ASRXXX10.1177/0003122418796807American Sociological ReviewBrown and Patrick 7968072018

American Sociological Review 24–­1 Time, Anticipation, and the © American Sociological Association 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418796807DOI: 10.1177/0003122418796807 Life Course: Egg Freezing as journals.sagepub.com/home/asr Temporarily Disentangling Romance and Reproduction

Eliza Browna and Mary Patricka

Abstract This study examines women’s use of egg freezing as a tool to renegotiate the relationship between romantic and reproductive trajectories and temporalities. We interviewed 52 participants who were considering freezing their eggs, were in the process of freezing their eggs, had already frozen their eggs, or had considered freezing their eggs and chose not to do so. We find that most of our participants used egg freezing to disentangle the trajectory of finding a partner from the trajectory of having children, with the end goal of bundled marriage and childbearing. For some participants, this temporary disentangling is an intermediate step toward fully decoupling these trajectories through single parenthood. Using this critical case, we move beyond previous work on sequencing and timing in the life course by focusing on (1) individuals’ subjective experiences of time and (2) the ways women manage and manipulate time in the life course. Finally, we show how these theoretical tools can be used to better understand other empirical cases in the life course.

Keywords egg freezing, life course, reproduction, temporality, union and family formation

Union and family formation are occurring at decades (Livingston 2018). In the midst of increasingly older ages for women in the these demographic changes, increasing num- United States. From the 1940s through the bers of women are using reproductive tech- early 1970s, women’s average age at marriage nologies—including in vitro fertilization (IVF) was 20; it has now crept up to 27 (U.S. Census (CDC 2017) and egg freezing (Society for Bureau 2017). Over the past few years, the Assisted Reproductive Technology 2018)—to average age of first birth has reached record manage and manipulate time in the life course. heights (Mathews and Hamilton 2016). Birth rates have simultaneously declined for women in their teens and early 20s and increased for aNew York University women in their 30s and 40s (Martin, Hamilton, Co-authors have equal authorship and are listed and Osterman 2017). Trends toward later tran- alphabetically. sitions are even more pronounced for women with higher levels of education, who are now Corresponding Author: Eliza Brown, New York University, 295 Lafayette more likely to begin childbearing in their 30s Street, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10012 compared to their counterparts in earlier Email: [email protected] 2 American Sociological Review 00(0)

