Excessively Career Orientated or Properly Prioritizing?

Upon reading The Great Gatsby and discussing class, wealth and power in my American Studies class, I have been thinking a lot about American's priorities. One thing in particular that I have picked up on is the concept of people's dreams, and the American dream in general. It seems that many people's motivations are revolved around acquiring money and thereby "succeeding" in the work place. But another American dream centers around the idea of raising a family. So I wondered, at what cost do American's sacrifice their family centered dreams for their career centered dreams? And is there one that people generally value over the other.

A recent Bloomberg article covered a hot new trend that to me demonstrates the prioritizing of these two dreams- family and work. It is called "freezing eggs". Freezing eggs is a newish technology that allows women to extract eggs from their bodies and have them medically frozen until they want to use them to have a child. Brigitte Adams, a women interviewed in the article, says that freezing her eggs "bought [her] time and the possibility of having children in the future." Brigitte is a marketing executive, and like many other wealthy, career oriented women, paid $10,000 for the opportunity to put establishing a family off several years.

I first took the whole concept as a demonstration of Americans not valuing family but career above anything else. Wanting to work first rather than establish a family. However, after more thinking I have come to the conclusion that by these freezing their eggs they are actually doing the opposite- putting family above career. While they may be deciding to tackle their career first, they are spending large sums of money so that they can have a family eventually. They fear that if they "Work hard, put off kids, [they] might find [themselves] at 40 hearing a fertility doctor deliver the bad news." These women freeze their  eggs in fear of never having the ability to live their other American dream of raising an American family, which in turn demonstrates the fact that they care about the family values.

Do you feel as of these women are putting their values of having a family in front of or behind their career? Do you think there is a general American trend regarding the ranking of people's workplace and family dreams?