Mom on Her Own

Once upon a time, there was a very happy lady named Marianne who had one thing missing from her life. She wanted a baby. But since Marianne didn’t have a husband, she went to a doctor, who gave her seeds from a kind and generous man called a donor. Nine months later, out popped a beautiful baby boy named Sam.

That’s the story Marianne Boswell, a single mother in a suburb of Boston, tells her five-year-old to help him understand why he doesn’t have a daddy. Like many single moms who become parents without a husband or partner, Marianne doesn’t have an easy life raising a son on her own. But perhaps the biggest challenge is trying to answer Sam’s inevitable questions. “He knows that we’re a family with a mommy and a nana,” says Marianne, 47, an executive recruiter. “But I still cringe on Father’s Day.”

More and more women are facing the same issues. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 32% of all births today are to unmarried women, up from just 5.3% in 1960. While teenage pregnancies have declined, there has been a dramatic upsurge among college-educated career women like Marianne. Some got pregnant by accident. But many more have made the conscious decision to have a child on their own because they haven’t found Mr. Adequate, let alone Mr. Right. “Now almost everyone seems to know someone firsthand or secondhand who has done it,” says Jane Mattes, founder of Single Mothers by Choice, a 4,000-member international support group. “That’s a huge cultural difference.”

Several developments have helped boost the popularity of single motherhood. With better-paying jobs and greater career opportunities, more women can afford it. Advances in the technology of conception, such as in-vitro fertilization, have made it much more feasible, even in the later childbearing years. Meanwhile, adoption by single mothers has become a more accepted option.

Not so long ago, this breed of single mom was considered eccentric at best, man hating and antifamily at worst. A woman whose husband had died or whose boyfriend had run off could be regarded as a victim, but one who deliberately set out to have a child without a father was a threat to traditional family values. Who can forget Vice President Dan Quayle’s attack on TV single mom Murphy Brown eight years ago? Well, it seems many people have. With increasing numbers of middle-class women parenting alone, the stigma of being a single mother is fading.

Still, single mothers are not immune to their own doubts–not least, wondering whether their child will suffer from the lack of a two-parent upbringing. Some research has indicated that children of single mothers are more prone to academic and emotional problems, especially during their teen years. However, those studies tended to focus on poor families headed by teen mothers and kids of divorced parents. A Cornell University study of six- and seven-year-olds found that the mere fact of single parenthood does not mean that a child will have trouble academically. Henry Ricciuti, professor emeritus of human development and author of Single Parenthood and School Readiness, found that the mother’s educational level and ability, rather than the absence of a father, have the most influence on a child’s school readiness. Says he: “Single parenthood shouldn’t be seen, in and of itself, as a damaging factor to the child.”

To most appearances, the kids of single mothers seem as happy and well-adjusted as their two-parent schoolmates. “I don’t think there’s any difference at all,” says Ean Kessler, 12, whose mother Karen is a member of Single Mothers by Choice in Hamden, Conn. “It’s the same with one person telling me what to do.” Yet it’s too soon to make any firm judgments. “We will probably need a generation of kids to grow up to find out the answers,” says Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

Single mothers already know the job of raising a child alone is far from easy. Marianne first began considering single parenting in her late 30s, after she broke off a four-year relationship. “I decided I wasn’t going to turn 40 without at least exploring having a child,” she says. “I wanted it to be a conscious decision, as opposed to something that just didn’t happen to me.” Money was not an issue–she was part owner of a thriving software company and owned a condo in Cambridge, Mass., and a house on Cape Cod–but she still underwent two years of therapy before she made the decision to go to a sperm bank and conceive a child by herself.

At first, after the baby arrived, Marianne kept her same hectic work schedule, taking along her infant son and a baby sitter to out-of-town conventions. After daylong meetings, she’d return to her hotel room and nurse the baby. “I made it work,” she says. “But I sure don’t miss those times.” Since then, Marianne has changed jobs to cut out travel. Her mother lives with her and helps out with baby sitting. “I don’t have all the answers,” Marianne says. “But I trust myself and the people around me to help me make the right decisions.”

Marianne’s financial situation makes her more secure than many single mothers. Brennetta Simpson, 44, an assistant dean of music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., wasn’t thrilled about going through childbirth, so she decided to adopt. But she had serious concerns about whether she could afford to do so on her university administrator’s salary. Another problem: Who would take care of her child if she were to die unexpectedly? She got her best friends in California to agree to step in as surrogate parents in that event.

Shortly after the adoption agency called her on Christmas Eve 1996 with news that a baby girl had just arrived, Brennetta had a quick dose of reality. Imani-Brenae, 17 days old when Brennetta adopted her, woke up screaming every two hours all night long. “I thought, Oh, my God, it’s just me,” she says. “What was I thinking? That I could raise a baby alone?”

To make ends meet, Brennetta slashed her living expenses and took a second job teaching a youth choir. It was an exhausting time. She set up a playpen in her office to keep Imani with her at work. Even the smallest tasks could be a trial. “Try taking a shower holding your baby in your arms,” she says. She remembers talking to a student one day when her mind suddenly went blank. “I was so tired,” she says. “I was an emotional wreck.” Things are smoother now that Imani is nearly four and relatives are nearby to pitch in; indeed, Brennetta has applied to adopt a second child.

Sara Hansard, 49, a journalist from Arlington, Va., adopted a 1 1/2-year-old girl from China more than two years ago. She faced the strong objection of her mother, “who always imagined me getting married and having kids the normal way.” Mom has come around, but since she lives in an assisted-living facility 90 miles away, she can’t be much help. So Sara has organized an informal network of single moms in her area, who are on call to baby-sit in emergencies and who trade child-rearing tips.

Having a child later in life is rewarding, Sara says, but she knows her choice is not universally popular. She says she has lost out on jobs because some bosses wouldn’t accommodate her needs as a single mom. Then there was the stranger on the subway who struck up a conversation and when she found out Hansard was a single mom, railed that what she was doing was morally wrong. Sara told her off. “I wanted to be a parent, and in my case, I happened not to be married,” she says. “I’m not apologizing to anyone for that.”