Rachel Lehmann-Haupt is an expert on the future of family life, career timing, and the influence of science and technology on fertility, pregnancy and family. The age of motherhood is on the rise across the developing world, and as a result many women and couples are becoming increasingly reliant on alternative choices to create their families. This includes advanced reproductive technologies like egg freezing, invitro fertilization, the use of donor eggs, and the option to become a DIY mom, a phrase Lehmann-Haupt coined. She is founder and director of The ART and Science of Family project.
As the author of In Her Own Sweet Time: Egg Freezing and the New Frontiers of Family (Basic Books, 2009 and Nothing But the Truth, 2015) she has influenced and been an inspiration to thousands of women who are searching for the best ways to balance their desires for a career and family. Her articles on the topic have been featured from Slate to Babble.com. She has been profiled by The Chicago Tribune for her practical and brave choice to freeze her eggs when she was thirty-seven; she has appeared on Good Morning America, Wall Street Journal’s Lunch Break and Bay Area Focus speaking on the topic, and has been quoted on the front page of The New York Times.
In her writing and speaking, she gives a personal face and offers life strategies to the most relevant social trends that intimately affect women’s lives. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York, O magazine, Self, Outside, Wired, Vogue, Neo.life and her essay “The Multi-tasking Man,” appeared in What Makes A Man: 21 Writers Imagine the Future, edited by Rebecca Walker (Riverhead Books, 2005). She graduated with distinction in English literature from Kenyon College, and has a Masters in Journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. At UC Berkeley, she apprenticed under Clay Felker, the founder of New York magazine. She has spoken on numerous panels at bookstores, hospitals and corporate events, and has delivered keynotes at universities.