Turning Point USA

I started to cry when I read Mindy Kaling’s latest interview with Marie Claire — not in a good way.

If you’re a Mindy fan, or even just a passive follower of hers on social media, you may know that she’s a single mom of two — by choice. In 2017 she gave birth to a daughter, Katherine, and in 2020 she had a son, Spencer. She has always been very secretive about HOW she got pregnant though. Could it have been the traditional way with a close friend? Did she use a sperm donor? She didn’t adopt, because she has talked about her experience being pregnant.

However, in her latest interview she revealed that she chose to have her children later in life, on “her terms” when she “had the means” to do it. She went on to say, “I wish every 19-year-old girl would come home from college and that the gift—instead of buying them jewelry or a vacation or whatever—is that their parents would take them to freeze their eggs…They could do that once and have all these eggs for them, for their futures…to focus in your twenties and thirties on your career, and yes, love, but to know that when you’re emotionally ready, and, if you don’t have a partner, you can still have children.” 

I had a couple thoughts on her statement: 1 — It sounds to me like she froze her eggs and either had intercourse with a close friend, OR she used a sperm donor with her frozen eggs. 2 — I was horrified by this “advice” she is doling out.

My own personal relationship with “Big Fertility” has been a rollercoaster over the last 5 or so years. In my mid-20s, I remember telling friends that freezing my eggs sounded like a no-brainer if I still wasn’t anywhere close to getting married by 30. I had zero moral qualms with the idea. It didn’t even occur to me that there could be one.

I’ve dreamed about being a mother for as long as I can remember. I have read more parenting books than some of my friends who ARE parents. Then, during the pandemic, I started to question the morality of some of the methods that Big Fertility promotes to get pregnant — as someone who considers themselves to be “pro-life no matter what.”

I started by taking a closer look at IVF. For those who may be unfamiliar, IVF takes a mature egg and fertilizes it with a sperm in a lab, creating an embryo. Some parents (like my best friend and her husband) vow to use all of their embryos, and in that case I suppose I don’t see a “pro-life red flag.” Other parents make decisions to destroy certain embryos. Sometimes this is because they have too many, they want certain genders, or are trying to avoid birth defects. In those scenarios, I asked myself, is IVF really any different than an early abortion? I realized, it wasn’t.

More recently, surrogacy, sperm and egg donations have made their way onto my radar. Pop-culture (and now, Mindy Kaling) tells us that we should put OURSELVES first. “I think in my twenties I was only focused on, Okay, I don’t want to get fired. I want to be successful, and I was only thinking about myself,” Kaling said during her interview.

We’re encouraged to have children whenever we want, and to utilize advancements in fertility science to do so. We’re sold on this idea that “all children need is a loving home. It doesn’t matter if it’s one mom, one dad, two moms, or two dads.” If you’ve been on TikTok lately, it’s possible you’ve even seen the 3 or 4 moms trend recently. It’s been drilled into us that it’s OUR RIGHT as adults to have a child if and when we want to. But is it?

It was hard for me to come to terms with this. As someone who’s career has been put first my entire 20’s (by circumstance, not by choice. I would have loved to have been married by now!) I am starting to feel more and more pressure, sadness, and anxiety about having that family I dream of. I know that if I wanted to freeze my eggs and possibly get a sperm donor to take some of the pressure off, I could do it. But what if it isn’t my RIGHT to have a child, even though I desire to?

What if the rights that should be put first, the rights that should be prioritized, are that of the child? Shouldn’t a child’s right to know who both of their biological parents are, and ideally, have a relationship with both of those people be the priority? Does the child not have the right to be raised in a healthy, happy, nuclear family? I think the child does.

This is why I believe what Mindy Kaling, and so many others who advocate for the “Pursue career first! Freeze your eggs! Marriage doesn’t matter!” lifestyle is cruel and toxic. Their ideology threatens the very fabric of what so many societies have thrived on in cultures throughout human history.

If I had a magic wand, I would have been married by 23. I would have started having kids by 25, done by 30. I have the dream career, and I’m financially well-off. I have all the material things I could ever want. I can stay out late or sleep in, I could read books all day and no one will bother me. But what does this bring me, really?

My deepest fear, is that if I cannot have the family I so deeply desire within the next few years, I never will. I’m terrified to be on my deathbed, alone, because who would be there for me? As wonderful as they are, my social media followers won’t be holding my hand, or footing the bill for health care in my old age. As horrible and scary as that thought is, I still cannot fathom purchasing my children, like they are just another commodity. I couldn’t deprive my children of their biological and emotional need to grow up with a mother and a father.

The fear of loneliness is real, for so many women, but it cannot justify a moral wrong. That is why I think Mindy Kaling, was another product of society’s lie, that children are products to be bought when convenient.

That’s why I think Mindy Kaling has it all wrong, even if I desperately, achingly, wish it was right.