Narratives of relationality and time in fertility preservation vlogs

ABSTRACT Fertility preservation incorporates relational and temporal dynamics that have both experimental and conservative dimensions in people’s thinking about their reproductive futures, parenthood, and family building. In this article, we discuss video blog (vlog) narratives of people who have publicly documented their experience of preserving their gametes (eggs or sperm). The aim of the study is to examine how people, who are experiencing the prospect of fertility decline or disruption, frame their decision-making about gamete preservation and what this means for their future family building. As such, we organise the data around three demographic groups according to health, career and relationship status, and gender transition. To analyse the vlogs we use composite narratives, a method whereby researchers synthesise data to construct stories based on people’s lived experiences, without attributing events or details to particular people. Using this method, we draw on two conceptual tools from the sociology of personal life; relationality and temporal scripts, to highlight how vloggers discuss fertility preservation in relation to time and their experiences to real and imagined others, in making decisions about their reproductive futures.


Introduction
As a relatively new advancement in reproductive medicine, fertility preservation was first developed for oncology patients receiving cancer treatment (Marilyn Crawshaw 2013; Marcia C. Inhorn, Daphna Birenbaum-Carmelli, Pasquale Patrizio 2017).With the improvement of vitrification procedures, these cryopreservation techniques were then extended for non-medical use to cisgender 1 (cis) women concerned about age-related fertility decline and are now increasingly used by transgender and non-binary (trans) people before commencing medical transition.Gamete cryopreservation 2 is designed to proactively treat infertility (Lucy van de Wiel 2020), and is represented in the media, the internet, and by the medical profession as a technological breakthrough, particularly for cis women seeking to delay childbearing.Rather than leaving their reproductive futures CONTACT Rhonda M. Shaw rhonda.shaw@vuw.ac.nzSociology, Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand This article has been corrected with minor changes.These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
to chance, these cryopreservation techniques enable individuals to manage the risks associated with their diminishing fertility and, in the case of ovarian egg freezing, "anticipated gamete exhaustion" (Dominic Stoop et al 2014).
Fertility preservation incorporates relational and temporal dynamics that have both experimental and conservative dimensions in people's thinking about their reproductive futures, parenthood, and family building.As a future-oriented strategy, fertility preservation is experimental in that it challenges and re-calibrates temporal assumptions about how to, when, and who can, constitute and create a family; thereby challenging "the somatic temporality of the body (growing old/becoming infertile) with institutional temporalities (how society structures procreation in [people's] lives), normative temporalities (hoping to become a parent when a [person] is viewed as too young or too old to procreate) and affective temporalities (hoping to become a parent or fearing it is too late)" (Charlotte Kroløkke 2019, 530).
Like assisted reproductive technologies generally, decision-making around fertility preservation occurs against the conservative backdrop of pro-birth (i.e., pronatalist) policies and practices and other hegemonic cultural discourses that encourage reproduction and exalt parenthood based on biogenetic connections.Where pronatalism is concerned, expectations about parenthood for normative adulthood typically follow a "prescriptive timetable for the ordering of major life events" (Bernice L. Neugarten, Joan W. Moore, John C. Lowe 1965, 711) such as when to marry or partner, when to have children, and so on.This way of structuring the life course is organised by internalised "social clocks" (Neugarten, Moore, and Lowe 1965) that appear to be a natural, inevitable part of a person's identity.Not only do these clocks or "temporal schemae" orient people's lives in chrononormative ways, says Elizabeth Freeman (2010, 4), the norms they follow in relation to adulthood tend to be viewed as cis-, hetero-and "repronormative."As Lee Edelman (2004) and Jack Halberstam (2005) have observed, these social scripts are repronormative because they increasingly assume that wanting and having biological children is the default for everyone, regardless of gender or sexuality.
The capacity to freeze and preserve cellular activity is now heavily financialised (van de Wiel 2020), resulting in the mainstreaming of assisted reproductive technologies and their expansion to broader populations of potential patients in many jurisdictions, 3 such as trans populations.Historically, trans people's reproductive decision-making has been prohibited by medical and legal constructions of trans individuals and fertility (Falck et al. 2020;Lara Karaian 2013).Recent changes occurring in several jurisdictions worldwide, in line with international guidelines, now recommend that healthcare professionals routinely discuss fertility preservation and reproductive options with trans people commencing medical transition (Coleman et al. 2022).Fertility preservation enables people experiencing potential fertility decline or disruption to reorder their life course trajectories, by synchronising what is popularly referred to as their biological (fertility) clock with social clocks that are more in line with biographical time and personal life (Eliza Brown and Mary Patrick 2018;Catherine Waldby 2015).That is to say, the fertility preservation decisions people make do not occur in isolation from social norms and complex networks of real or imagined relationships with others; they not solely freefloating choices, but relational.In this article, we analyse video blog (vlog) accounts of people who have publicly discussed preserving their gametes (eggs or sperm).Vlogs are personal videos posted by an individual or organisation on a social media platform, which share a person's thoughts on a topic or some aspect of their life.They are the product of both the internet and larger media culture since the turn of the twenty-first century, a common characteristic of which has been a trend in communication toward greater selfdisclosure and storytelling about intimate experiences in public.
Our aim in this article is to examine the ways vloggers from diverse backgrounds frame their personal decision-making about gamete preservation in relation to others and to social norms around reproduction and future family building.As such, our analysis draws on the concepts of relationality and temporal scripts from the sociology of personal life (Vanessa May 2019;Carol Smart 2011, 2007) to consider how biography and the management of time are integral to the decisions, actions, and choices of gamete freezers experiencing fertility decline or disruption.Given the ethical challenges facing researchers using social media data extracted from vlogs, we begin our discussion with an account of the research approach we adopted.

