At 35, Marie, single and without children, understands that it will soon be too late to become a mother.
This observation triggers a flood of questions: should she embark on a process of self-preservation of oocytes?
Does she want to have children?
If yes, why ?
Above all, she asks herself: “Why do people have children?”
This is the starting point of the audio series
Marie and the Eggs in Snow
(1), produced by Paradiso Media, shot and written by designer-editor Marie Cahu.
For this first personal project, the woman who is also a director of institutional films humorously mixes sociological questions and more intimate reflections.
Two episodes (out of six) were posted online on March 12 (1).
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Freeze your “eggs”
At the beginning of the story, Marie says: “I had a string of rotten stories, an impressive track record of unavailable men.
If I continued like this, I wouldn’t have children.”
The thought makes him dizzy.
The feeling of failure is at its peak.
In the middle of an anxiety attack, a friend whispered an idea to her: “Have you ever thought about freezing your eggs?”
In his mind, the seed is sown.
In France, the bioethics law authorizing (among other things) access for women to the self-preservation of their oocytes without medical reasons, was promulgated in 2021. The sample can be carried out until their 37th birthday.
For the thirty-something, time is running out.
She then embarks on medical examinations to prepare for the procedure, without being able to anticipate the emotional weight represented by the process and the questions that will arise from it.
The first of them being: “But what is wrong with my romantic relationships?”, followed by “Would you consider having a child on your own?”
Also read “I am no longer “just” a mother and I sometimes have the impression of being nobody”: these women who left the world of work when their children arrived
Why do we have children?
In the third episode, scheduled to be posted online on March 19, Marie Cahu once again emerges confused from a medical consultation at the Center for the Study of Conservation of Eggs and Human Sperm (Cecos) in Angers.
The procedure is cumbersome.
Is it really worth it?
Very quickly, the young woman questions herself more broadly: why do we want to become a parent?
At the bar, at work, at the supermarket and on the bus, she continues her investigation and begins to ask the question to anyone who is willing to answer her: those close to her and strangers alike.
According to the answers obtained, the desire to have a child comes from a certain "social mimicry", a need to "leave a trace", to "find a driving force, a giver of meaning", or even from desire to “not grow old alone”.
Without forgetting the weight of the “injunction to motherhood”, which Marie will evoke in the following episode with feminist activist Michelle Perrot.
The six episodes of this audio series (each averaging 28 minutes) will take listeners to the outcome: will Marie complete her procedure to freeze her eggs?
(1)
Marie and the Eggs in Snow,
podcast shot and written by Marie Cahu, produced by the Paradiso Média studio, directed by Marie Cahu and Théo Albaric, is available on all podcast listening platforms.