ASR新文| 冻卵，如何让女性不再为生孩子而找伴侣：生命历程的时间预期研究

荐读：Brown,Eliza, and Mary Patrick. 2018. ‘Time, Anticipation, and the Life Course: EggFreezing as Temporarily Disentangling Romance and Reproduction’. American Sociological Review 83 (5):959–82.

冻卵（egg freezing），对女性的恋爱关系，意味着什么？对女性的人生规划意味着什么？冻卵，也意味着提前“冻住”某块时间预期，“冻住”某一人生未来阶段，对life course，对time研究，意味着什么？

来自纽约大学的两位学者ElizaBrown and Mary Patrick通过对52位女性（已冻、在考虑冻、不考虑冻，共三组）的访谈，检验了女性如何通过冻卵as atool to renegotiate the relationship between romanticand reproductive trajectories and temporalities

一、研究背景与案例介绍

当前，美国女性的平均结婚年龄是27岁，30/40岁时生孩子的女性比例也在逐步上升。从人口学特征上讲，受更好教育女性，生孩子会更晚。由此，对于有生育意愿的女性来说，冻卵便被提到日程。

尽管美国尚未有完整的统计数据，但现有研究表明，大多参与冻卵女性，都是白人、受过高等教育、收入高、30多岁。毕竟，冻卵也是具有一定风险，并且要求相当的经济成本（比如Eggfreezing is rarely covered by insurance. Women generally pay upward of $10,000for each cycle, in addition to annual storage fees of around $1,000 and, ifused, the cost of IVF）。

通过对于52名女性（其中有28位是白人）访谈。其中，已冻卵的女性中，25人是单身，从未结婚，2人是单身和离婚，3人是恋爱关系尚未结婚。在考虑冻卵的女性中，10人是单身，从未结过婚，3人是单身和离婚，2人是恋爱关系，4人是结婚了。

二、为什么sociology of life course，不易解释冻卵的案例

首先，在生命历程研究中，大多对于人生轨迹的考虑，都只是从“日历时间”等制度化时间入手，但对于subjective experience of time难以把握。就像冻卵，是非常个人化的决策与时间规划，无法按线性时间加以考虑。

其次，在生命历程研究中，对于时间规划往往会有固定的education,work, retirement等角度加以理解aging process，人的agency不容易纳入其中，这尤其反映在不易反映出人如何“操纵”时间（如“冻”的意思）。但现在的婚姻/工作/生活，往往不再那么固定，比如婚前同居，已经充满了各种非典型的人生顺序。轨迹不再只有一种。就像在冻卵中，不必先找到伴侣再考虑生育。

最后，生命历程研究往往是以结果为导向划分与分析时间的运用，而非面向未来、从规划与预期的角度，理解未来的不确定性与操纵。显然，生命历程中常说的“轨迹”和此案例将会分析的“计划” 是两套逻辑。正如一旦将生育与感情，通过冻卵的方式分隔开来，那么就相当于将生育与“浪漫爱”分开。The culturally dominant justification for marriage is romantic love, not childbearing or other outcomes, a condition that may make disentangling marriage and childbearing trajectories more appealing. Workand family scholarship goes beyond observing levels of connectivity among different trajectories and devotes considerable attention to how individualsactively work to renegotiate the relationship between their family and careertrajectories

三、经验观察

1. 职业压力导致要延迟生育才冻卵吗？

尽管冻卵通过被描述为提升职业女性的工作要求而采取的一种措施，但在访谈中发现，这一答案并不常见。大多访谈对象还是认为，采取或考虑这一行为，是为了追求使伴侣关系变得纯粹地浪漫化，以及考虑到未来可能不确定的不孕症。Most ofour participants framed romantic concerns as the primary driver for freezing their eggs or looking into egg freezing.事实上，访谈对象会感觉到自己的怀孕能力会随年龄而下降。

2. 不再为了生孩子而找对象？

生育时间决定找对象的进度（the tight connection between her search for a partner and her pursuit of havingchildren）？参与冻卵的女性可不这么想。他们知道，在一般情况下，这二者是绑定在一起的，所以他们在“时间拆解”。

虽然甚少像中国这样在20多岁就会催着找对象，但是这些美国女性也会在35岁的时候感受到生育压力，因为这个”数字”是生孕机率下降、生孕风险提升的诸种标志之一。

一位女性这样说：

Because everyoneknows 35 is the magic number, all of a suddenyou’re high risk, all of a sudden I thought all my eggs are going to just like,I don’t know, disintegrate, and I am now not going to have a kid. I don’t know,I was just freaking out. So I went—so at 35, that was when I first went and hada consultation with the fertility doctor.