Egg freezing is a new reproductive tech- trajectories in their lives—in our empirical nology that involves extracting and preserv- case, whether having children in the future is ing women’s reproductive cells in anticipation seen as tightly connected with or contingent of future infertility. The use of this technol- on finding a partner. In the case of individu- ogy to “stop time”1 by pausing the progres- als’ management and manipulation of time, sion of a critical life-course timeline raises we attend to how individuals create and revise important questions for sociologists of the life trajectories as they move through them, course. What draws women to egg freezing, including attempts to manipulate the relation- and what can egg freezing tell us about the ships among different trajectories in their management and manipulation of time in the lives, such as modifying the relationship life course more broadly? In this article, we between finding a partner and having chil- analyze how women use egg freezing to man- dren. We introduce the concept of disentan- age their anticipations of the future, and in glement of trajectories, a theoretical approach particular, to modify the relationship between that is critical for understanding the appeal of their reproductive and romantic trajectories egg freezing and that allows for a richer while still preserving the ideal of eventually understanding of individual actors’ progres- having children with a romantic partner. Our sion through the life course more generally. analysis, using conceptual tools from the We conducted interviews with 52 women sociology of time, allows us to rethink the in different stages of the egg freezing process. role of time in life course research while pro- We found that our participants used egg freez- viding useful conceptual tools and theoretical ing as a tool to manipulate subjective experi- insights for future work in the sociology of ences of time and to remake anticipations of the life course. the future. Women were fearful that rushing “Time, context, and process” (Elder 1994) to find a partner with whom to have children are critical elements in the study of the life was rationalizing their search for a romantic course, but researchers in this area have tended partner, making the process calculative and to analyze time as an impersonal, linear meas- contrived. This prompted them to situate new ure progressing chronologically, using “clock relationships on a long-term time horizon, as time” or “calendar time,” to study phenomena they sought to temporarily disentangle their such as aging, birth spacing, and union dura- partner search from long-term childbearing tion. These impersonal conceptualizations of goals. By temporarily disentangle, we mean time are useful for certain research purposes. cognitively isolating the different strands of However, as we will show, we cannot ade- experience and action so they could move quately understand the appeal and use of egg forward according to their own desired tem- freezing without attending to individuals’ sub- poralities. By pushing their imagined child- jective experiences of time and their anticipa- bearing timeline further into the future tions of the future, and without conceptualizing through egg freezing, women hoped to time as both something that actors experience bracket their childbearing goals and pursue as outside of their control and something they romantic partnership for its own sake, rather actively work to reshape. than pursuing partnership as a means to have Specifically, we go beyond examining children. They hoped that temporarily taking time in terms of objective, chronological apart these strands of experience and action measures to look at (1) individuals’ experi- would allow them to protect their romantic ence of time and (2) individuals’ management life from the rationalizing force of a ticking and manipulations of time. In examining indi- reproductive clock; participants aimed to viduals’ subjective experiences of time, we eventually rejoin these trajectories, that is, attend to actors’ sense of the flow of time, have children with the “right” partner. Lever- their anticipations of the future, and their aging these insights, we show that attending sense of the relationship between different closely to actors’ experiences of and attempts Brown and Patrick 3 to remake trajectories and temporalities in the have high incomes, and are in their late 30s life course opens up new lines of inquiry for (Baldwin et al. 2015; Hodes-Wertz et al. life course scholars and provides new ways of 2013; Myers 2017). Existing literature on egg thinking about older lines of inquiry. freezing has focused on a broad range of social implications of the technology. This includes the medicalization of anticipated The Case Of Egg Freezing infertility (Martin 2010), the ethical issues Egg freezing, medically referred to as oocyte raised by the technology (Baldwin et al. cryopreservation, is a new2 and rapidly grow- 2014), the enactment of “responsible” repro- ing3 reproductive technology that potentially duction (Carroll and Kroløkke 2017), and the preserves women’s ability to produce genetic potential for egg freezing to reshape kinship offspring. We focus on women who are freez- structures (Schuman et al. 2013). ing their eggs because they anticipate having Egg freezing researchers disagree over difficulty getting pregnant and giving birth as whether the procedure is empowering (Goold they age. Women may also elect to freeze and Savulescu 2009; Homberg, van der Veen, their eggs for other reasons, such as cancer and Silber 2009; Mertes and Pennings 2011; patients or female-to-male transgender indi- Robertson 2014) or exploitative (Harwood viduals preserving their genetic material 2009; Smajdor 2009). Among studies geared before treatment. The process of egg freezing toward analyzing the appeal of egg freezing, includes one to two weeks of hormone stimu- the technology is occasionally framed as a lation. This is followed by an outpatient pro- way to delay childbearing until conforming to cedure to retrieve the eggs that bloomed intensive mothering ideologies is possible during that cycle. If a woman chooses to use (Baldwin 2017; Myers 2017). In contrast, her frozen eggs, she must fertilize them and evidence from survey research suggests implant them in her uterus (i.e., the second women do not use egg freezing to purpose- half of the IVF process). This may or may not fully delay childbearing. Instead, most women result in a viable pregnancy. The likelihood of who freeze eggs do so because they are single one round of IVF using frozen eggs resulting and looking for a long-term partner with in a live birth is between 3 and 30 percent whom to have children (Baldwin et al. 2015; (Cil, Bang, and Oktay 2013). Success depends Greenwood, Pasch, and Huddleston 2017; on the age at which the patient froze her eggs, Hodes-Wertz et al. 2013; Seyhan et al. 2017; the method of freezing used, and the number Stoop, Nekkebroeck, and Devroey 2011). In of embryos transferred.4 Egg freezing is what follows, we aim to adjudicate these con- rarely covered by insurance. Women gener- flicting accounts concerning why women ally pay upward of $10,000 for each cycle, in elect to freeze their eggs. addition to annual storage fees of around In addition to being a phenomenon worthy $1,000 and, if used, the cost of IVF. Current of study for its own sake, egg freezing serves research on women’s use of their frozen eggs as a critical case for analyzing and reconcep- suggests few women return to use them tualizing time in the life course. Women going (Alvarez et al. 2015; Dahhan et al. 2014; through the egg freezing process reckon with Myers, Daily, and Jain 2015). Ultimately, perceived incongruences among imagined although egg freezing is marketed as an biological and social timelines (Waldby 2015). “insurance policy” for women’s future fertil- This creates a state of “hyper-projectivity” ity, it involves a great deal of uncertainty. (Mische 2009) in which persons experience Complete demographic information on themselves careening toward the future. For women who freeze their eggs in the United many women, the decision to freeze eggs States is not available. However, existing comes at an emotionally fraught moment in research suggests that most women who the life course, when previously taken-for- freeze their eggs are White, highly-educated, granted futures of marriage and childbearing 4 American Sociological Review 00(0) are called into question (Johnson-Hanks cultural, historical, and institutional forms of 2002). As we will show, these imagined temporality (Lewis and Weigert 1981; Mills futures come to be treated as projects requir- 2000; Nowotny 1992; Zerubavel 1979). Tem- ing active work and attention, rather than porality is shaped by power structures, espe- impending futures they approach passively. cially social class (Auyero 2012; Bourdieu 2000; O’Rand and Ellis 1974; Schwartz 1974). Temporality and the Life Course Most work on the life course does not The life course, “a sequence of socially attend to individuals’ experiences of time defined events and roles that individuals enact (Hitlin and Elder 2007) or other constructions over time,” offers an inherently temporal view of time such as institutional time (Mills 2000), of social life (Giele and Elder 1998:22). The but some notable work has reexamined time traditional life-course perspective includes in the life course. Many scholars have worked three temporal dimensions: (1) the individual on the subjective experience of aging (espe- life span from birth to death (aging); (2) the cially in gerontology), age norms and expec- social timetable of the life course (life stages); tations, and the individualization of the life and (3) historical time (Elder 1977; Ryder course (Diehl et al. 2015; Settersten and 1965). Demographers have devoted consider- Mayer 1997). Other work goes beyond look- able attention to the chronology of life-course ing at the life course in terms of a singular, events, especially timing and sequencing, linear route, emphasizing that the life course emphasizing the social structures that explain is marked by inflection points after which patterns in these areas. Theoretical work on life-course pathways change course (Abbott the life course has mostly been devoted to 2001; Johnson-Hanks 2002). This work sug- social-psychological (Elder 1994; Frye and gests that the life course should be studied Trinitapoli 2015; Karp and Yoels 1982; through analyzing individuals’ aspirations of Neugarten 1979) and structural-cultural ques- multiple possible futures, rather than focusing tions (Holstein and Gubrium 2007; Johnson- narrowly on events (Johnson-Hanks 2002). Hanks 2006; Johnson-Hanks et al. 2011). Hitlin and Elder (2007) connect notions of These perspectives have enriched our under- time in the life course to the concept of agency. standing of how individuals perceive life- They argue that individuals exercise different course stages and how life-course trajectories forms of agency depending on their orientation change across history. However, previous toward the future. They describe one form of work has left unexplored the ways individuals this agency as life-course agency, oriented might experience and manipulate the tempo- toward the long-term future and toward past rality of life-course trajectories themselves. transitions, which they distinguish from other, For scholars of the life course interested in more immediate agencies (i.e., pragmatic). “time, context, and process” (Elder 1994), When applying these ideas to empirical cases, recent sociological work on time offers useful life-course scholars have kept analyses of time tools for understanding individuals’ experi- in the life course at a long-term, outcome- ences of time and their anticipation of the focused level (Hitlin and Kirkpatrick Johnson future. As opposed to the linear temporal 2015). In this way, they have failed to consider measures, such as age or clock time, in which the interaction between shorter- and longer- time continuously marches on in uniform term forms of anticipating the future. increments, this line of work focuses on con- Other theorists of time look at the connec- tinuities and discontinuities in temporal expe- tions and disconnections between different rience (Zerubavel 1979, 2003), the shifting ways of anticipating the future. For instance, speeds of temporal experience (Elias 1992; Tavory and Eliasoph (2013) distinguish Sorokin and Merton 1937), and the multiplic- between an individual’s moment-to-moment ity of temporalities, including biological, anticipations of the future, called protentions, Brown and Patrick 5 and long-term, naturalized, and taken-for- course stages and transitions, such as early or granted orientations toward the future, delayed childbearing and marriage (e.g., Gold- referred to as plans. Both of these stand in stein and Kenney 2001; Heck et al 1997; Key- contrast to trajectories,5 which are more fitz 1975). By focusing on the timing of explicit long-term narratives and reflexive life-course stages and transitions in union and modes of future orientation. Protentions and family formation, but not attending to individ- trajectories may be connected or discon- uals’ subjective experiences of time, demogra- nected. For example, when a single woman phers and sociologists have been unable to goes on dates, she may or may not experience delve into important elements of how individu- a connection between the moment-to-moment als both experience and attempt to manipulate anticipations of her dating experience and her their life-course trajectories. In making sense long-term marriage and childbearing plans. of individuals’ actions and interactions, it is Individuals’ future projectivity in trajecto- critical to determine whether people’s proten- ries varies along multiple dimensions (Mis- tions in the present are linked to longer-term che 2009, 2014). These include the range of trajectories and plans in the life-course. possibilities in view, the degree to which the For example, when a couple has sexual inter- individual sees herself moving toward the course they might be thinking only about the future as opposed to a sense that the future is very next moment, rather than linking the pre- coming toward her, and the reach of the indi- sent to a long-term family formation plan, a vidual’s time horizons, or how far into the dimension linked to the propensity to have future she anticipates and makes plans. unprotected sex (Flood 2003; Higgins and A critical dimension of projectivity useful Hirsch 2008; Raine et al. 2010). The connec- for understanding the appeal of egg freezing is tions and disconnections between protentions connectivity, or the imagined linkages between and long-term trajectories, and between the pre- trajectories, including the degree to which sent and the future, are not only passively expe- some imagined future possibilities are experi- rienced. They are also actively managed and enced as contingent on others (Mische 2009). manipulated, especially with recourse to new For example, as we will show, our participants reproductive technologies. For example, a mar- experienced a tight connection between the ried couple planning a potential divorce may search for a romantic partner and their ticking work to bracket this imagined future dissolution reproductive timelines. Accordingly, women in order to have another child in the near future. felt their partner search was rushed. In addi- Sociologists of union and family forma- tion to experiencing the flow of time and the tion have also given significant attention to connections between different trajectories, sequencing of events. They have especially individuals actively work to manipulate their focused on atypical sequencing, including experiences of time (Flaherty 2003, 2012) and childbearing before marriage (Cherlin, Ribar, to renegotiate the relationship between differ- and Yasutake 2016; Guzzo and Hayford 2010; ent trajectories (Mische 2009). Manlove et al. 2010; Wu, Bumpass, Musick We import these conceptualizations of 2000), cohabitation before marriage (Ken- time and anticipation from the sociology of nedy and Bumpass 2008; Smock 2000), and time into the study of the life course, building sexual intercourse before marriage (England, on these concepts to develop the concept of Wu, and Shafer 2013; Wu, Martin, and Eng- disentanglement of trajectories. As we will land 2017). show, the notion of disentanglement allows us In focusing primarily on the sequencing of to understand the appeal of both egg freezing events, however, scholars tend to assume that and its relationship to our participants’ move- two events that typically occur in a particular ments through the life course. sequence are stops along a single trajectory. In Within union and family formation, demog- contrast, these events may in fact be experi- raphers have focused on the timing of life enced as separate but related trajectories with 6 American Sociological Review 00(0) distinct temporalities. Examining sequencing Interviews also allow for an in-depth, open- is important, but it should be coupled with ended examination of meaning-making and analyses of changing levels of connectivity planning for the future. During the inter- between different trajectories. This connectiv- views, we asked questions about participants’ ity happens at both the individual level and the childhoods, education history, work history, level of changing structural and cultural con- dating and relationship history, past and pres- ditions. In union and family formation, for ent social connections, decision-making and example, becoming an adult is no longer con- experience with egg freezing, cultural atti- sidered contingent on getting married (Cherlin tudes about marriage and childbearing, and 2004). For some women, having children is no hopes and plans for the future with regard to longer contingent on finding a suitable mar- work, romantic relationships, and family. riage partner, a shift that allows women to Interviews lasted between one and three manage the uncertainty of their marriage tra- hours. Participants were eligible for the study jectories (Edin and Kefalas 2005; Hertz 2006). if they were seriously considering freezing Although decoupling parenthood and part- their eggs, were in the process of freezing nership through single motherhood continues their eggs, had already frozen their eggs, or to be stigmatized, an overly tight connection seriously considered freezing their eggs and between certain union and family formation then chose not to do so. projects is also taboo. The culturally domi- We conducted interviews with 52 partici- nant justification for marriage is romantic pants,6 as well as 15 follow-up interviews with love, not childbearing or other outcomes 12 of those participants. We conducted follow- (Coontz 2006; Simpson, Campbell, and Ber- up interviews with participants who in their scheid 1986; Whitehead and Popenoe 2001), initial interview indicated they anticipated a condition that may make disentangling mar- changes in their partnership, parenthood, or riage and childbearing trajectories more egg freezing statuses in the near future. Some appealing. Work and family scholarship goes follow-up interviews were conducted over the beyond observing levels of connectivity phone. All interviews were conducted between among different trajectories and devotes con- March 2016 and August 2017, a time span that siderable attention to how individuals actively limited our ability to study changes to our par- work to renegotiate the relationship between ticipants’ plans for the future over a long their family and career trajectories (Blair-Loy period of time. All participants have been 2003; Damaske 2011; Gerson 1985, 2010). assigned pseudonyms to protect their confi- Ultimately, it is critical to explore the connec- dentiality, and we omit potentially identifying tions and disconnections between different information, such as employers’ names. trajectories rather than taking them for Interviews were conducted with one of granted, and to examine the ways individuals two authors, and both authors conducted attempt to manipulate the relationships among about the same number of interviews. Each different trajectories and thus reshape their author listened to the interviews they did not experiences of time. This is the starting point conduct and wrote memos on the interviews of our empirical analysis. within a week of their occurrence. All follow- up interviews were conducted by the original interviewer. All interviews were transcribed Methods verbatim, either by the authors or by profes- This article relies primarily on 67 in-person, sional transcriptionists, and then coded in in-depth interviews conducted using a life Dedoose (2018). We initially coded emerging story technique (Atkinson 1998). Interviews themes from the memo writing process, and are particularly useful for understanding the we fine-tuned the codes over time in dialogue “emotional landscape of desire, morality, and with our data and with relevant literature, expectations” people inhabit (Pugh 2013:50). making use of abductive analysis (Tavory and Brown and Patrick 7

