The question of freezing eggs from a migrant perspective
“For the longest time, I was hoping and expecting it to happen organically and now it feels like intervention is required.”
When Iranian-New Zealand filmmaker Shamin Yazdani hit her mid-30s, she found herself face-to-face with a dilemma - to freeze her eggs or not?
In her documentary, Frozen – My Eggs & Me, which recently premiered at a sold-out screening at the Show Me Shorts Festival, Yazdani unpacks some profound personal truths with the help of friends.
A child-free Iranian friend, who is like a sister, says: “I think we can just give birth in so many different ways in this world".
“I just don’t think that it has to be through a child that [you leave a legacy], particularly in a generation where women like us have never existed before … they’ve never been free.”
For many women, the decision of having children (or not) is a battle between a biological clock, career and social pressures. The latest data from Stats NZ shows the total fertility rate was 1.58 births per woman, up from a record-low fertility rate of 1.54 last year.
More women are also having children later in life. The median age of women giving birth reached 31.5 years in 2024 - the highest since records began in 1962, according to Stats NZ.
But the egg-freezing process - as well as being expensive, painful and emotionally exhausting - can also feel like a roll of the dice with variable success.
Fertility and her future - Shamin Yazdani's deep dive
After returning to Christchurch from London, Shamin Yazdani says she began to take stock of the question around her eggs.
Supplied / Renn Cameron
Add to that the experience of being born to immigrant parents. Yazdani grapples with guilt about possibly not honouring her parents’ sacrifices (who have moved homes, experienced war and revolution) and possibly being last in the line as an only-child.
“I spent a good chunk of my 20s and early 30s in London and was more focused on career at that time or seeking to create something [that extends beyond],” Yazdani says in the film.
“I found myself arriving at this full circle moment, where I felt like I was losing time there… that I could be spending [with my parents].
“There’s something to be said about being rooted somewhere where your family has been for generations … there’s something really grounding about that and that’s something that worries me about the prospect about freezing my eggs, having my own family and being able to offer that to my own offspring.”
Having grown up in Ōtautahi Christchurch and coming back to the city as an adult, Yazdani felt there was a difference in the privileges between Pākehā and non-Pākehā.
“The onus is on us to, or women, to troubleshoot that and think about options like freezing our eggs, which can be a response to the social and societal frameworks that we are living in," Yazdani tells RNZ podcast Here Now.
“Many of us try to build that for ourselves in the new space and context that we're in. But that requires so much energy and effort and time to build something that we weren't born into like the people around us and so that is one of the biggest challenges that then can possibly delay decisions like whether to have a family.”
Shamin Yazdani says her Iranian friends are like older sisters to her - replacing the relationships she otherwise would have had in her own community and culture.
Supplied / DOFilm
Her close relationship with her parents made the discussion of freezing her eggs a little easier to broach with them. She realised her guilt and fear was actually coming from within.
“I think in the case of my parents, because so much of their lives has been in some ways out of their hands, quite unpredictable … and I think when life throws these kind of curveballs at you, I think they just appreciate that sometimes we can't control everything.
“.... That's sort of what's at the root of their support and their understanding and compassion, which I'm very grateful for.”
Making a big life decision and a film simultaneously has been challenging, she admits.
“This has been quite the gestation period with this film, and I still feel like I'm very much in it, and I probably will until a little while after the film is released as well. And then maybe then I'll be able to confront everything with a clearer head. But for now, it still feels like the film is my baby.”
