Strollerderby
NYT Asks: Are There Too Many Ways to Conceive?
Lisa Belkin over at the NYT’s Motherlode blog wonders if the pursuit-of-parenthood market may be oversaturated. 
Citing the recent examples of the Sarah Jessica Parker/Matthew Broderick surrogate twins and the woman attempting to become a surrogate grandmother by using her dead son’s sperm, Belkin asks if science — with its IVF, egg donations, fertility drugs and other advances — has perhaps given us too many options. She quotes The Washington Post’s Liza Mundy, who recently wrote a book about assisted reproduction: “When there is always something else to try … there is no
permission to stop. That
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7 Comments
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI do wish folks would stop saying “adoption is so expensive” because it need not be. It very much depends on what kind of adoption you’re talking about. Ours cost us very little out of pocket, as the federal tax credit for adoption covered about 95%. (And ours were healthy, newborn adoptions, not older kids from foster care–another stereotype about adoption and costs.) You may not want to adopt and you may have great reasons. That’s fine. Not everyone SHOULD adopt. But don’t pretend that out of pocket fertility treatments are cheaper. We couldn’t have covered one single IVF attempt with what we paid to adopt two children.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amIs it suddenly become smug to want biological children? Did I miss something? When did wanting to get pregnant and have a baby become a statement on the awesomeness of one
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amWe had insurance, it paid for almost everything. We would have loved to go straight to the adoption route, but that would have cost us a ton, and I do fear the birth mother would change her mind, and in our state, she has six months to do so.
Yes, the costs of raising a child is something we considered along with everything else, but think of this….You do not need to buy thousands of dollars worth of clothing at one time. Same with diapers or formula….(if you don’t or can’t breastfeed), college funds can be opened and money can be deposited slowly.
Most people who do go through ivf, iui etc usually have tried to have a bio child via sex, so I’m sure the financial aspect of raising said child has crossed their minds. I don’t know many people who don’t think about it…except maybe the octomom.
leahsmom commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI’ve always been curious about the financial issue with assisted reproduction – as someone who never ventured into this area myself, being a firm believer in adoption and not feeling any need to pass on my genes. When people are trying to figure out how much money they can afford to pay for treatments, does the cost of raising the child enter into that calculation? Or is it more about available resources at the time? I know that adoption isn’t cheap, either – but the most expensive part, for me, is actually raising the child you have, and providing them with healthcare, education, shelter, food and water, and even entertainment. It’s always more than I think it’s going to be. Are there resources out there for folks thinking about this?
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI agree. For me, the non-financial suffering involved with treatments was a trivial consideration next to the financial considerations. I suppose that if I was tremendously wealthy, maybe it would be hard to know when to stop it with the drugs and needles and everything else, but as it is, the money was the only real consideration. Some couples hit their emotional wall and say “enough’s enough” earlier in the process, obviously, but for them, the plethora of choices shouldn’t be a problem either. I’m really glad that there are an increasing number of options for infertile people.
Anonymous commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI really struggle with this. When we first started fertility treatments we decided that we would do x,y,and z, but stop after that.
What you don’t know when you begin is how incremental the changes are. You start at one place and when that doesn’t work there’s one more thing to try. But it’s not a big step, just a tiny step. And another tiny step and another tiny step until you look back and you can’t even see where you began. With every little change you think, “what if this is the thing that will work? it’s such a tiny thing… there’s really no difference between this thing and the last.”
Sometimes I wish someone would just say “you are infertile. it will never happen for you.” Then we could just stop.
katlady500 commented on Jan 01 70 at 12:00 amI once read a heart wrenching piece about deciding to quit trying to have children. And for the few people that have enough money to keep on trying beyond the point where they have any semblance of mental peace, there may be too many options. But I generally believe that more options are better than fewer.
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