Family, Self

Would You Freeze Your Eggs For Your Career? These Brands Think So

(News item: Apple and Facebook's health plans provide coverage for a woman to freeze her eggs for use later in life.)

The news that Apple and Facebook are "paying" their employees to freeze their eggs seems to suggest that these companies are rewarding the delay of children. As is often the case, the details are much less inflammatory. These companies have extended their health plans to include these procedures, and these procedures are in demand by their employees. Yes, it serves the company, but it also meets the needs of their employees. It is the sign of a smart company that responds to how their employees choose to manage their lives, especially after the recent contraception debate.

It makes sense that these are tech companies: tech savvy Millennials have definite ideas about how they want to live!

The Millennial generation values options. The young working woman's rallying cry for women's rights has switched from, "You can have it all," to "You can have it your way." More concerned with making it work than following the rules, she questions the assumptions in every avenue. "How many dates before you sleep with him?" is less of a realistic question when you aren't even that clear what a date is anymore! And when a couple looks at, "How do we want our life to work? And what do we each like to do?" it turns a couple's choice of who stays home with children into a discussion of desire, finance and goals rather than an automatic response.

Making life work on their terms is one of the highest values today. In relationships, they're making their own rules. In the workplace, attachment to job titles, loyalty to rules, top down management are not the way this group operates. For those raised in the digital age, information is available instantly. And with increased data comes increased questioning of the status quo.

When a higher value is placed on what works for them over what works on their resume, interesting things happen. Time off to travel can be as important as a corner office. Work that excites gets placed ahead of job stability. Delaying marriage and/or kids because work is compelling now, choosing kids without marriage, marriage without kids...you get the picture. The traditional stability previous generations sought has ceased to be a goal of a generation who saw it let down their parents. Flexibility has become this generation's stability.