Stork Theory: Grade A: The Market for a Yale Woman's Eggs

This article was, quite simply, very strange. Very strange.

The whole manner and process in which David and Michelle, even the original author, discussed "eggs" left me feeling very uncomfortable. For the purposes of full disclosure, I was a bit thrown off—okay, very thrown off—by the very mechanical and businesslike style in which they handled their potential child.

This is supposed to be the spontaneous and beautiful miracle of life! Full of surprises and unimagined complexity. How could they even hope for perfection?

I remember how pregnancy and such things seemed to me as a child. When I was in the 4th grade (ish?) I picked up a Newsweek magazine, and, wanting to feel smart and mature for my age, flipped to a random article and forced myself to read the whole thing.

This article was on infertility and its effects on couples. Yippee!

The article never directly mentioned sex or how the whole pregnancy thing worked, but, from this, I was able to make the following conclusions:

·      Most women eventually end up pregnant.

·      If you want a child, you must be married and just wish really hard until it finally happens.

·      Even when married though, some women face the possibility of not becoming pregnant.

·       The older you get, the fewer chances you have of becoming pregnant.

·       Women have eggs. (Whatever that means.)

·       The stork theory is pure rubbish.

But from Grade A, it seems as though the whole "perfect child" theory is also rubbish, an insincere and pretentious attempt at confirming the supposition of an ideal reality, manifested in the impossible expectations and hopes for an inconceivable (pun intended) child.

In fact, the whole vagueness of the piece reflects how alien the whole process seemed to me, and no doubt overwhelming to the author as well. David's refusal to reveal anything about himself and his situation left me feeling very confused and with a bad impression of this "disturbing" man (I'm sorry, but he sounds like an asshole). It also left me thinking: what are the motives for David and Michelle? The very businesslike and ambiguous manner made it seem as though they weren't doing this because they had no other method of conception—to actually have a child—but instead to create an inhumane set of selective genes. A sort of trophy, one on an endless list of accomplishments to parade around town for others to envy.