Data collection
The data collection and analysis for the study were organised around three demographic groups: health, career and relationship status, and gender transition.The vlogs on gender transition were analysed in a previous study (Alex Ker and Rhonda M. Shaw 2022) and were therefore collected prior to the cis people's vlogs on health and career.We chose YouTube as our data collection site due to its large database and accessibility to publicly available vlogs.Videos were collected through keyword searches on YouTube and snowball sampling through subsequent video recommendations (Margaret Sampson et al. 2013), using a method similar to "goal-oriented browsing" (Davidson et al., 2010cited in Tang et al. 2021, 2) to replicate end users' experiences of searching for specific types of videos.Our searches included various combinations of "fertility preservation," "egg freezing," "sperm freezing," "sperm banking," "IVF," "story," "vlog," "experience," "cancer," "health" and "journey."For trans vlogs, these included "trans," "transgender" and "nonbinary." The first of two searches for cis people's vlogs in October 2020 resulted in 29 videos that met our inclusion criteria, uploaded to YouTube between April 2009 and September 2020.To ensure sufficient data collection and find any videos missed from our first search, we conducted a second search in July 2021 that resulted in ten further videos, uploaded to YouTube between February 2017 and March 2021.Videos were included if they involved self-filmed footage and personal commentary about the fertility preservation process through either a vlog style, or if the video was produced and uploaded by an organisation and the video profiled individuals' experiences.We then added nine videos to the dataset from our study on trans people's vlogs on fertility preservation, uploaded to YouTube between June 2015 and October 2019.Two videos were then excluded from analysis; one video was subsequently made private, and one was a general documentary about egg freezing.
In total, 46 videos from cis and trans vloggers were included in our analysis for the present study.As some vloggers made more than one video, the dataset represents 49 individuals' experiences.The videos in our final dataset were posted by individual vloggers (n=33), news media platforms (n=5), or health clinics (n=8).Most of the narratives we collected were from cis women (n=39); a cis man made one video, four were made by trans/feminine people, and five by trans/masculine people.Although some of the vloggers may be considered "micro-celebrities" (Tobias Raun 2018) due to their number of subscribers, most vloggers did not have a large social media following.
To understand the diverse contexts in which YouTube videos on fertility preservation are produced, we note Florencia García-Rapp (2017) content typology of YouTube videos, which includes content-oriented, market-oriented, relational, and motivational videos.This framework enabled us to consider both commercial and community contexts in which people share their experiences (García-Rapp 2017), and how these contexts may impact the way vloggers construct their narratives.Most vlogs combined information with relational and/or motivational content.Some, that endorsed fertility clinics, were market-oriented and related to the financialisation of fertility preservation (van de Wiel 2020).While the motivational videos were created to empower viewers to make decisions around their fertility, the relational quality of the vlogs aimed to give viewers a sense of connection to the vlogger as a person, not just to a video (García-Rapp 2017).
Most vloggers had accessed fertility preservation services in the United States (n=37) and the United Kingdom (n=7), with a few accessing services in the Philippines (n=1), Thailand (n=1), Australia (n=2), and Aotearoa New Zealand (n=1).Vloggers' nationalities included British, Canadian, American, Chinese, Filipina, and Indian.To the extent that we can gauge, many cis vloggers were from middle-class/upper socioeconomic backgrounds and were therefore more likely to be able to afford fertility preservation services.This impression is based on the types of careers many vloggers had such as doctors, business owners or micro-celebrities, and some vloggers' discussion of their ability to afford egg freezing, which is typically an expensive procedure across the globe.It is also important to note that vloggers' experiences of fertility preservation are affected by the availability of public funding in their respective countries of residence.We provide a sketch of fertility treatment funding in vloggers' respective countries after the following section outlining our research ethics and methodological approach.