Timmermans 2014). Examples of parent conducted the egg freezing process, those codes include “appeal of egg freezing,” in who were still considering whether to freeze, which we coded for discussions of what drew and those who had previously considered egg participants to freezing their eggs, and “egg freezing but ultimately decided not to freeze. freezing decision-making,” in which we The average age of our participants at the coded for the factors that contributed to our time of egg freezing was 36. At the time of participants making the final decision to the first interview, five participants were stu- freeze their eggs. We each coded all of the dents without income and five were unem- transcripts; we then conducted a reconcilia- ployed. Not including these participants, the tion process for any differences in coding, mean annual personal income at the time of finding and resolving 28 discrepancies the interview was about $100,000. All partici- beyond trivial differences such as the length pants had completed college. At the time of of the unit of analysis, which ensured reliabil- participants’ last interview, 30 women had ity in our interpretation of the data. completed a cycle of egg freezing (“freez- Because egg freezing is most prevalent ers”), 19 were considering freezing their eggs among a small and specific segment of soci- (“thinkers”), and three had considered freez- ety, we used a targeted recruitment strategy. ing their eggs but had decided against it As part of recruitment, we visited all known (“decided not to freeze”) (see Table 1). Three fertility centers in New York City and asked if participants identified as lesbian, bisexual, or we could leave study flyers in the waiting queer and had or were looking for female rooms. Several fertility centers complied. We romantic partners. also put up flyers at local universities and Among the participants who froze their cafés, posted in online forums for women eggs, at the time of egg freezing, 25 were interested in egg freezing, emailed groups of single and never married, two were single and female professionals, and maintained Face- divorced, three were in romantic relation- book and Twitter accounts throughout the ships, and none were married. Among the study for recruitment purposes. We also women seriously considering freezing their recruited using snowball sampling, asking our eggs, at the time of the first interview, 10 participants if they knew anyone else who were single and never married, three were might be interested in joining the project at the single and divorced, two were in romantic conclusion of the interview. We found partici- relationships, and four were married. Among pants through all these methods, but we were the three women who seriously considered most successful in recruiting participants via freezing their eggs but decided not to, at the online strategies. We ultimately conducted in- time of the interview, two were married and person interviews with women who lived in one was in a serious relationship; all three of the metropolitan areas of New York City, these participants were single when they Boston, Washington, DC, Chicago, Los Ange- began seriously considering egg freezing. les, and San Francisco. Our sample is limited Consistent with research that shows few to women who lived and worked in large met- women return to use their frozen eggs (Myers ropolitan areas in the United States, and there- et al. 2015), only two of our participants had fore we cannot speak to the experience of used their frozen eggs at the time of the last women freezing their eggs in other countries interview, and neither was successful. or outside of major U.S. urban areas. In our sample of 52 women (see Table 1), Results 28 were White, five were Black, 12 were Asian, two were Hispanic, and five were Disentangling Romantic and Middle Eastern. The average age of our par- Reproductive Trajectories ticipants at the time of the first interview was Most of our participants were single and look- 35; this includes participants who had ing for a long-term partner to have children 8 American Sociological Review 00(0)

