"What I find most disturbing is the implicit assumption in this article that women should have children."

"Even though the article is against egg freezing as a general practice, it makes no mention of the societal demand that women have children in the first place. Maybe if these women who decide to have children at 45 felt comfortable with their own desire to NOT have children, the practice would slowly become less popular."

A popular comment at a NYT op-ed titled "Don’t Depend on Those Frozen Eggs."

The "practice" that the commenter would like to see "slowly become less popular" is egg freezing, not — as one could easily misread — having children.

But the misreading is interesting, because the truth slips out. People tend to do what they want to do, and I think that egg-freezing, though promoted as a way to prolong life's window of fertility, is secretly a way to fulfill the desire not to have children at all, as the woman buys ease in the passage of time.

The longer she goes without finding a place in her life for a child, the clearer the picture becomes. She really doesn't want that child. And with that clarity, she finally sees her true and free choice, and she has been spared the old-fashioned anguish of the years of hearing the "ticking biological clock" that had, in the past, pressured women into having a baby as a bulwark against the regret that crystallizes after age wreaks infertility.