think pieces followed, debating the costs and benefits of “postponing procreation” in the name of professional advancement.

“冷凍你的卵子，解放你的事業(yè)，”《彭博商業(yè)周刊》(Bloomberg Businessweek)2014年的一篇封面故事的標(biāo)題這樣宣稱。正是在這一年，F(xiàn)acebook和蘋果開始向員工提供冷凍卵子的服務(wù)。數(shù)以百計的觀點(diǎn)文章接踵而至，對以職業(yè)發(fā)展之名“推遲生育”的成本和效益進(jìn)行辯論。

In the years since, many more women across the world have frozen their eggs. Many are highly educated. But the decision may have very little to do with work, at least according to a new study. In interviews with 150 American and Israeli women who had undergone one cycle, career planning came up as the primary factor exactly two times.

此后的幾年里，全世界有更多女性冷凍了她們的卵子。許多人受過高等教育。但這項決定可能與工作關(guān)系不大，至少一項新的研究得出了這樣的結(jié)論。對150名經(jīng)歷過一個凍卵周期的美國和以色列女性的采訪發(fā)現(xiàn)，以職業(yè)規(guī)劃為凍卵首要因素的情況，只出現(xiàn)了兩次。

Instead, most women focused on another reason: they still hadn’t found a man to build a family with.

相反，大多數(shù)女性關(guān)注的是另一個原因：她們?nèi)匀粵]有找到一個可以與之建立家庭的男人。

“The stereotype that these ambitious career women are freezing their eggs for the purposes of their career — that’s really inaccurate at the present time,” said Marcia Inhorn, a medical anthropologist from Yale University, and one of the authors of the study, which was presented Monday at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology’s conference in Spain.

周一，在西班牙舉行的一場歐洲人類生殖與胚胎學(xué)學(xué)會(European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology)研討會介紹了這項研究，其作者之一、耶魯大學(xué)的醫(yī)學(xué)人類學(xué)家馬西婭·英霍恩(Marcia Inhorn)說：“人們認(rèn)為這些抱負(fù)遠(yuǎn)大的職業(yè)女性正在為了事業(yè)冷凍卵子，這種刻板印象在目前是相當(dāng)不準(zhǔn)確的。”

Most of these mid-to-late 30s women were already established in their careers by the time they got to the clinic, the study found.

研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，這些30多不到40歲的女性來到診所時，大多已經(jīng)在事業(yè)上站穩(wěn)了腳跟。

“They weren’t freezing to advance; they were facing the overarching problem of partnership,” she said. This was the case, even among those who worked for companies that offered to pay for the procedure.

“她們不是為了晉升而凍卵;她們面臨的首要問題是伴侶關(guān)系”，她說。甚至在那些愿意為凍卵程序付費(fèi)的公司工作的人也是如此。

Though a single woman, headed toward 40, may feel like a freakish anomaly as she freezes her eggs because she hasn’t found a partner, she’s not. This finding echoes other studies in the United States and Britain that have similarly found that it’s the absence of a partner that drives most women to freeze their eggs.

一個快40的單身女人，因為找不到伴侶而冷凍卵子，這聽起來像是極其罕見的異常案例，但其實(shí)不是。這一發(fā)現(xiàn)與美國和英國的其他研究相呼應(yīng)，它們都發(fā)現(xiàn)，正是沒有伴侶的原因驅(qū)使了大多數(shù)女性冷凍她們的卵子。

The subjects in this particular study, which has not yet been published, came from seven different fertility clinics. In the United States, the women generally lived in cities along the East Coast or in the Bay Area. They ranged in age from 29 to 42, with three-quarters falling between 35 and 39.

這項尚未發(fā)表的研究的對象來自七個不同的生育診所。在美國，這些女性一般居住在東海岸或舊金山灣區(qū)的城市。她們的年齡在29歲至42歲之間，四分之三的人年齡在35歲至39歲之間。

The research approach taken by Dr. Inhorn and her co-authors Dr. Pasquale Patrizio, director of the Yale Fertility Center, and Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli of the University of Haifa, involved asking women — both single and those who had partners — to share their egg freezing stories and then analyzing their responses to try to understand their primary motives.