Table 1. Participant Characteristics

Decided Not Full Sample Freezers Thinkers To Freeze

Race Asian 23% 13% 42% 0 Black 10% 13% 5% 0 Hispanic 4% 0% 11% 0 Middle Eastern 10% 13% 5% 0 White 54% 60% 13% 100% Country of origin United States 83% 87% 74% 100% International 17% 13% 26% 0 Mean age at interview 35 37 33 35 Mean age at egg freezing N/A 37 N/A N/A Employment status at interview Not working 10% 11% 11% 0 Full-time, unpaid student 10% 0 26% 0 Works part-time 4% 3% 0 33% Works full-time 77% 87% 63% 67% Career fielda Arts and media 12% 10% 11% 33% Business and law 40% 27% 37% NA Medicine and research 13% 17% 5% 33% Social or public service 19% 20% 21% NA Student 15% 7% 26% 33% Income at interview (mean)b $127,000 $136,000 $107,000 $79,000 $0 to $50,000 31% 17% 47% 67% $50,001 to $100,000 29% 33% 26% NA $100,001 to $150,000 21% 27% 16% NA $150,001+ 17% 23% 5% 33% Relationship status at interview Single and never married 58% 67% 53% NA Divorced, currently singlec 10% 7% 16% NA In a relationship 15% 17% 11% 33% Married 17% 10% 21% 67% Relationship status at egg freezing Single and never married N/A 25 – 83% N/A N/A Divorced, currently single N/A 2 – 7% N/A N/A In a relationship N/A 3 – 10% N/A N/A Married N/A 0 N/A N/A Fertility outcome at final interviewd Nulliparous 87% 83% 100% 33% Pregnant 8% 10% 0 33% Child(ren) 6% 7% 0 33% % of full sample 100% 58% 37% 6% N 52 30 19 3 aDoes not include unpaid full-time students. bIncome mean does not include unpaid full-time students, unemployed participants, and one refusal. Accordingly, this number is slightly inflated. cAll divorced participants were also single at the time of the interview; no one was divorced and in a relationship or remarried. dNone of the pregnant or parenting women successfully conceived using eggs they had frozen. Four were impregnated through intrauterine insemination (IUI), one through IVF with donor eggs, and one through sexual intercourse. Brown and Patrick 9 with at the time of the interview, or they were actively work. Asked if she imagined herself looking for a long-term partner to have chil- having kids when she was a teenager, Ora, a dren with at the time they froze their eggs. 34-year-old White woman who worked in the Egg freezing is often portrayed as a way for fashion industry and who was considering high-powered working women to delay child- freezing her eggs at the time of the first inter- bearing for the sake of professional advance- view, said: ment.7 However, only seven of our participants brought up career factors as driving them to For sure. And it was—it felt very like, Well, freeze their eggs.8 These women described of course. But it didn’t feel as intentional, needing time to overcome occupational and find a partner, find a person that you want to financial instability. This is in contrast to have children with, duh duh duh . . . it was popular narratives about using egg freezing to more like, Yeah, of course . . . in a thousand years. But now that time has come, so . . . delay childbearing to make partner at a law [laughs]. firm or become CEO of a company. Most of our participants framed romantic concerns as Like Ora, most of our participants the primary driver for freezing their eggs or recounted a shift from taking future partner- looking into egg freezing. Even women who ship for granted to needing to actively work, did profess concerns about occupational or in an “intentional” way, at finding a partner, financial stability as it related to childbearing transforming futures that seemed inevitable often coupled such concerns with worries into purposive trajectories (Tavory and Elia- about their romantic lives. soph 2013). Our participants often attributed Our participants anticipated age-related this shift to developing a sense of their own infertility (Martin 2010): they believed their dwindling ability to get pregnant. ability to get pregnant and have children would decline over time or had perhaps already begun to decline. The childbearing trajectory is often Working on Romance rife with uncertainty: the speed of the decline Some women began relating to romance as a and the precise end of the reproductive time- project on which they actively needed to line are unknown. For women who want to work. This could be due to a break-up or a have genetic children with a romantic partner, long period of singleness, experiencing fam- with or without assisted reproductive technol- ily and friends entering long-term relation- ogy, beating their imagined ticking reproduc- ships and getting married, receiving external tive clock is connected to and contingent on pressure from contacts who told them it was finding a partner. Most of our single partici- important to find a partner to have children pants experienced pressure to find a partner with soon, or when they reached “magic num- quickly due to this contingency; they were bers” (Martin 2017), such as age 35, that plagued by a sense they were running out of serve as cultural road signs of their declining time to have children with a partner. They por- grasp on the chance to have children. trayed egg freezing as enabling them to man- Hadiya, for example, a 37-year-old Black age these anxieties by temporarily disentangling woman working as a nurse, was in the process the project of finding a partner from the project of freezing her eggs during our first interview. of having children. Asked to explain why she started “panicking” Our participants often reflected on a shift about relationships at 35, she said: in their orientation toward romantic relation- ships and future childbearing: from taking Because everyone knows 35 is the magic future marriage and childbearing for granted number, all of a sudden you’re high risk, all when they were younger, especially in ado- of a sudden I thought all my eggs are going lescence and their 20s, to needing to approach to just like, I don’t know, disintegrate, and I these futures as projects on which they must am now not going to have a kid. I don’t 10 American Sociological Review 00(0)

know, I was just freaking out. So I went—so to use egg freezing to signal to prospective at 35, that was when I first went and had a partners that they were not rushed or looking consultation with the fertility doctor. for a partner as a means to have children. Like Hadiya, Chloe, a 33-year-old White Turning 35 signaled to Hadiya that she needed and Latina woman who worked in product to begin actively working toward finding a management and was considering freezing partner and having children, for fear her eggs her eggs, described the appeal of egg freezing might “disintegrate.” Confronted with a tick- in terms of disentangling her dating life from ing reproductive clock in the face of a future her long-term childbearing goals: rapidly coming toward her (Mische 2009), Hadiya lamented the tight connection between My number one priority is to find a play- her search for a partner and her pursuit of partner to have a blast with who stretches having children. Asked about the appeal of me, grow, and we can learn, and I’m not egg freezing, Hadiya talked about protecting willing to give that up to have a family at her romantic life from the temporal con- the right time. So [egg freezing] is my way straints of her reproductive timeline: of putting the family thing over here, so that I can focus on the super compatibility, and Without the egg freezing, maybe I would not feel like, Oh, sometimes you have to date a guy or end up with a guy I shouldn’t give things up in life, and people aren’t be, just because maybe he wanted a child perfect. and that’s what we want, but in reality I really . . . I just don’t want to have a child Chloe hoped that by pushing her reproduc- with anyone. I actually would like to be . . . tive timeline further into the future, she could I want to be with the person that I want to be disattend from concerns about future family with and out of that have a child, and I think (“putting the family thing over here”), thereby egg freezing will allow me to do that instead bracketing her imagined future childbearing of doing it the other way. trajectory (Husserl 1960). She hoped to pur- Hadiya made a distinction between finding sue dating and relationships for their own a partner for its own sake, with whom she will sake, rather than as a means to have children eventually have children, and looking for a within a certain timeframe (“I’m not willing partner as a means to have children. She to give that up to have a family at the right framed egg freezing as a way to achieve the time”). former, by disentangling her search for a part- Similarly, Catherine, a White, 39-year-old ner in the present from an imagined rapidly- acupuncturist who was briefly married in her moving reproductive timeline. mid-30s, was considering freezing her eggs at This was a prominent pattern among our the time of her interview. When asked what participants: they hoped that egg freezing originally appealed to her about egg freezing, would loosen the tight connection between Catherine explained she was drawn to egg their reproductive timeline and their path to freezing because she thought it would help finding a long-term romantic partner. They her reshape her dating life by disconnecting expressed three major advantages to disentan- her search for a partner from her concerns gling these projects: first, our participants about her reproductive timeline: imagined that egg freezing would make it Just the fact that, you know, you didn’t have possible to find the right partner and avoid to date people thinking, Oh God, I have like “settling” due to decreased time pressure; a year. Are you right for me? Are you right? second, they hoped egg freezing would allow It makes you sort of anxious to try to find a the romantic trajectory to achieve a slow, partner because you feel like you have to do organic temporality, protected from a ration- it fast, which can lead to you making wrong alizing ticking clock; and third, they intended decisions because you have this goal of a Brown and Patrick 11

