So what happens if the employee turns up pregnant? Does she need to give the money back?
It is like paying for a round of IVF. If it works, you get pregnant. If it doesn’t work, you don’t get pregnant. But you have to pay for the treatment either way.
If she freezes her eggs and then gets pregnant naturally, she and the company are still out whatever they paid for the procedure. And few women will take them up on it - but they’ll attract candidates who’d consider taking them up on it.
What is interesting is that around 20% of women are hitting menopause without children, a number that used to be 10%. For the college educated with master’s degrees or higher, it hits 30%. While we see the first generation with contraception their whole reproductive lives (Boomers) having a percentage that didn’t want kids and thus didn’t have them, there is now a constant stream of articles on how you can’t really have it all, how too many women hit 40 and think now they can have a kid but realize they cannot, who think IVF works as well as 40 as 35 but try five rounds before being told to go home.
So Facebook and Apple are offering a service to attract the best and brightest women who are in their late 20s or 30s, afraid to have kids now and hurt their careers but now know from peers that if you don’t do SOMETHING, you’ll likely miss out or have a single baby at 38.
The offer of egg freezing is to attract a specific demographic (female) that is highly educated. All they have to do is have 5 or 10 women use it to be touted widely as feminist and family friendly, while attracting hundreds of women in tech highly committed to their careers.
Great publicity, strong attractor to a “diverse” and productive demographic, and you don’t have to pay anything extra if she has a kid naturally or decides not to have kids at all.