Solo Mother

Sometimes, I stumble across women I instantly admire. Women whose ability to make gutsy choices and stick with them seem to doom my “see every side of it” personality to the dustbins of second-best.
Women like Emily Caston who, fed up with looking for Mr. Right and not willing to settle for Mr. Right Now, she chose a path of in vitro fertilization and wound up with a button-cute little girl and a debt of gratitude to the man who unknowingly helped her. Well, he knew he was donating sperm. He didn’t know which mum would end up with his genetic …read more

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Author Mikki Morrissette is inviting women in the New York area to join her and others to celebrate single motherhood. Here’s her take on it:
 Letting anyone in the NYC area know that we’re gathering a great group of women who have opted to have kids on their own, on Saturday afternoon, October 4. Great speakers (Jane Mattes, Louise Sloan, Lee Varon)…great food…great networking conversations….in a great space. Check out ChoiceMoms.org for more information. (We’ll be coming back for a 2nd annual gathering in Bay Area on November 8…and future events in Chicago, D.C., and more).
If you’re interested in participating, you …read more

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I’ve been having a great time tonight, perusing Single Minded Women. You’ll find some great cameraderie, support, and tips over there. Not the least of which is… drumroll please…
Their weekly Single Moms blog, where they round up links you’re sure to love.
If the articles alone don’t capture your attention, then perhaps the chance to win a free iPod might? Hmmmm? Here’s the pitch:
Join our community and win a new Nano iPod! If you’re a single mom with something to say, we’d love to feature you or a group you started in our next e-newsletter. Log on to our …read more

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If Minnie Driver is your friend, you probably always know where you stand with her. I’ve never read an interview she’s given where I didn’t come away with a feeling of… blunt force honesty.
Her current pregnancy and unwed status hasn’t curbed her appetite for frankness. She says she doesn’t know if she’s going to stay with the upcoming baby-to-be’s father, mysterious as he is. She says that in this day and age, women don’t need husbands to be mothers, and she’s assembling her own delivery room team: “My mom and Aunt Serena will be with me, as will my …read more

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The King of Everything and I went to the City of Alexandria’s birthday party this evening. We were met by one of our best friends who in turn introduced us to her friends, who in turn introduced us to their friends. This amorphous group banded together by a strategically hung pinanta, and was bounded by five tables groaning with food on one side. For some strange reason, I was gregarious today, and happily chatted with all and sundry.
The woman on the blanket behind ours was lovely — physically appealing, beautiful in a classical, competent, economic scale, no overblown rose …read more

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I think about adopting a child, from time to time. My kid really should be one of five (he’s lobbying for one of fifteen, but even Mother Theresa wouldn’t be able to handle that insanity!), and I feel bad that he’s an only child. I don’t have any idea of how to even begin to go about it.
Luckily, b5media’s own, “A Child Chosen” has posted a list of great adoption books. I think I’ll go to the library and see if this dream is ever going to be a reality.
What do you think? Are you interested in adopting, single …read more

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Mikki Morrisette writes a strong blog in the Huffington Post about the choices women are making vis a vis marriage and children. It points out the very obvious truth that outsiders just don’t get it. Women choose to have children without marriage for a variety of reasons, from a biological clock connected to a time bomb about to go off to a 20 something’s assertion that men don’t seem to add enough to their lives for a long-term commitment.
How’s that for a modern woman?

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I wonder what life would have been like if I’d made the decision to have a child without the active involvement of a father. Would this be easier or harder or just different? I don’t know. Whether a woman finds herself with an unplanned pregnancy and decides to forge ahead, father or no… or if she’s a woman who wants a child but doesn’t feel like waiting for Mr. Almost Right to come along, and either has a planned pregnancy or adopts… I admire these strong, creative, confident women who are single by choice.
Poking around on the Web brought …read more

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I love the idea of single by choice mothers, no matter what the pundits in the pulpit or that man in the White House might think of it. To have a child purely out of the love and wonder of having a child? To know that you love that kid, and that you want that kid, and there’s no fear of losing a spouse to death or divorce? How liberating. I wish I could adopt. My son wants to be a big brother. I’d love to have more than one child in my life.
I’ve been thinking about the differences that …read more

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More than one path leads to single motherhood. I know women who never married the fathers of their children and women who never even met the fathers. One woman I know used a form of artificial insemination that brought images of turkey basters to mind: she wandered around with a capsule of frozen swimmers tucked safely in her armpit, gently warming up to body temperature. (No, you can’t get pregnant by sperm swimming in your armpit. Nuff said.) There is a growing number of thirty-something women who are tired of waiting around for Mr. Right to show up and opt for …read more

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