Ethical considerations
There is no consensus among social researchers, Institutional Review Boards or Human Ethics Committees regarding research ethics around publicly available data on the internet and social media fora.Some ethics committees treat vlogs as publicly available texts purposively produced for a general audience, and as such, do not require researchers to obtain vloggers' consent to include quotations from their videos in their research (e.g., Liezille Jacobs and Anelisa Kelemi 2020; Ashley N. Patterson 2018).In David Giles (2017) view, for example, research ethics clearance is not required because YouTube copyright agreements enable the public use of videos.
As a point of difference for our study, and a condition of ethics clearance by our university Human Ethics Committee (reference number #28281), we sought consent from the vloggers to use anonymous quotations from their videos.As the videos were not produced for academic analysis and included sensitive personal information, we surmised that some vloggers may not consent to their narratives being used for research purposes.Accordingly, we contacted vloggers who provided contact details on their YouTube channels to explain the study and ask for their permission to use their anonymised quotes.Of the 14 cis vloggers contacted, three replied and two gave their written consent; for the trans vloggers' study, 15 vloggers were contacted, and six gave their written consent.After receiving relatively few responses to emails requesting the cis vloggers' consent for us to use their narratives, we considered alternative ways of presenting the findings that minimised the risk of identifying vloggers, as described below.

Data analysis
The second author watched each video several times, took detailed notes on the video content and demographic details, and transcribed relevant quotations verbatim.An inductive conventional content analysis of the notes was then undertaken to identify patterns, similarities, and differences across data (Hsiu-Fang Hsieh and Shannon 2005).This process involved coding quotations and observations and grouping them into categories.The first and second authors watched selected videos again to check the identified categories against the content re-grouping where necessary.The categories were then organised into ten preliminary themes that presented common areas of discussion, as well as contradictions across vloggers' accounts, discussing and refining these themes until consensus was reached.

Building composite narratives
Considering the low response rate from vloggers to consent, we followed Smart's (2011, 16) lead and took a different approach to "writing and representing sociological knowledge and insight."Accordingly, we were inspired by Willis," (2019) method of creating composite narratives, whereby researchers synthesise data to construct stories based on people's lived experiences, while not attributing events or details to particular people.This technique allows researchers to present detailed accounts while keeping participants" identities confidential (Meridith C. Burles and Jill M. G. Bally 2018;Rebecca Willis 2019).In creating fictionalised accounts, the researcher asks readers to "put their faith in the researcher's judgement" (Willis 2019, 474).Though "fabricating" data may be considered to reduce the credibility of data, Annette Markham (2012, 341) adds that in any case "[A]ll data are narrowed, altered, and abstracted through various filters before they are analysed" as researchers reflect on and develop their own relationship to the data; all qualitative research involves an element of creativity and interpretation.Based on the ways in which composite narratives have been used across disciplines, Olivia Johnston, Helen Wildy, and Jennifer Shand (2021, 2) conclude that this method provides a "credible and concise" way to present research findings.
To create our composite narratives, we first listed each vloggers' demographic details and categorised them into five groups, creating a fictional person/profile and name for each narrative.From here, we added some of the details under each profile, such as the vlogger's reasons for making vlogs, the vlog format, and their reasons for undergoing fertility preservation.While most details are based on the vloggers' actual experiences, some (such as a vlogger's country of residence) have been altered to maintain their anonymity.Unlike Willis (2019), who presents verbatim quotes from her interview data, we chose not to present direct quotes from the videos but instead created our own quotes, through synthesising similar quotes, which aimed to capture the "emotional truth" of participants' experiences, rather than the "narrative truth" (Susie Orbach 2000, cited in Willis 2019, 472).We then mapped the representative quotes and experiences onto each profile.
It is important to explain our reasons for combining the accounts of vloggers whose infertility has been diagnosed as "medically indicated" alongside those for whom the decision to access fertility preservation is regarded as "social."Rather than viewing medical infertility as an objective bias-free clinical diagnosis and social infertility as non-medical and elective, we take the view that social reasons for infertility are an outcome of life chances and circumstance and not simply a matter of personal preference or lifestyle choice (Rhonda M. Shaw 2022).For example, as Kylie Baldwin, Lorraine Culley, Nicky Hudson, Helene Mitchell (2019) found in their qualitative study with cis women egg freezers, both fertility and health issues as well as social reasons may be implicated in the decision to pursue egg cryopreservation.

