Louise Sloan on Salon.com
Apparently, Louise Sloan, author of Knock Yourself Up: No Man? No Problem! A Tell-All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom is taking a bit of heat in the forums for her choice to have a child. Please read the article at Salon and weigh in on the comments there. My personal favorite is from St. Cheryl, who writes:
From a straight, married, upper middle class professional, feminist, gay-friendly parent:
Children don’t “need” two parents. Parents need two parents. Having children can make you temporarily insane. Children have a right to have at least one sane parent at all times.
May I put that on a tee-shirt? Seriously.
Thanks to Rachel Sarah (Single Mom Seeking!) for the heads up. You’ll want to go visit her post here, because she’s got the whole scoop, and she’s running a contest to give away Sloan’s book.
Tags: Louise-Sloan, Rachel-Sarah, single-mother, single-mother-by-choiceRelated Stories
POSTED IN: parenting
5 opinions for Louise Sloan on Salon.com
Nelly
May 28, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I wonder how Louise Sloan`s little son Scott is going to feel, when he reads his mothers book describing his conception as “knock yourself up”. From the subtitle: “No man?-no problem!” he will learn how much responsibility his mother expects of him. In her book, Sloan descibes a sperm donor party where the future single mother holds up a vial of sperm and says: “say hello to daddy!”. Don`t worry that little Scott will grow up without knowing what a Daddy is. Fear rather that he will learn, from reading his mothers book, exactly what a “Daddy” is.
In a “No man?-no problem!”-society the moral and legal foundation for collecting child support from unwilling fathers will erode. What will Scott`s mother say to him when he “knocks up” a girl and expects to be payed for it?
I recommend parents to put up an ample trust fund for their little daughters to prepare for the day when Scott`s generation hits the mating market.
The emergent trend of “single motherhood by choice” is often presented as liberating women, but in the end of the day it is the men who are being “liberated”. I know it is deeply unfair, but the power of women over men in the end boils down to relieving them from responsibility towards their offspring. Louise Sloan is promoting the fatherless family at a time when we are moving into an agening socity with welfare under siege. The timing of her book could hardly have been worse.
Nelly
May 31, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Forget about equality. Mothers are forced by biology to take care of their offspring, fathers are not. Since a 100,000 years ago, when they started to make kids with big heads who took 25 years to propagate, this asymmetry has had to be addressed. The institution of marriage has traditionally done so, but is starting to fail. The reaction of western society is to extend this failing institution to homosexual couples who comprise approximately 1/2% of all couples. I hope they will succeed, for then we only have to cope with the remaining 99.5%.
Fatherless families are rather the norm than the exception in many inner cities, where young men boast of how many girls they have “knocked up”. With “single mothers by choice” the middle class is joining the party and is sending a powerful message of consolation to all dead beat dads: children don`t really need fathers. Unlike their colleagues in the ghetto, sperm donors are protected from responsibility by law.
“Single mothers by choice” is such a showpiece for women`s liberation, that it is easy to forget that in the end of the day it is the men who are being liberated. Relieved from the burden of having to raise their offspring. Old men grieve about it, young men adapt. In a recent interview with twelve sperm donors they all without exception, expressed the view that men are largely irrelevant to children. Peggy Drexler can rejoice.
When fathers become irrelevant, so do boys. However much a “single mother by choice” loves her son, it will not escape his attention that he represents the “unwanted sex” in the family. Maybe his own life started with a vial of sperm being greeted at a sperm donor party with the words: “say hello to daddy!”. By his mothers example he will learn, that not only are fathers unnecessary, they are a joke. If he “knocks up” a girl and expects to be paid for it, will his mother then lecture him on the responsibilities of fatherhood? or will she rather send the poor girl packing with the words: “no man?-no problem!”?
Young men seem to have problems with finding a meaningful role in society. If they see a poster on campus saying “We need you!”, it was probably put up by the local sperm bank which offers a reward for becoming the ultimate “dead beat dad”: a sperm donor. In 20-30 years time we shall know the result of this social experiment, and we better prepare ourselves for more than the “pension bomb”.
Jess
Oct 24, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Nelly and Christina, I am very late leaving this comment it seems. . .but this is something I’ve been thinking about. Yes, I’m a mom by choice–my daughter was adopted from China in 1998. There is no father in the picture and the chances of my child ever meeting her biological parents are slim to none. I read the Salon letters and was interested to see what a raw nerve this touches.
Couple of things: I have never bought the women-are-here-to-civilize men argument. It seems to be that each of us is responsible for civilizing ourselves after our parents have done their very best. There is no man who has been “relieved” of raising kids in our family equation–there was no man, period. But there are plenty of men out there who are welcome to choose marriage or other states, with or without kids. What’s stopping them? Surely I am not stopping them by my choices. What if everyone in society were me? Well everyone isn’t. Overwhelmingly people are still gravitating to marriage, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make room for other ways.
From what I know of Louise Sloan, she has never stated that fathers are a joke and I doubt she is conveying this message to her son. This would sort of be like me telling my daughter that her biological parents are a joke. No parent of a child who is loved can utter these things because those ties–even if they are invisible or hard for the child to understand immediately (the case both with sperm donation and international adoption)–are extremely important to the child and are part of his or her story. The more I know and love my daughter, the more I wish both of us could meet her original parents, but it isn’t going to happen and I knew that going in. Does that make me selfish?
Finally, the fact that a family has no father is neither a sign of rejection of men nor a slap in the face to fathers. It just means that that family has no father.
Thanks for letting me ramble.
Jess
SoloMother
Oct 24, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Jess, I didn’t reply to Nelly’s anger, because sometimes I just didn’t know where to start. But I’m glad you’re here to offer a balance to the equation. I was horrified by some of the comments Sloan’s book and article generated.
There are children out there who have no parents. There are children who need us, mothers, fathers, tribes. However the family forms, if there is love… there is family.
Jess
Oct 24, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Couldn’t agree more. The “selfish” charge is especially assinine IMHO too.
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