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."