Composite narratives
We present five composite narratives from Alicia, Mei Ling, Matt, Dawn, and Rose in the following section.Alicia and Dawn both live in the United States, where fertility preservation costs vary widely depending on state legislation (Resolve: The National Infertility Association 2021).Costs are sometimes covered by medical insurance for people with medical conditions; however, fertility preservation costs are rarely covered by insurance for trans people undertaking gamete freezing for transition-related reasons (Moira A. Kyweluk, Joyce Reinecke, and Diane Chen 2019).In Australia, where Rose resides, Medicare (government subsidised healthcare) offers a rebate on some fertility treatments to assist people with significant medical expenses (IVF Australia 2021).Access to public funding for fertility preservation in Aotearoa New Zealand is based on assessment criteria that require a clinical diagnosis of medical infertility (Shaw 2022).This means that fertility preservation for "elective" or "social" reasons must be paid for privately, but (Matt's) oncofertility treatment is covered by government funding.Public healthcare is available for citizens and legal residents in Malaysia, although the waiting list for some treatments, such as in vitro fertilisation, can be up to one year.However, as an emerging fertility hub, Malaysia offers lower cost fertility treatment and greater affordability than other destinations in the Asia-Pacific region and has been increasingly promoted as a destination for reproductive travel (Xiaolian Chen, Ian Calder, and Barry Mak 2020).Mei Ling, who lives in Malaysia, pays for her own treatment.
As the narratives illustrate below, people consider and pursue fertility preservation for diverse reasons at different points in their lives.Most vloggers perceived fertility preservation as a way of reclaiming control or choice of their family building trajectories, thereby shifting chrono-and repronormative expectations of reproduction.This control was compromised, however, for people pursuing fertility preservation for health-and transition-related reasons.At the same time, vloggers discussed uncertainty around the success of fertility preservation.The process also raised questions for vloggers (and others) about normative conceptions of gender, the gendering of bodies, and reproductive capacities.

Alicia (secondary infertility; based on seven narratives)
Alicia is a Black cis woman living in Texas, the United States.She is in her mid-30s and lives with her husband and one child.Her narrative includes themes of reproductive choice, uncertainty, insuring the future, and femininity.Alicia talks about egg freezing in a motivational video made for other women considering this process.She tells viewers; "if you're considering freezing your eggs, do it!It might seem like something only rich people do, but there are always options and I encourage you to look into those options, you won't regret it [. ..]At the end of the day, it's your choice so do whatever makes you, your partner, happy." Alicia views egg freezing as a "back-up plan" in case her fertility declines before she has a chance to have another baby, but she knows she still wants more children.She says, "I don't know what the next ten years of my life are gonna be, but the number and quality of my eggs is definitely going to continue to decline over the next decade."Alicia is currently employed in a high-paying job, so she feels confident about covering the cost of egg freezing.She recognises there are no guarantees to fertility preservation but believes "it is worth trying."Alicia describes her decision as "an insurance policy [. ..].If I had the choice I wouldn't use my frozen eggs, like we'd all want to have kids naturally, but it might not happen, so you've got to be ready." Although Alicia and her husband are in a strong relationship, she likes the freedom she sees egg freezing as giving her; it means that she does not have to rely on timing her pregnancy in relation to her fertility, and it takes some pressure off while she focuses on other things.She describes it as "a huge sigh of relief, really, like a safety net."She also adds that "the whole [egg freezing] process made me feel more feminine.I know it sounds strange, but when I found out how many eggs they collected after the hormone treatments I was relieved; it felt like they were also saving a part of my femininity, which I could put on hold for later."While Alicia describes it as being both a physical and emotional "journey," she says the process made her become more aware of her body and mood and heightened emotions around motherhood.