baby as opposed to this goal of a partner- age 37, said that egg freezing gives women ship, which I think could be dangerous. “an enormous amount of freedom.” Asked what she meant by that, she responded: Catherine expressed that her reproductive timeline should not dictate her partner search, I have a lot of friends who maybe rushed and that the project of having children should into having children because of their timing, be distinct from and secondary to the pursuit just their biological clock is ticking, and it’s of finding the right person. Although this not that they didn’t want to have children, motivated her interest in egg freezing, Cath- but they’re choosing—and by their own erine was leaning toward not freezing her admission—to have children with people eggs at the time of the interview, due to con- who they probably wouldn’t have had chil- dren with if they had taken the time to form cerns about its effectiveness: “From my a real relationship with someone and do it research, it doesn’t seem to be a guarantee at traditionally. So I mean, it gives me the all.” freedom to . . . pursue my career, my dreams, the freedom to choose the right mate for me, and you know, live my life. Avoiding Settling To be clear, most participants still hoped their Settling, in this context, refers to marrying partnership and parenthood projects would an undesirable partner in order to have chil- come together in the form of bundled mar- dren. Several participants framed egg freez- riage and family, and they saw having children ing as a way to avoid settling. They drew as contingent on finding a partner. By punting boundaries between their own imagined tra- the imagined end of their reproductive time- jectories and the trajectories of their friends line further into the future, they could date or family members who they understood to without simultaneously attending too closely have settled. Chloe, for example, was critical to their desire for children. Modifying the of friends who have a “70 percent compatibil- relationship between these two trajectories ity” level with their partners, and she distin- enabled them to reshape their subjective expe- guished this from her own desired partnership rience of each trajectory’s temporality. The search: “I want 90, 95 percent compatibility.” disentangling of these projects was temporary: She framed egg freezing as a way to avoid they hoped to isolate their romantic lives from “force-fitting” substandard relationships to their plans to have children for the time being, meet “some arbitrary deadline.” In addition to to avoid subordinating their search for a part- avoiding settling with imagined undesirable ner to the temporal constraints of a dwindling partners, participants also framed egg freez- reproductive timeline. ing as a way to avoid going back to tumultu- But this disentangling is important. The ous or unhappy past relationships. pressure to find a partner quickly conflicts Most of our participants were concerned with romanticized notions about finding the about sacrificing their selectivity. However, a right person, an imagined path with a desired few talked about the underside of being too temporality, undiluted by pragmatic concerns selective about their partners. Samantha, a or strategic efforts. Our participants expressed White, 39-year-old executive at a media com- fear that too tight of a connection between the pany, seriously considered freezing her eggs, pursuits of finding a partner and of having but she decided not to do so when she met her children could lead to “settling.” Egg freezing current husband. Reflecting on their relation- was repeatedly portrayed as a means of avoid- ship, she said, “I stopped being so particular. ing settling with someone who was not right . . . [There are] parts of him that are not per- for them by extending their reproductive fect and I think that earlier I would be too timeline. For example, Ana, a Black, 40-year- much of a perfectionist about people.” old real estate broker who froze her eggs at Samantha framed settling as a product of 12 American Sociological Review 00(0) maturation. Finding a marriage partner, even today’s July 28th, [2016]. We’re going out one who might be less than “perfect,” made on August 1st, so like, by August 1st, 2017, freezing her eggs less desirable. like, we can like . . . a year from now, I’ll like, know if this is the person or not the person, and then I can get pregnant or I can Achieving Desired Romantic get married if I wanna like do that, and go Temporality through that. In addition to helping participants avoid “set- tling” with substandard partners, disentan- Just as Olivia framed egg freezing as gling romantic and reproductive projects allowing her dating life to be more “organic,” holds the promise of allowing women to Jackie framed egg freezing as allowing her to achieve a desired temporality in their dating access a desired temporality in her dating life, lives, without situating each new relationship ideally truncating an overly rational and over- on a long-term time horizon. For example, extended time horizon. Simply put, with egg Olivia, a 41-year-old White woman who freezing, she hoped she could date without worked for a healthcare company, froze her fixating on her end goal of family. Jackie eggs after separating from her husband. In our depicted an imagined, undesirable temporal- first interview with Olivia, she described the ity of future romantic partnerships that she benefits of egg freezing for her own life: hoped egg freezing would help her escape:

