Should You Have a Baby on Your Own?

"It's time you start having kids." So barked a novelist of my acquaintance the moment we sat down for dinner. My uterus is none of his business, and yet, I'd just returned from a week on the beach with my little brother and his family, and all that quality time with my small nieces had made me feel something I'd never known: a craving to have a child of my own. At 40, I was late to this game.

After a brief internal debate — Am I actually going to discuss this deeply private topic with someone I barely know? — I swung the barn door wide open. I explained how growing up, I'd assumed I'd get married and have children, but as I progressed through my 20s and 30s, I never felt a desire to do either — that is, until now. Finally experiencing that famous tick-tock was unsettling, I admitted, but also a relief. Now I got what other women had been talking about. Even so, I wasn't ready to dismiss my decades-long ambivalence. Maybe it wasn't denial, as people say, but a genuine disinclination to be a mother, my own internal voice trying to be heard above the ear-splitting din of cultural expectation. Our entrées arrived.

"Ridiculous," he scoffed, stabbing into his lamb shank. "Everyone wants kids. Everyone who doesn't have them is miserable. It's biology. What makes you think you're so special? You absolutely must get on this, immediately."

Inexplicably unfazed by his being a complete asshole, I pressed on, earnestly confessing my concerns about timing: My fertility was fast waning, but my relationship was still brand-new. If I were to "get on this, immediately," as he was weirdly insisting, I'd be doing it alone.

When he volunteered to inseminate me himself, I laughed. But back home, I couldn't sleep. All night, I cycled through my Hail Mary options — my brand-new boyfriend's sperm, my gay male best friend's sperm, anonymous donor sperm, adoption — and berated myself for being in this position to begin with. At dawn, I was still wide awake.

I was considering having a child by myself in part because I'd been watching other women do it — or rather, one woman in particular: Rachel Grady, the first person in my extended social circle to decide to have a child on her own. I've since learned that the majority of "choice moms" (the term I've come to prefer over the wordier "single mothers by choice") are inspired by someone they know, even if their initial reaction is "I could never do that myself."

Grady is a film director and producer who lives near me in Brooklyn. In 2010, when we were both 37 and I heard she was pregnant from anonymous donor sperm, I felt the same awe as I had when her documentary Jesus Camp was nominated for a 2006 Oscar. If I'm a cautious, plan-making type, Grady is the sort who goes out and does something while everyone else sits around hemming and hawing. She struck me as suited to such a big leap, so unlike me. Back then, I was living off freelance journalism, my finances were a mess, and — this overrode all practical considerations — my mother died in 1996. I couldn't imagine managing a newborn without at least a mother-in-law to provide maternal support.

After my sleepless night, I wanted to know more about Grady's experience. Over dinner at her apartment, she explained that after she first felt the baby urge at 31, it decimated her romantic life. "I'd always dated, but then I started dating desperately, looking for someone to have a kid with," she told me. "I got involved with guys who were incredibly wrong for me. I thought, 'I'm behaving out of fear. If I'm not careful, I'll get stuck with one of these losers!'"

Working through "a few serious emotional/mental hurdles" brought Grady to a major revelation: "I've never cared about marriage, so why am I conflating motherhood and matrimony? I have a good career, an amazing mother, great friends. I feel satisfied. I can do this myself." The second she made the decision, she felt an enormous relief, and luckily for her, pregnancy came easy. She bought a $200 vial of sperm, scheduled an intrauterine insemination, or IUI (insurance covered both), and today, she has an adorable 4-year-old boy with an infectious laugh ... as well as a boyfriend she met when she was seven months pregnant. All her practical fears — that she'd be stuck at home all the time, never travel, be unable to afford it — came true, and yet, she says, "None of it felt like an issue. I just figured it out."

On the subway home that night, I wondered: Maybe if I got my finances in shape and made up for my own motherlessness by creating an alternate support system, I could do it too. Maybe?

There's yet to be a national survey that differentiates between "voluntary" and "involuntary" single motherhood, but anecdotal evidence indicates an uptick in choice moms. California Cryobank, one of the nation's largest sperm banks, told me they've seen a significant growth in choice-mom clients since the early 2000s, particularly in the past five to eight years. Carole LieberWilkins, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles, told me she's counseled far more choice moms over the last decade than the previous two decades of her practice. Also revealing are surveys that track the age at which women first get pregnant. In 2014, the CDC reported that from 2007 to 2012, birth rates for single mothers over 40 surged by 29 percent.

Sociologists report that "voluntary" single mothers are generally older, mostly white, and better educated and more financially successful than "involuntary" single mothers. This certainly describes most of the 20 women I ended up speaking with by phone — among them are a doctor, two lawyers, and two corporate executives — but not all. I also spoke with several out-of-work actresses, a baker, and a singer-songwriter — which suggests to me that the profile of the choice mom is evolving as quickly as her number rises.