Mei Ling (career-focused; based on 13 narratives)
Mei Ling is a Malaysian Chinese cis woman in her late 20s living in Kuala Lumpur.She is single and has spent her 20s focusing on her career.Her narrative includes themes of negotiating gender, autonomy, and relationships.Mei Ling makes YouTube videos about running a business as a woman.Mei Ling is not sure if she wants children but believes that "there is a sense of urgency and timing about [fertility]" and wants to "keep her options open."She expresses some doubts throughout the process, such as not retrieving enough viable eggs for storage or whether she will find a suitable partner within the timeframe of her eggs being stored.However, she is ultimately happy with the procedure and obtains enough viable eggs to freeze.She describes the whole process as worth taking "just two weeks out of my life" to increase her options of having biologically related children.
For Mei Ling, freezing her eggs "really took the pressure off having to think about each passing year" as it meant she had more time to plan her future family.She explains that "when you're a woman and have so many things to think about like career and relationships, it feels as if time is not on your side, so that's why I froze my eggs-it gave me that bit of time I needed."Mei Ling's friend, who is doing egg freezing at the same time, recommended the fertility clinic.Mei Ling believes that egg freezing is an empowering process; it enables women to "have it all" by allowing them to "take control" of their lives.She describes feeling "so lucky to have had the opportunity to take back control of my body, like I'm not making this decision for anyone else, it's just for me and that feels really powerful." Mei Ling discusses how partners in past relationships told her that she was not "feminine enough" because she was too career focused.She "ended up getting really jealous of men who could just travel all the time and didn't have to worry about their biological clock."Her family, too, think that egg freezing is a "risk" and that Mei Ling's desire to delay motherhood goes against a "natural" way of conceiving without reproductive assistance.Mei Ling feels conflicted about the process, mainly because of her parent's disapproval, and the possibility that the process will not be successful.However, because the technology is available, she thinks it is responsible to try it.Egg freezing is therefore a way of reclaiming her autonomy and has helped her get "one step closer to being where I want to be, it's so empowering."

Matt (cancer journey; based on five narratives)
Matt is a Pākehā (New Zealand European) cis man in his mid-20s.He is in a long-term heterosexual relationship and is currently studying to be a doctor.He was diagnosed with cancer and decided to freeze his sperm before undergoing chemotherapy, which his doctors believe will likely cause permanent infertility.Matt's narrative includes themes of insurance, lack of immediate autonomy, and disruption.
Matt uses humour to deal with the sperm retrieval and freezing process, which he describes as awkward and "unsexy."Unlike some cis women, who commonly describe the egg freezing process as a journey, Matt talks about sperm freezing as a treatment and practical means to an end.It is a process he would have otherwise not undertaken without his cancer diagnosis.
For Matt, "cancer made me realise that time is precious and short.The cancer forced me to consider my future family, and the possibility of not having kids one day.I had to think about whether I really wanted kids, it's not something I had thought about much before."Matt was unprepared for the discussion about the sperm banking process but was aware there was not much time to think about what he wanted to do.After discussing it with his partner and a fertility specialist, they decided to freeze his sperm as a "plan B" in case chemotherapy caused infertility, even if he didn't "know when the right time will be to have kids, though I'm with my partner."He says that "maybe I will or won't use them, but either way it's a back-up plan.Making that decision really took the stress off, and I'm happy with the decision I made."Matt acknowledges that "although [fertility preservation] really is like an insurance policy, it's not a guaranteed one."

Dawn (potential infertility; based on 15 narratives)
Dawn is a white Christian cis single woman in her late 20s who lives in Illinois, the United States.Her narrative involves themes of disruption, failure, negotiating gender, and insuring the future.Dawn is a wellness expert and has over 300,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel.In her market-oriented video, Dawn endorses the clinic that she froze her eggs with.She talks about her positive experiences of the clinic, which she describes as a "blessing," and concludes by saying that "we can have it all, and [clinic name] made it seem easy.I felt so comfortable and respected, even though the process was quite involved, the staff took such good care of me." As a younger woman, Dawn was diagnosed with premature menopause, which there is a history of in her family.For Dawn, "because of my health condition, I always thought I couldn't do something that women are supposed to do," referring to becoming pregnant.While Dawn still hopes to meet "Mr Right," get married, and conceive naturally, Dawn's diagnosis forced her to think seriously about her dream of motherhood and the decision to freeze her eggs.She describes how she "felt like I had sort of failed because I hadn't achieved these goals yet.I had to act quickly because of my condition, but it was like everyone around me was judging me for deciding to freeze my eggs [. . .].I got insecure about my gender identity.But women shouldn't have to be stressed about making these decisions." Dawn frequently mentions God and prays for her path to motherhood to work out.She also talks about the possibility that she might regret not freezing her eggs, a common sentiment shared by cis women seeking egg preservation.Dawn is certain that she wants to have children at some point and sees egg freezing as "a way of ensuring your future, it allows me to keep the option of motherhood open for longer."She describes egg freezing as "doing something good for myself, it's like giving myself a gift."It also gives her more time and enables her to "live life on my own terms."