I don’t believe in investing time kind of I guess I don’t wanna go from like, to rush crazily trying to meet somebody now to be through like, part of getting to know each my baby-daddy. What I think I accomplish other in like the early part of the relation- with freezing my eggs is to give myself time ship, and then to go right in—to like, rush to let things organically happen and not run through, hurry up, real quick, get married, around like a crazy person trying to make and to like, rush to try and have a baby, and something happen. That doesn’t make . . . I don’t know, I guess I have these like, sense. baked in ideas about what sorts of timelines work. Olivia did not want to try to “make things happen” in her romantic life or force her Narratives of fast, immediately intense romantic life to fit her reproductive timeline. romance, or love at first sight, permeate pop- Extending her reproductive timeline helped ular culture (Illouz 1998). Nevertheless, our her truncate the time horizon of her dating participants idealized a slow build in their life, allowing her to pursue romantic partner- romantic lives that they hoped would lead to ship “organically,” without the constraints of stable partnerships; a romantic temporality a rationalizing ticking clock. they hoped egg freezing could help them Other participants explicitly described access. how the pressures of a long-term time horizon Jackie expressed a desire to use egg freez- damaged their dating lives. We interviewed ing to help her disconnect the protentions, or Jackie, a White, 34-year-old executive direc- moment-to-moment anticipations, of her tor at a nonprofit, before and after she froze romantic life from the long-term project of her eggs. During the first interview, she having children. She hoped to truncate her expressed that freezing her eggs would allow imagined future trajectory of finding a roman- her to be more relaxed about the timeline of tic partner by disconnecting it from the pro- her romantic relationships: ject of having a child, renegotiating the connectivity between the two trajectories [W]hat I want it [egg freezing] to do is to (Mische 2009). Jackie feared that her sense of liberate me from like, looking at every sin- urgency to find a partner to have children gle new relationship like, alright, like, with left her unable to access a more idealized Brown and Patrick 13 romantic temporality, oriented toward slowly I told one guy that I was dating, ’cause he and “organically” getting to know prospec- was like, You’re 42, you’ll want a family tive partners. She hoped egg freezing would right away, and I was like, No, I said, I’m allow her to shift her dating interactions to not in a rush. I froze eggs, I froze embryos. this more romanticized temporality, with a I said, I have options. So I want to enjoy the process of a relationship, I don’t want to short-term time horizon, temporarily discon- rush it. Which you know, obviously now is nected from her long-term goals of getting fine. But if—a few years ago it might have married and having children. been different. Other participants identified the tensions inherent in a rushed romantic temporality and In the process of coordinating futures with saw it as making dating lives too rational and prospective partners, Isa used her frozen eggs calculative. They talked about the dangers of to signal that her protentions were discon- being “ambitious” in relationships; about nected from the long-term project of having wanting to let their romantic lives unfold in children: “I’m not in a rush. I froze eggs.” Isa, an “organic” way; about not wanting to have along with other women in our study, framed “end-game Mr. Right”; and about wanting a truncated time horizon in her partnership their romantic lives to be “magic.” Disentan- trajectory as an important asset on the dating gling romantic and reproductive temporalities market. Similarly, Madeline, a 36-year-old through freezing reproductive cells holds the White Orthodox Jewish woman who worked promise of isolating romantic pursuits from in real estate, told prospective partners that the rationalizing force of a ticking reproduc- she froze her eggs: tive clock and restoring the “magic” to the search for a partner. I think I’ve told three guys, and . . . every- one’s like, Okay, great. I think for guys, even—especially in the religious commu- Temporal Signaling in Romantic nity, I think it, they’re like, Oh you’re 36? Interactions And you froze your eggs? That’s great. Like, it makes them feel better. So, I don’t know Several participants expressed hope that by if that’s, it’s not really true, right, because freezing their eggs and accessing an idealized there’s only a 10 percent [chance] that the romantic temporality, they would better align eggs will—like that’ll work out. But in their their own trajectories with prospective part- mind, it makes them feel better. ners. This would help them avoid signaling that they were “in a rush” to have children. Madeline is conscious that her frozen eggs This phenomenon was often experienced as are unlikely to lead to a live birth. Nonethe- deeply gendered. less, she deploys them in dating interactions Beth, for example, a White, 34-year-old to signal to men that she is young enough to woman who worked in the pharmaceutical be considered a suitable partner and has industry, lamented that “there’s no clock for ample time left to have children. men.” Our participants often tried to prove to Other participants hoped that having fro- prospective male partners that they were not zen eggs would keep them from sending on a fast-track to long-term partnership and unintentional signals or “vibes” to prospec- childbearing, deploying their frozen eggs as tive partners in dating interactions. Olivia evidence. Isa, a 42-year-old Black woman consistently referred to egg freezing as a who worked in finance and who froze eggs “desperation avoidance strategy”; she wanted and embryos created with donor sperm, used to avoid signaling to men that she was hur- her frozen eggs to signal to prospective part- riedly searching for a partner to have children ners that her dating life was disconnected with. Similarly, Tracey, a 35-year-old White from her childbearing trajectory, allowing for and Lebanese woman who worked in clinical the desired temporality: research, was in the process of freezing her 14 American Sociological Review 00(0) eggs at the time of the interview. She talked White, 35-year-old doctoral student who was about not wanting to have an “air of despera- in a serious relationship when she froze her tion” on dates, and she framed this as part of eggs, described a desire to not think about the appeal of freezing her eggs: relationships as “household-building scenar- ios.” She described egg freezing as a “backup” You’d like, get down on yourself for being and a way to take pressure off her relation- single and not meeting anyone, and then ship: “I think [egg freezing] will make it bet- always in the back of your head, just like, ter because I won’t feel so much pressure and You’re getting older and if you want to have we can just let things happen how they hap- kids . . . blah blah blah. It’s like, it’s so hard pen.” Participants who were in relationships at least for me, and probably for a lot of or married still framed egg freezing as allow- girls, it’s hard to just not always have that in the back of your head . . . and probably part ing them to disentangle their romantic trajec- of the reason I thought maybe if I froze my tories from their paths toward childbearing. eggs I would—I would just take away that . . . Vanessa, a 36-year-old Asian woman who I don’t know if I was just putting out a vibe, worked as an actor, was considering egg like I need to find someone quick and like freezing in part because she saw it as a kind make it work so we can do the normal, okay, of insurance on her marriage: date for a year and then maybe get engaged, okay, and then like a year from then get I’m like, people’s feelings change, and let’s married and then maybe a year from then be realistic, I love my husband, we’re great have kids. right now, but you never know what’s going to happen. What if I blow my chance at hav- Having frozen eggs was framed as an interac- ing my own biological child and we’re not tional tool in participants’ romantic lives, even together anymore? So those are some either directly deployed to signal they were of the thoughts that ran through my head in not “in a rush” to find a partner to have chil- terms of considering freezing my eggs. dren with, or as a means to avoid sending unintentional signals of rushed temporality. For Vanessa, having frozen eggs held the Part of the appeal of egg freezing is its promise of preserving her ability to have chil- ability to disentangle the pursuit of finding a dren in the event her marriage ends. Most partner from the pursuit of having children. participants wanted to protect their romantic Many participants feared that too much pres- trajectory from an encroaching reproductive sure to find someone quickly could lead them timeline, but for Vanessa, the appeal of egg to “settle” with the wrong person, and they freezing was in protecting her reproductive wanted to avoid an over-rationalized or overly timeline from the potential precarity of her pragmatic manner of dating. They drew on marriage. cultural narratives of the appropriate tempo- rality of dating, which was in tension with their sense of a ticking biological clock. They Splitting Trajectories, Pursuing Single used egg freezing to change the nature of their Parenthood own experience of finding a partner and to For several participants, freezing eggs did not signal to prospective romantic partners that help disentangle the project of having a child they were not in a “rush” to get married or from the project of finding a partner. Some of have children. these participants began to consider or pursue Among the small number of participants single parenthood, fully splitting the two who were married or in serious relationships, projects.9 egg freezing was also framed as a way to Egg freezing often serves as an intermedi- reshape the relationship between their roman- ate step toward single parenthood; a way to tic and reproductive trajectories. Paige, a temporarily disconnect the project of finding Brown and Patrick 15 a partner and the project of having a child and she wanted to stop “passively waiting” to before, or instead of, decoupling these pro- meet someone:10 jects completely. In some cases, participants framed egg freezing as giving them more I think that the pressure I feel to have a child time to find a partner before turning to single is so, feels, and the desire, and the pressure parenthood. For other participants, going is so strong, I don’t even know if I like, I through the egg freezing process gave way to can’t even tell if I like someone, you know? considering single parenthood as an option, [laughter] And also, I kind of feel like my life would be easier if, I mean harder in particularly when egg freezing did not have some ways, but easier if I had a child, or if I the desired effect on their romantic lives. made this decision to have a child, and then Olivia, for example, was entirely closed to I was dating, because then I would just feel the idea of single parenthood the first time we like, I’ve made this decision for myself, you interviewed her. She thought that completing can come, you can join or not. three rounds of egg freezing would allow her to date without thinking about having chil- Even though she had frozen her eggs, Kayla dren, and that she would be content to not could not fully disentangle the project of part- have a child if she did not meet an appropriate nership from parenthood. She imagined that partner. When we next interviewed her nearly splitting these projects entirely might actually a year later, however, she had become more improve her romantic life. When we followed attached to the idea of having children and up six months later, she was pregnant from an had begun to seriously consider the option of intrauterine insemination (IUI) with sperm single parenthood. When we asked her how from an anonymous donor.11 She explained she became more accepting of the prospect of how she made the decision to pursue single single parenthood, she explained: parenthood:

