If you haven't already bumped into her on the playground, you know somebody who knows somebody who knows her… She's unmarried, probably a professional woman, with a post-graduate degree — financially stable, if not successful. She's been watching her age creep upward, acutely aware that her fertility drops after 35. The day comes when — no suitable suitor on the horizon, let alone in the bedroom — she makes the fateful decision: She's not going to wait for Mr. Right any longer. It's time to take the matter of motherhood into her own hands.

 

Why Women Are Doing It…and How

 

Alexandra Soiseth, author of Choosing You: Deciding to Have a Baby on My Own, began toying with idea in her mid-thirties. She bounced it off family and friends, to mixed reactions. "'You're crazy!" she recalls her sister, a three-time mom, saying. But "I knew if I didn't try to have a kid, I would regret it my whole life," explains Alexandra. When several women at work adopted on their own, single motherhood seemed a doable reality. A Google search for "sperm" led Alexandra to the Scandinavian Cryobank, where she was matched with the blond (and anonymous) "Olaf." A single Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) later, she was pregnant with her daughter Kai, at age 39. 

 

Potentially more complicated is known donor insemination. This appealed most to Mikki Morrisette, author of Choosing Single Motherhood: The Thinking Woman's Guide. Thirty-five years old and devastated by her breakup from a man with a son, she realized for the first time that she wanted a child of her own. She compiled a short list of potential donors but then settled on a friend who had volunteered. ("He wasn't in my top 2," she explains.) As donor to her first child (at 37) and second (at 41), he's available should the kids want to have conversations. But, says Mikki, neither seem terribly interested at this point.

 

Donor insemination remains the most popular route among many — sex partner, fertility treatment, and adoption among them. By rough estimates, about 25 percent of single women choose adoption, whether it's through a U.S. agency or foreign.

 

Making It Work

 

Of course, how to conceive is only one of the issues facing a potential single mom. "My biggest concern was whether I was too selfish," concedes Mikki. "I'd been a single person for so long." Alexandra was most worried about managing alone — what would happen if she got sick? "I was obsessed with the idea!" she says. With her family in far off Saskatchewan, she didn't know whom she could count on in New York. Finances are another biggie, though the question of sufficient income and savings becomes far more pressing with a second child.

 

Mikki, who launched ChoiceMoms.org as a forum to discuss such issues, encourages women to be honest with themselves about their capabilities and fears. "We tend to be goal-driven women," she explains, "so we have trouble admitting vulnerabilities and asking for help" — both of which are essential in alleviating the daily stresses of single motherhood.

 

Most important, according to both Alexandra and Mikki, is a proactive approach to building community. The size of your income, the prettiness of your home — these will pale in comparison to a solid support network, along with the willingness to find male role models. Says Mikki: "You have to know whom you are going to turn to in emergency situations!" In Alexandra's experience, help came where she might not have been expected it: A mother of four did her laundry every week. A downstairs neighbor became the male figure in her daughter's life.

 

But Is It Fair?

 

The growing phenomenon of single motherhood by choice has its critics. After all, statistics on children raised in fatherless homes are bleak: higher drop-out and crime rates, increased drug use and sexual promiscuity. Is a woman who frequents a sperm bank condemning her child to such a future?

 

The answer, by all accounts, is no. "There's a huge difference between a woman consciously making the decision to be a parent and one who, through no fault of her own, becomes the victim of circumstance," explains Mikki. "Choice moms," as she calls them, are resourceful and self-sufficient. Their homes are marked not by the emotional wounds and financial hardship that often accompany divorce and abandonment, but by a can-do attitude — which, says Mikki, gets passed onto their children, along with a strong sense of confidence and responsibility.

 

Not that there aren't challenges. The intensity of the one-on-one bond between mother and child may lead to separation difficulties. And, says Mikki, "social isolation can be a struggle with more reclusive mothers." Nor does the grief at going it alone, without a partner, necessarily wane with the birth of the child.

 

Nevertheless you'd be hard pressed to find a single mother who regrets her choice. In fact, Alexandra urges women to make the decision sooner rather than later, especially if nearing 40. "When I finally decided I was going to try for a second," she explains, "it was too late — unless extraordinary measures were taken."

 

For more information, we recommend these resources:

• Choice Moms
• Knock Yourself Up
• Single Mothers by Choice