英霍恩和她的合著者、耶魯生育中心(Yale Fertility Center)主任帕斯夸萊·帕特里齊奧(Pasquale Patrizio)博士，以及海法大學(xué)(University of Haifa)的達(dá)普納·比倫鮑姆-卡梅利(Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli)所采取的研究方法包括，要求單身女性和有伴侶的女性分享她們冷凍卵子的故事，然后分析她們的反應(yīng)，試圖了解她們的主要動機(jī)。

Of the participating women, 85 percent were single and most were heterosexual. For about half of these single women, it was uncertainty about when they would meet a man to build a family with that brought them to the clinic, they told the researchers. The next largest group was driven there by a divorce or breakup. (Egg freezing was actually covered by several of these women’s divorce settlements.) This was followed by a smaller group of women who were deployed overseas and felt it was wise to freeze their eggs first and then a handful of women who were preparing to have a baby on their own. Career planning was the least common reason.

參加研究的女性中，85%是單身，大多數(shù)是異性戀。她們告訴研究人員，在這些單身女性中，大約有一半的人不知道她們什么時候會遇到可以共同建立家庭的男人，正是這種不確定性將她們帶到了診所。下一個最大的群體是因為離婚或分手來到了那里。(實(shí)際上其中一些女性的凍卵程序是用離婚分得的財產(chǎn)支付的。)隨后更小的群體是在海外生活的女性，她們認(rèn)為先冷凍她們的卵子是明智的做法，接著是少數(shù)準(zhǔn)備單獨(dú)撫養(yǎng)孩子的女性。職業(yè)規(guī)劃是最不常見的原因。

Among the 15 percent of the subjects who were in relationships, the reasons for freezing their eggs were not unlike the single women’s: though they had a partner, he was not yet ready or not interested in building a family.

在15%的非單身受訪者中，冷凍卵子的原因與單身女性沒有什么不同：盡管她們有伴侶，但他還沒有準(zhǔn)備好組建家庭，或者對此不感興趣。

Why are so many women having a hard time finding men to have children with? One hypothesis that researchers often cite is that it’s related to demographics. Women in many developed countries, including the United States, Canada, Britain, Japan, Norway and Australia, are now more educated than men. This could be creating a dearth of appealing male partners for these women.

為什么這么多女人很難找到可以一起生孩子的男人?研究人員經(jīng)常引用的一個假設(shè)是，這其中存在人口學(xué)因素。包括美國、加拿大、英國、日本、挪威和澳大利亞在內(nèi)的許多發(fā)達(dá)國家的女性現(xiàn)在比男性受教育程度更高。這可能會造成能夠吸引這個女性群體的男性人口短缺。

An American doctor in Dr. Inhorn’s study voiced this concern, saying “Most men don’t want relationships,” and are willing to date uneducated women, whereas most educated women will not. “So I think I have about a .09 percent chance of meeting someone.”

英霍恩研究中的一位美國醫(yī)生表達(dá)了這種擔(dān)憂，她說：“大多數(shù)男性不想擁有一段關(guān)系”，他們愿意和未受過教育的女性約會，而大多數(shù)受過教育的女性不會愿意和那樣的男性約會。“因此我覺得我遇見一個合適的人的幾率是0.09%。”

While a number of her subjects seemed to feel empowered by their decision to freeze their eggs, this sense of frustration was common.

雖然英霍恩的一些研究對象似乎感到，凍結(jié)卵子的決定賦予了她們自主的力量，但挫折感也很普遍。

“Why me? Why did I end up this way?” was a question that came up a lot. Yes, they had focused on their careers — but they had relationships over the years as well. Neither they, nor their friends, had expected to find themselves without a partner at this stage in their lives.

“為什么是我?我為什么會變成這樣?”這是一個經(jīng)常出現(xiàn)的問題。是的，她們曾專注于自己的事業(yè)——但多年來她們也建立過關(guān)系。無論是她們還是她們的朋友，沒有人會想到自己在人生的這個階段還沒有伴侶。

“It’s not something you’ve done,” Dr. Inhorn said she found herself wanting to tell them. “It’s you and thousands of other women.”

“并不是因為你自己的原因，”英霍恩發(fā)現(xiàn)她自己想這樣對她們說。“有成千上萬的女人和你一樣。”