Beginning or expanding your family is a major life event with many factors to take into consideration. While it’s an exciting prospect, family planning can be stressful.
Adding a child to your family through birth or adoption can be complicated. For starters, infertility is not uncommon, affecting one in eight heterosexual couples. The good news is that, since 2021, there has been a sharp uptick in employers offering fertility and adoption benefits.
Vendors such as Carrot and Progyny provide fertility services that may include egg freezing, drug therapy, intrauterine insemination, and in vitro fertilization. These services make attainable fertility treatments that would otherwise be financially out of reach for many people. (A single round of IVF, for instance, can run between $15,000 and $30,000.) Some providers also offer assistance with surrogacy arrangements, an option for people for whom other fertility treatments are medically unadvisable or possible.
If you choose to grow your family via adoption, this can be a lengthy and expensive process, costing anywhere between $15,000 and $40,000. Some vendors that may be accessible via your company might also offer adoption benefits, helping walk you through the time-intensive steps of adopting a child. Notably, many companies have opened adoption and surrogacy benefits to LGBTQ+ employees and single employees who have historically been excluded from family planning benefits. Additionally, roughly 10% of companies offer some form of adoption financial assistance, as well as 29% offering paid adoption leave. (Be sure to consult your tax advisor if you plan on both accepting your company’s adoption financial assistance and filing for an adoption tax credit.)
It is likely more and more employers will add fertility and family planning benefits as time goes on, especially given a high percentage of millennials say they would change jobs for these benefits. Talk with your company’s Human Resources to find out if your employer offers any of these benefits or might in the future.
Sources:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/infertility/care-at-mayo-clinic/mac-20354325
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/birth-control/basics/natural-family-planning/hlv-20049454
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/birth-control/basics/birth-control-basics/hlv-20049454
https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/genetic-counseling-for-family-planning
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/free-publications-women/birth-control
https://www.usaid.gov/global-health/health-areas/family-planning
https://opa.hhs.gov/reproductive-health/understanding-fertility-basics