Speaking
In her writing and speaking, Lehmann-Haupt offers life strategies to social trends that intimately affect women’s lives. Her specialties include the future of family life, career timing, and the influence of science and technology on fertility and pregnancy. She has been featured ABC’s Good Morning America and she has spoken on numerous panels at bookstores, hospitals and corporate events, and has delivered talks at universities.
Watch a sample talk:
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Workshops
Family Fluidity in the Age of Collaborative Reproduction
Family in the 21st century is evolving, and this calls for a new understanding of where we’re headed and how we can support and include all modern families.
The last decade has seen the increased use of modern reproductive technologies like IVF, egg freezing, donor egg and sperm, and gestational carriers that are profoundly evolving family shapes, civil liberties, values and gender roles. Gay marriage is now legal, and the declining share of children living in what is often deemed a “traditional” family has been largely supplanted by the rising shares of children living with single or cohabiting parents. At the same time, the age of first-time parenthood is rising, and nearly-one third of couples today face infertility that creates the need to lean on reproductive medicine.
As we begin to expand our acceptance of sexual orientation and gender identity to include nonbinary and trans people, we are also beginning to understand the full spectrum of biological possibilities and family arrangements for creating and raising a child. For example, to be a “mother,” you can contribute DNA, or carry a baby conceived with an egg donor in your womb, or do neither and simply raise a child as your own with a partner. To be a “father,” you can contribute DNA or raise a child. In other words, the four roles traditionally associated with the nuclear family have been untethered and extended, and they now have nuanced roles in the family. Being a parent might mean contributing DNA, it might mean raising a child, it might mean contributing financially, and it might mean giving birth to a child, but these roles can all exist outside of the nuclear family.
These “mights” mean we must redefine what a parent is legally, morally, ethically, and emotionally, and ideas around reproductive justice, or the right to have children. This talk is for anyone who wants to better understand the modern fertility process for themselves and family members, who identify with one of these new types of families or who seeks more acceptance about the changing landscape, values, and language to support diversity and inclusion.
Fertility Workshop: Why I Froze my Eggs: The Pill of the Technology Generation
Rachel will lead a fertility workshop at your organization, company or school. Maybe your organization or company just began offering fertility benefits and your employees want to know more. In this modern age, planning your life course is a tricky balancing act between career and family that often involves re-planning.
In an intimate brown bag lunch style conversation, Rachel will share her personal fertility story based on her book, In Her Own Sweet Time: Egg Freezing and the New Frontiers of Families. She can describe the experience of freezing her eggs and explain the pros and cons of this choice and the cultural stir it has created. She will also speak to the new array of choices that advances in reproductive science are making available from fertility testing to genetic testing.
Based on Newsweek article, “Why I Froze My Eggs” and NPR “Talk of the Nation” Interview
Other Topics
Your Biological Clock: Balancing Your Fertility, Relationship, and Career .
In this modern age, planning your life course is a tricky balancing act between career and family that often involves re-planning. Based on her own experience and the stories she gathered in her book, In Her Own Sweet Time, she can speak to the new array of choices that we have from “instant families” to “egg freezing” to “DIY motherhood.”
Themes: Work-Life balance, career, fertility, advanced reproductive technology
Who’s it for: For law, medical and business graduate students as well as undergrads, women’s business organizations, alumni groups, and corporation looking to help their workers with cutting edge progressive thinking.
Based on Your Tango video: Stop Worrying About Your Biological Clock
Themes: Work-Life balance, career, fertility, advanced reproductive technology
Who’s it for: For law, medical and business graduate students as well as undergrads, women’s business organizations, alumni groups, and corporation looking to help their workers with cutting edge progressive thinking.
Past Speaking Appearances
2005: Gave keynote address at UCLA Business School’s The Networked Home conference. Adapted speech from essay, “The Multi-Talking Man,” which appeared in Rebecca Walker’s What Makes A Man: 21 Writers Imagine the Future (Riverhead books, 2005)
2009: Participated in the panel “The Future of Reproduction: A Personal and Global Perspective” at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.
2010: Woman and the Machine: Publishing, Technology, and the Female Brain There have been many gains for women in the last forty years, but we still need a big push to increase the numbers heading up technology firms and choosing careers in science and engineering. Do women feel the sting of “stereotype threat” in start-up environments and other tech-heavy fields where men seem to jump in with both feet? Perhaps we’ll do better when we understand the wiring of our female brains? In this session, our panelists explore what happens when women embrace technology and build the machines of the digital age. Sara Öhrvall, Bonnier Group, Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, author, media consultant Deborah M. Soon, Catalyst (shown) Moderator: Kara Swisher, D: All Things Digital
2016: Delivered Why I Froze My Eggs: The Pill of the Technology Generation to students at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California.