Rose (gender transition; based on nine narratives)
Rose is a trans woman in her early 20s living in Australia.Her narrative includes themes of negotiating gender and re-adjusting expected reproductive temporalities.She hopes that by sharing her fertility preservation experiences, she will help other trans people to make informed decisions around their fertility.Rose was motivated to share her experiences about this topic because she found it difficult finding trans-specific information about fertility preservation online.She encourages other trans women to consider gamete freezing if they want to keep their parenthood options open.She comments, "it doesn't matter what people say, like, if you wanna have a child who's related to you biologically, do it!" Rose plans to start taking gender-affirming hormones and was advised by her doctor to talk with a fertility counsellor about freezing gametes before starting hormone therapy.Rose says she does not always trust healthcare professionals' views on fertility because of the historic lack of understanding about the impacts of medically transitioning on trans people's fertility.Rose is not sure she wants children in the future but likes the idea of donating her frozen gametes to a "queer friend" if she decides against biological parenting; a finding aligned with other studies documenting trans individuals' openness to alternative forms of parenthood such as adoption and fostering (Ker and Shaw 2022).
After talking to a fertility counsellor and then an acquaintance who had been through the process, Rose decides to freeze her gametes.At first, she is reluctant to set aside time for the process as it would delay her medical transition, but she has heard other trans women talk about feeling they had taken a "step backwards" in their transition when they had discontinued hormones to freeze gametes.Rose "just had to think about myself in the future, not now, cos I knew I'd get on the oestrogen eventually [. ..] you've just gotta be patient."Rose describes the fertility preservation process as "awkward" and "weird."She talks about how being misgendered by some clinic staff heightened her discomfort.Rose also speaks about the high gamete storage costs, but that it was helpful that the gamete retrieval was publicly funded.Rose is grateful that her parents' financial aid will help to pay for long-term gamete storage.

Discussion: shifting the repronormative narrative
These narratives are connected by the way they make visible the norms and assumptions around reproduction and family building through negotiating both relational and temporal expectations.For example, the cis women vloggers variously drew on neoliberal discourses to construct fertility preservation as a choice and form of self-empowerment, challenging assumptions around women's reproductive potential as finite and inevitably dependent on the ticking of the "biological clock."Though vloggers commonly described fertility preservation as an insurance policy many hoped they would not have to draw on, they also acknowledged the risk and uncertainties that accompany gamete freezing.Further, vloggers who discussed fertility preservation as necessary to imagining their reproductive future (due to health or transition-related reasons) framed freezing gametes as more of a short-term and urgent or unavoidable decision.

Empowerment and resistance
Both the media and reproductive biomedicine promote cryopreservation technologies as liberating for women who seek to delay childbearing due to career advancement or the absence of a committed partner.According to some feminist scholars, the marketing and promotion of these technologies is entangled with the language of neoliberalism and a logic of market thinking that pervades all aspects of personal life.Rather than leaving their reproductive futures to chance, those who have the economic resources to do so are persuaded to act "responsibly" and safeguard their diminishing fertility by electively freezing their eggs until they are in the best position to parent (Katherine Carroll and Charlotte Kroløkke 2018).
In our study, vloggers' perspectives on whether fertility preservation was liberating or self-empowering largely depended on their respective reasons for undertaking it.The selfempowerment discourse was most evident among cis women who chose to freeze their eggs for career-or age-related reasons, who tended to describe egg freezing as a process through which they could extend or reclaim lost time on their own terms.
The autonomy that many vloggers said they reclaimed through gamete preservation appeared to be a way of resisting repronormative heteropatriarchal views on reproduction, such as the expectation that women produce offspring "at the right time" in line with socio-cultural and temporal scripts.Some cis vloggers, like Mei Ling and Dawn, accounted for fertility preservation as self-empowerment by first internalising it as a sign of "failing" to live up to societal expectations of womanhood.They then went on to resist the assumption that reproduction depends on a present (heterosexual) partner with whom one might conceive a biological child.In their framing of gamete freezing as an empowering process, vloggers described having more control over when and with whom to have a child.Having the option to re-calibrate heteronormative temporalities around "the time of reproduction" (Halberstam 2005, 5) thus enabled these vloggers to reject normative judgements about the appropriate age and time for becoming a mother.The cis women tended to speak about egg freezing as giving them agency to re-define or reconceptualise others' gendered expectations of their reproductive capacities too, such as Mei Ling's family's views of egg freezing as "risky," or former partners questioning her femininity when she prioritised career over having children.
The broader literature around fertility and reproduction indicates that trans people feel constrained by the gendering of fertility and pregnancy healthcare settings (e.g., James-Abra et al. 2015;Rachel Epstein 2018;Olivia J. Fischer 2020).In our study with trans vloggers (Ker and Shaw 2022), for example, a trans man spoke about not wanting to be pregnant as he saw that as a "female thing," alluding to how the dominant conflation of pregnancy and womanhood impacts trans people's relationships of their bodies and reproductive capacities in a cisnormative light.However, some trans vloggers resisted this notion when expressing that a person's biological or reproductive capacities do not have to determine their parenting roles or identities.Several talked about fertility preservation as enabling them to redefine what it means to be the mother, father, or parent of their own child, and to expand their reproductive possibilities beyond a hetero-and cisnormative framework.