It has become clear to me that finding that I think I just wanted to not delay this part of great male partner that I was hoping was out my life, like having a child. So even though there, might not be out there. And so coming the egg freezing like presumably put a hold to terms with that reality has invited me to on my biological clock, it didn’t actually— look at other possibilities in a way that I for me, it didn’t do what I imagined it does wasn’t willing to when I was still dead set for some people, which is to say like, Okay on that. now I’m going to take the next couple of years and really try to meet someone. It This growing disappointment that her partner didn’t like achieve that initially. It just made might not be “out there,” coupled with her me realize that I really wanted to be at a dif- greater commitment to having a child, led her ferent stage and that I didn’t—though I could to consider pursuing single parenthood. now wait for it, I didn’t want to wait for it. Some participants became single parents after finding they were unable to successfully After putting considerable effort into tem- disentangle partnership and parenthood porarily disentangling her parenthood and through freezing their eggs. Kayla, a White partnership projects by freezing her eggs, 37-year-old social worker who was single for Kayla decided to move forward with parent- most of her adulthood, had expected egg hood, regardless of her partnership status. freezing would take the pressure off finding When she got pregnant, she felt she had “per- someone, allowing her to relax on dates and mission” to stop dating. In contrast to partici- improve the likelihood of finding a partner. pants like Catherine or Chloe, who expressed After freezing her eggs, she told us she con- that their childbearing plans should not dic- tinued to have a sense of urgency to have tate their partnership search, Kayla expressed children, such that “there wasn’t any space an inverted version of this: that her partner- for like, naturally getting to know someone,” ship search should not dictate when she has 16 American Sociological Review 00(0) children. Now that her path to childbearing producer who froze her eggs and then later was no longer contingent on finding a partner, chose to become a single parent through Kayla was hopeful about her romantic pros- donor insemination, now has a 2-year-old pects. She said she intends to resume dating child. She explained that having frozen eggs after having her baby and that “it won’t feel in storage changed the nature of her dating as burdensome because I won’t have the life: “I don’t feel like I need someone else to pressure.” have kids, like it’s not like I’m interviewing One participant, Leah, a queer 38-year-old people for their role of dad or donor.” At the rabbi who felt her dating life was stymied by time of the interview, Jessica was considering the rigors of rabbinical school, was choosing having a second child. She did not mention between egg freezing and single parenthood. this on dates, because she was not “interview- Leah decided to pursue egg freezing so she ing [them] for the role.” Jessica continued to could “throw” herself into dating one more pursue dating and relationships as a single time before pursuing single parenthood. mother, but she did not anticipate rejoining When a relationship that seemed promising these trajectories. did not work out, she decided to fully discon- The decision to move from disentangling nect the project of becoming a parent from the these projects to splitting them entirely is not project of finding a partner: always singular and final. One participant, Francine, a 39-year-old White woman who I wanted to throw myself more into dating, worked at a large technology company and and there was a relationship that I was hop- had not dated in recent years, froze her eggs ing would work out, that ended up not and then decided to pursue single parenthood. working out. And I think as soon as, like After one failed pregnancy attempt, she that was part of it for me, like fuck, sorry moved from New York City to a more family- I’m cursing, like fuck dating . . . like I can’t friendly city and changed jobs for better wait. I just felt like I needed to separate— there came a point after this relationship that maternity leave. After moving, she contem- I was hoping would work out and didn’t, plated doing another round of egg freezing and I was just like, you know what, I need and then decided to try dating in her new city. to separate these projects. She had taken steps toward single parent- hood, but she still believed she could meet a Leah initially chose to freeze her eggs partner any day and they might have a family instead of moving straight to single parent- together. She actively struggled between tem- hood. But she decided to become a single porarily disentangling and fully splitting these parent after becoming frustrated with “wait- projects: ing” for a partner, thereby moving from dis- You know, there is one, like, work stream, entangling these projects to fully splitting for a lack of a better word, like there is one them. She got pregnant through an IUI with path where I am moving forward with my sperm from a known donor, and, at the time plans to have a family. There’s another path of the second interview, she was dating while where I am moving forward with dating, in the early stages of her pregnancy. The which could affect the plans to have a fam- problem of how to manage the relationship ily, but I’m not relying on one to make the between finding a co-parent and finding a other one happen. partner emerged in a new form. She said she would like to find a partner who could join Over the course of four interviews, Francine the family she created, and she struggled with oscillated between each “work stream,” how to manage this on dates. switching from holding out hope that egg Some participants anticipated keeping freezing would allow her to meet a partner, to their romantic and reproductive trajectories excitedly talking about the possibility of fully separate. Jessica, a White 41-year-old becoming a parent, to a renewed hope that she Brown and Patrick 17 still might meet a romantic partner before disentangling of partnership and parenthood becoming a parent. Ultimately, the journey was a precursor to fully decoupling these tra- between disentangling and splitting the par- jectories through single parenthood. This enthood and partnership projects was circu- splitting of the partnership and parenthood itous and emotionally fraught for many trajectories held the promise of changing the participants. experience of their search for a romantic Freezing eggs and becoming a single par- partner. ent are often two parts of a developmental Our participants constructed four ways of process and work in tandem with one another. navigating the relationship between pursuing Some participants already had single parent- partnership and pursuing childbearing (Figure hood in mind when they first considered egg 1). These paths do not capture every partici- freezing; for others, egg freezing led to a con- pant’s experience, nor do they capture the sideration of single parenthood. Whether or experiences of all women, some of whom, for not egg freezing helps participants “relax” on example, may actively choose to not have dates, bracketing their interest in both parent- children (McQuillan et al. 2012) or may hood and finding the “right” partner plays an engage in other forms of resistance to pre- important role in their movement through scribed family trajectories (Lahad forthcom- these different paths. For some participants, ing). However, they are useful ideal types single parenthood was the flipside to settling: emergent in participants’ accounts. they would rather have a child alone than with In the more traditional path (A), individu- an unsatisfactory partner. The disentangling of als pursue marriage and childbearing as parts partnership and parenthood can crack open the of a single trajectory, “organically” meeting a window to fully splitting these projects. partner when relatively young and then unhurriedly having a child a few years later. Discussion In the delayed path (B), individuals move from taking their own marriage and child- Theorizing the Relationship between bearing futures for granted to becoming Partnership and Childbearing hyper-focused on these trajectories. This shift Trajectories (in Figure 1, Period 1 to Period 2) is often due Our participants, mostly single, childless to hitting a meaningful age threshold (e.g., women over age 30, sensed that a rapidly mov- age 30 or 35), seeing friends progress toward ing reproductive timeline was encroaching on marriage and childbearing, or being warned their dating lives, creating a tight connection by older women in their lives about a ticking between their pursuits of finding a partner and reproductive clock. Individuals on trajectory having children. They experienced a rushed B often struggle with the prospect of looking temporality of dating and romance and felt for a romantic partner and co-parent simulta- pressure to “settle” with an undesirable part- neously, and they think that doing so harms ner, violating cultural ideals around the appro- the prospects for both. priate temporality of dating and romance. They Alternatively, women may try to use egg worried they were looking for partnership as a freezing to extend their reproductive timeline means to having children, rather than seeking and to disentangle these two trajectories (C): romantic partnership for its own sake. on one trajectory they pursue a prospective Women sought to temporarily disentangle partner, guided by romanticized notions of these projects via egg freezing. They hoped to finding “the right person,” and in a separate, bracket long-term childbearing goals, change later trajectory they pursue childbearing with the experience of their partnership trajectory, this partner. The endpoint is the same as the and signal to prospective partners that they traditional path: bundled marriage and child- were not “in a rush” to find a long-term part- bearing. Finally, women may split these tra- ner and have children. In some cases, this jectories fully (D) by becoming single parents 18 American Sociological Review 00(0)