于是，冻卵是避免为了生孩子而找对象的压力，解开两种事情之间的关联性（Hadiya talked about protecting her romantic life from the temporal constraints of herreproductive timeline … This was a prominent pattern among our participants:they hoped that egg freezing would loosen the tight connection between their reproductive timeline and their path to finding a long-term romantic partner.）。一位叫Hadiya的女性这样说：

Without the egg freezing, maybe I would date a guy or end up with a guy I shouldn’t be, just because maybe he wanted a child and that’s what we want,but in reality I really . . . I just don’t want to have a child with anyone. Iactually would like to be . . . I want to be with the person that I want to be with and out of that have a child, and I think egg freezing will allow me to do that instead of doing it the other way.

确实，当你急于想把寻找伴侣和生孩子的事情绑在一起的事情，错误的决定往往就会降临：

Just the factthat, you know, you didn’t have to date people thinking, Oh God, I have like ayear. Are you right for me? Are you right? It makes you sort of anxious to tryto find a partner because you feel like you have to do it fast, which can leadto you making wrong decisions because you have this goal of a baby as opposed to this goal of apartnership, which I think could be dangerous.

3. 冻卵让女性的爱情生活更自由与解放？

一旦当生孩子与找伴侣这两件事，在35岁的门槛上被拆解开来，那么女性在爱情生活关系中，也将得到更多的自主权。

一位在制药业工作过的34岁女性抱怨说：“there’sno clock for men.” 另一位42岁的黑人女性的做法更为直接（froze eggs and embryos created with donor sperm），因此，在约会的时候，她便可以这样对男士说：

I told one guythat I was dating, ’cause he was like, You’re 42, you’ll want a family rightaway, and I was like, No, I said, I’m not in a rush. I froze eggs, I frozee mbryos. I said, I have options. So I want to enjoy the process of arelationship, I don’t want to rush it. Which you know, obviously now is fine. But if—a few years ago it might have beendifferent.

4. 不止是拆解两个轨迹，甚至单亲生育，不再要男士

在受访的一位女性，Olivia，起初冻卵是为了拆解生孩子和找伴侣两件事，但是她逐渐觉得还是找伴侣不易，但又还想要孩子，于是考虑做单亲生育。

It has become clear to me that finding that great male partner that I was hoping was out there, might not be out there. And so coming to terms with that reality has invited me to look at other possibilities in a way that I wasn’t willing towhen I was still dead set on that

四、理论模型

第一，作者提出，冻卵通过“时间性拆解”（temporarily disentangle.）关于生育轨迹与伴侣轨迹的四种模式。

第二，对社会学理论的贡献

首先，生命历程研究，要关注主观经验，而非总是以event为中心。

Inthis study, we move beyond looking at the timing and order of events (Elder1998) to examining the subjective experience of time and its consequences formoving through the life course and for innovating when culturally-mandatedprogressions seem unlikely or impossible. Attending to (1) individuals’subjective experiences of time, and in particular their anticipations of thefuture, and (2) individuals’ management and manipulation of time, including their reconceptualization of the relationship between different trajectories,offers useful analytic tools for sociologists and demographers beyond the caseof egg freezing and union and family formation

其次，对于时间社会学来说，要把预期（anticipation）概念更加个人时间化考虑。

Sociologists of time and anticipation have called for linking the concept of agency withind ividual agents’ subjective experiences of time

最后，理解对于（生育）预期的管理，作为一种“信号机制”。

Ouranalyses of women using frozen eggs as a signaling mechanism in their interactions with men contribute to a growing body ofwork analyzing the connections between one’s position in the social structureand one’s subjective experience of time

（Sociological理论大缸第231期）

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