Insuring the future, but no guarantees
Vloggers tended to discuss their experiences of fertility preservation in relation to both their past experiences that impacted on reproduction-such as focusing on their career (Mei Ling), being unable to conceive (Alicia) or find the right partner (Dawn) -and considering their reproductive futures.They commonly described their decision to preserve their fertility as an "insurance policy" for their future.For one vlogger, freezing eggs was like "putting coins in the parking meter," alluding to fertility preservation as a way of "banking time" (Waldby 2015) for themselves to have children.Though vloggers' certainty about wanting children varied, freezing one's gametes was seen largely as a futureoriented strategy to secure some certainty around their reproductive futures by pausing fertility decline in the present.
Damien Riggs (2019) has discussed this phenomenon in relation to trans individuals' consideration of gamete cryopreservation "just in case" they do elect to have biologically related children in the future.The problem Riggs envisages with this kind of strategy is that it not only reiterates a genetic norm about biological relatedness as the ideal way to achieve parenthood, thereby overlooking alternative pathways to parenthood such as adoption, fostering, or step-parenting; it has the potential to produce trans individuals as consumers of reproductive services who then become what Laura Mamo (2013) calls "parents-in-waiting."Alternatively, some vloggers' mention of other pathways to parenthood, as well as the possibility of "failure" throughout the fertility preservation process, suggests that gamete freezing can be considered as a way of keeping an individual's reproductive options open, rather seeing biological relatedness as the "only" or "right" way of building a family.
The idea that fertility preservation enables people to buy time while they wait for the right relationship and career is entangled with the idea that gamete freezing affords them a sense of control over their reproductive futures.This is particularly true when individuals are unable to manage other temporal factors in their lives such as their biological clock.Some vloggers described fertility preservation as enabling them to take the pressure off considering having children in the immediate future (Mei Ling).Others more generally alluded to the perception that fertility preservation grants them more time to achieve their current goals, including being able to take their time looking for the right partner instead of settling or rushing into an undesirable relationship.In this way, as Brown and Patrick (2018) explain in their interview study with cis women egg freezers, the vloggers can "temporarily disentangle" the romantic project of finding a partner from the reproductive timeline.That is, pausing or "freezing" clock time in relation to fertility decline will, hopefully, secure them a better life down the track.By "arresting fertile time," these vloggers "hoped to better synchronise the otherwise conflicting timescales that shaped and constrained their lives" (Waldby 2015, 479).
In talking about fertility preservation as an insurance policy, vloggers also constructed gamete freezing in terms of risk and uncertainty.At the same time as dreaming of a future with their own biological children, some vloggers acknowledged that there were no guarantees fertility preservation would be successful or produce viable gametes (Dawn).Others speculated they may never retrieve their stored gametes (Alicia, Matt).However, the possibility that fertility preservation might not work was a risk they were willing to take; they would rather try and have it fail, than to not have tried at all.In concert with the literature, gamete freezing was seen by the vloggers as a "technology of hope" (Baldwin et al. 2019;Inhorn, Birenbaum-Carmelli, and Patrizio 2017) to which they were optimistically and affectively attached.Choosing to freeze their gametes was therefore viewed as keeping their options open (Mei Ling), whereas not freezing was something they might regret not having tried in the future (Rose).This desire to act is reflected in Alicia's urge to others to be responsible in the face of future fertility decline, saying, "it is worth trying [. ..] you won't regret it."