Figure 1. Partnership and Parenthood Projects by choice, liberating the romantic project to disadvantaged participants and the small extend past women’s imagined end of natural number of participants of color limits our fecundity. ability to analyze precisely how structural position shaped participants’ interest in egg freezing and their experiences of time. Limitations Future work should investigate how tempo- While interviews generate rich first person rality in the life course operates for individuals accounts, they cannot directly access individu- with different demographic characteristics. als’ experiences of time, particularly compared For example, studies of advanced maternal to observational methods like ethnography. age tend to focus on White women, but age of Moreover, relative to surveys, in-depth inter- first birth is increasing for people of all ethnic views require a smaller sample of participants groups (Livingston 2018). Future work can and limit the residential areas of participants to also fruitfully apply and extend our frame- a few locations. Additionally, because all inter- work to study how women of other races and views were conducted over the course of about classes manage their experiences of time and 16 months, this study is limited in its ability to the connections among different life-course speak to how participants’ plans for the future trajectories. might change over a longer time period. Finally, while we capture our participants’ In addition, because of the study’s focus perspectives about how men’s experiences of on one expensive technology (i.e., egg freez- time differ from their own, we did not capture ing), most of the sample was highly educated, men’s experiences of partnership and parent- White, and middle- or upper-class, and all hood trajectories, and it is possible that men participants were women. Our participants’ experience more pressing time horizons than race and class likely shaped their decisions to women perceive. We hope future research freeze eggs, but the absence of structurally will pick up these questions. Brown and Patrick 19

Contributions to Sociology of the Life promising to pause one’s ticking biological Course clock thus interacts with cultural anxieties among childless, structurally advantaged In this study, we move beyond looking at the women, prompting imaginative reconstruc- timing and order of events (Elder 1998) to tions of the relationship between partnership examining the subjective experience of time and parenthood. and its consequences for moving through the Analyzing individuals’ subjective experi- life course and for innovating when cultur- ences and manipulations of life-course trajec- ally-mandated progressions seem unlikely or tories allows us to go beyond surface-level impossible. Attending to (1) individuals’ sub- differences in sequencing and timing between jective experiences of time, and in particular different groups. Instead, we can compare dif- their anticipations of the future, and (2) indi- ferent groups’ management of time in the life viduals’ management and manipulation of course and find patterns in their innovations. time, including their reconceptualization of For example, Edin and Kefalas (2005) the relationship between different trajectories, describe how and why structurally disadvan- offers useful analytic tools for sociologists taged women become single parents: these and demographers beyond the case of egg women value marriage highly, but they are freezing and union and family formation. unwilling to settle for substandard marriage Analyzing these temporal aspects of the life partners, and they see childbearing as a neces- course can enhance research on a variety of sity and as a trajectory they can control. They trajectories, such as career trajectories, educa- think that having children should not depend tional trajectories, financial timelines, and on their ability to find a suitable marriage movement toward life stages such as adulthood partner, so they modify the relationship and retirement. Future research on the life between having a partner and having children course should investigate the use of other such by becoming single parents. tools and technologies to reshape progression Like our participants, the poor women in through the life course and should take seri- Edin and Kefalas’s study idealize an extended ously actors’ subjective experiences of time. courtship before marriage and describe the Existing work on the life course emphasizes perils of “rushing” into relationships. Of the importance of considering how culture course, there are important differences shapes life-course transitions and trajectories between these two groups of women, but dif- (e.g., Johnson-Hanks et al. 2011). Our work ferent outcomes can obscure what turns out to illustrates the importance of considering cul- be a similar process: both groups manage the turally-idealized temporalities in analyses of uncertainty of finding a marriage partner by how culture shapes movement through the life isolating the romantic trajectory from the course. Future analyses of actors remaking reproductive trajectory, protecting one trajec- life-course trajectories should take into account tory from the limits and distortions of the what kinds of connections and disconnections other. Incorporating temporality into our between particular trajectories are culturally understanding of the life course allows us to thinkable and desirable, and how cultural shifts compare structurally advantaged and disad- and emerging technologies necessitate or make vantaged women’s union and family forma- available new modes of reshaping one’s move- tion patterns in a way that goes beyond the ment through the life course. obvious or stereotyped preconceptions. In our case, amid increasingly delayed Finally, in this study we connect interest in marriage and childbearing, the cultural desir- a new reproductive technology and medical ability of bundled marriage and childbearing advancements more broadly to questions begins to conflict with idealized representa- about the progression of the life course. Just tions of pursuing a romantic partner as women as scholars of reproduction and demographers approach the perceived end of their reproduc- have documented the import of effective con- tive timelines. The emergence of a technology traception in changing the reproductive life 20 American Sociological Review 00(0) course and broader life-course transitions deployed in service of “time-work” (Flaherty (Bailey 2006; Goldin and Katz 2002), we 2003), at the level of short-term anticipations illustrate how the advent of reproductive and long-term trajectories. technologies like egg freezing might alter Our analyses of women using frozen eggs life-course formulations. as a signaling mechanism in their interactions Access to effective contraception and safe with men contribute to a growing body of abortions have helped women push marriage work analyzing the connections between and childbearing into the future (England et one’s position in the social structure and one’s al. 2013; Myers 2017), allowing trajectories subjective experience of time (e.g., Auyero like courtship and careers to progress with 2012; Bourdieu 2000; Lahad 2012; O’Rand slower, steadier tempos and enabling women and Ellis 1974; Schwartz 1974). Illustrating to disentangle romance and sexual intercourse gender inequities in temporality, our hetero- from marriage and childbearing. In the same sexual participants used egg freezing to signal way, our participants use egg freezing to push to prospective partners that they were not “in partnership and childbearing into the future a rush” to have children and to manipulate and disentangle their partnership and parent- their experiences of time to avoid giving hood trajectories. We hope the present work unintentional signals of rushing toward mar- encourages scholars of the life course to take riage and motherhood. They thus took on the seriously the injunctions that reproductive work of managing and disavowing gendered and other medical technologies can make in representations of themselves as desperate, individuals’ anticipations and experiences of hurried, and focused exclusively on mother- the progression of the life course. hood, even as they left these representations of other women in their 30s and 40s intact. Moreover, many participants not only used Contributions to Sociology of Time egg freezing to cope with gender inequities in In this article, we used an analytically rich short-term dating interactions, but to manage a case to extend existing theoretical work on more general sense of being on unequal footing time and anticipation. Sociologists of time with men with regard to life-course time. Par- and anticipation have called for linking the ticipants lamented that, as they understood it, concept of agency with individual agents’ men are not subject to the same kind of “bio- subjective experiences of time (Hitlin and logical clock.” By using egg freezing to make Elder 2007; Mische 2014). Egg freezing themselves more desirable to men, they used an appealed to our participants, in part, because individual fix for structural inequities, simulta- it enabled them to exert control over their neously submitting themselves to gendered ste- experiences of time and reclaim a sense of reotypes of aging women. Power structures and agency over their partnership and parenthood inequalities thus shape not only individuals’ trajectories. They primarily chose to freeze subjective experience of time, but also their their eggs because they were seeking cultur- attempts to manipulate that experience and to ally idealized temporalities of romance and outwardly portray a particular experience of reproduction, suggesting that attempts to link time. Future research should continue examin- temporality and agency should take account ing attempts to manage and manipulate struc- of cultural constructions of desirable tempo- turally-imposed temporalities. ral experiences and desirable relationships among different life-course trajectories. Acknowledgments Moreover, future research on individuals’ management and manipulations of time We would like to thank Claudia Bona-Cohen, Kyleen Breslin, Sarah Cowan, Paula England, Kathleen Gerson, should consider individuals’ use of technolo- Sarah Hayford, Ruth Horowitz, Colin Jerolmack, Danya gies and tools to shape their experiences of Lagos, Sonia Prelat, Christie Sennott, Iddo Tavory, Law- time. In this case, a new technology is rence Wu, and the participants of the NYLON workshop. Brown and Patrick 21

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