Considering alternative temporalities
Thinking around fertility typically relies on judgements about the temporal ordering of people's lives, such as when they are most likely to conceive successfully.There were two central ways that vloggers discussed time in relation to their decision-making around fertility preservation.First, drawing on the perception of cryopreservation technologies as experimental, several vloggers explained how fertility preservation enabled them to challenge a particular trajectory marked by life course milestones such as marriage and having children by a certain age.Most vloggers who spoke about perceiving their decision to preserve fertility initially as a "failure" later concluded that, rather than being bound by these temporal expectations, they were instead liberated by the flexibility that fertility preservation afforded them.
Second, vloggers who considered fertility preservation for health reasons, such as Matt and Dawn, talked about it as a process they were forced to consider in conjunction with the timeframe of their health condition.For Matt, his unexpected cancer diagnosis made him urgently consider whether he wanted to have children earlier than he might have otherwise.Moreover, although sperm freezing is a well-established procedure, Matt found decision-making about his fertility status on top of the cancer diagnosis confronting (see Crawshaw 2013).The prospect of cancer and future infertility thus represented a "biographical disruption" (Mike Bury 1982) to the plot line of Matt's previously unquestioned life course trajectory that is not replicated in the narratives of other vloggers, especially those for whom health issues are not a key concern.
While not directly comparable, since gender transition entails the conscious questioning of one's assigned biography, a similar tension may exist when trans people who medically transition consider the short-term and long-term implications of fertility preservation and medical transition in relation to each other.One consideration relates to the current understanding that taking gender-affirming hormones increases the risk of infertility, although the long-term effects of hormone therapy on trans individuals' fertility remain unclear (see Philip Cheng et al. 2019).While these debates may not explicitly be part of health professionals' discussions with trans people deliberating fertility preservation, both trans individuals and oncology patients are forced to consider "the degree to which some imagined future possibilities [such as having biological children] are experienced as contingent on others" (Brown and Patrick 2018, 963).
For people who undergo fertility preservation for health and transition-related reasons, the option of freezing one's gametes complicates assumed expectations around family building planning, and when they can actualise these.As Matt's and Rose's narratives suggest, people's decision-making around having children can be overshadowed by other immediate processes, such as undergoing chemotherapy or medically transitioning.For Rose, as for other trans people, interrupting or delaying hormone therapy means accounting for the effects this has on affirming her gender and how she relates to her body.Although some trans people may not perceive transitioning as a barrier to freezing their gametes or carrying a child, we cannot assume this will be the same for everyone.The temporal consequences for some trans people of going "backwards" to a former self to envisage a liveable reproductive future may precipitate anxiety and distress, especially in cisnormative fertility clinic contexts (Victoria Pitts-Taylor 2020).So, while fertility preservation affords Matt and Rose a vision of themselves in the future, the short-term decisionmaking process is not entirely straightforward.

Conclusion
In this article we have explored the relational and temporal norms in vloggers' accounts of fertility preservation, and the ways in which they frame their experiences and reproductive futures in line with these norms.As such, the article contributes to burgeoning scholarship examining fertility preservation techniques and life course literature in several ways.First, our study draws on conceptual tools from the sociology of personal life to show how the vloggers' decisions to freeze their gametes are made in "the presence of others to respond to and to contextualise those actions and choices" (Smart 2007, 28).Additionally, the sharing of relatable stories via YouTube enabled the vloggers to turn what may otherwise be a sensitive personal issue into a positive public dialogue about the contingency of reproductive futurity that can potentially help others.Second, while most studies on fertility preservation focus either on medical or non-medical gamete freezing or on cis or trans individuals' experiences of fertility preservation, our study examines the narratives of gamete freezers from different demographic groups; those undergoing cancer treatment, cis women contemplating egg freezing for age-related reasons, and trans people concerned about infertility due to gender transition.Third, our novel methodological approach both provides a way to acknowledge consent issues in social media and research ethics around the use of publicly available data and enables us to compare similarities and differences between the gamete freezers to better understand how they negotiate and manage their reproductive futures through time and their life course.As our study was limited to analysing the content contained within the videos, future research may benefit from an analysis of YouTube comments alongside the videos, to understand the impacts of sharing public narratives on viewers' understanding of fertility preservation.Because the phenomenon of gamete freezing is likely to become more frequent, future research might also explore the accounts of vloggers who have returned to use their frozen gametes for the express purpose of family building.