As was the case with Grady, voluntary doesn't necessarily mean Plan A. All but two of the women I spoke with expected they'd start a family the traditional way. Making this life decision required an internal paradigm shift so profound, I've come to think of it as a new phase of human development, like adolescence or the midlife crisis — I call this one the Fairy Tale Revised.

"I used to want to get married so badly, I almost could've married anybody," says Eleni Mandell, 45, the aforementioned singer-song- writer, who lives in Los Angeles. "When you want the fairy tale and you're not getting it, you judge yourself and you feel like everyone's judging you." At 38, she thought she'd found the right guy, but eight months into their relationship, he told her he never wanted to have children, although if she wanted to, he'd support her. "I thought, Are you a mad man?!" she says. They broke up but never grew apart. He helped her assess online sperm donor profiles and was there in the delivery room — an emotional support, if not a financial one. Today, the single mother of 4-year-old twins, Della and Rex, Mandell can't believe her luck. "I grieved the fairy tale ... and came out on the other side," she says. "I'm free. I love my life. I feel at peace. Now I would never marry just anybody."

Among the choice moms I spoke with, Mandell's sense of well-being is the norm. Every woman told me having a child on her own was the best decision she'd ever made, no matter how difficult her day-to-day. Indeed, they were all so upbeat that I began to wonder if solo parenting is a self-selecting endeavor: Only those who are constitutionally positive and optimistic — as well as, in Grady's words, "strong-ass bitches" — pursue this path. Sure enough, research psychologists describe choice moms as independent and mature with high self-esteem, a well-developed capacity to tolerate frustration, and stable family backgrounds (with the caveat that such families are often "complicated" or "nontraditional").

Of course, people who respond to a journalist's requests for interviews are a self-selecting group, invested in presenting a good self-image. Yet, I've come to think that Sasha, 41, a divorced writer and English teacher in Los Angeles, nailed it when she observed that it's how a woman comes to single motherhood that shapes her experience. Last year, after Sasha (who requested that I not use her last name) got pregnant on her first IUI cycle with donor sperm, she started speaking with single mothers in general and "noticed a huge difference in how people talked," she says. "Women whose husbands had bailed on them portrayed being a single mom as very difficult, while those who had chosen it portrayed it as wonderful. I began to see that it's a matter of expectations, which allayed my fears."

The most obvious challenge unique to raising a child solo is being singularly responsible for a small, helpless creature even when you're at your weakest. "When I'm really sick and he's really sick, that's the hardest thing ever," says Andrea Graham, 41, who works at a medical journal in Boston and shares her loft-style (as in, no separate rooms) apartment with her nearly 2-year-old son, Asher. "My enterprise is fragile. If something changes — my job, day care, my apartment — we'll be in a tough situation." Or in the words of Aileen Budow, 46, a communications executive who lives with her 3-year-old son, Greyson, in Manhattan, "You are your child's everything — in good times and in bad. While some might find it overwhelming, for me, it works." And if something happens to her? Experts urge choice moms to secure legal guardianship as early as possible, no matter how painful it is to think about. Budow says that asking her childhood best friend and her husband to assume the role was "filled with emotions, more than I expected, lots of tears for the honor of it, and the reality of the decision."

Across the board, the biggest hardship is money — even before the baby comes. Given the range of factors that determine a woman's ability to conceive, there's no way to plan for how much medical assistance she'll need or how much it will cost. (Of the choice moms I spoke with, only two got accidentally knocked up.) For every woman who was artificially inseminated quickly and cheaply, there's another who had to borrow money to fund what can turn into a head-spinningly escalating process.

Once the child arrives, even the predictable expenses — diapers, babysitters — can take any parent by surprise. Sandy (who asked not to use her last name), 34, a quality representative at a machine shop in rural Louisiana, who paid about $40,000 out-of-pocket to conceive, prides herself on "budgeting to the ground," as she puts it. "God forbid if you or the baby have medical problems. You really need a nest egg, an emergency fund. Day care is, excuse my French, hella expensive.

All the women I interviewed have small children. Rebellious or curious teenagers present all-new issues for choice moms, says LieberWilkins: "Adolescence is a time of identity formation. If a child was conceived through anonymous donor sperm, there is going to be a missing piece that can create an additional layer of wondering in answering the age-old question, who am I?"

Then there's that other most-important consideration, if not the most: a support system. Several choice moms described how the friends who were so available when they were all single together ended up disappearing as soon as the baby appeared. Darbi Howard, 47, the director of operations at a mental-health nonprofit in Oakland, California, bypassed this risk by actively building an all-new support system in her late 30s, before she even started the process of foster adoption. "I set the groundwork for the kind of life I needed. I cleaned house and got rid of 'bad friends,' quit smoking, did more volunteer work, reconnected with my parents," she says. By age 40, when she went to pick up her daughter, Charli, at the hospital the day she was born, she had everything in place. (Four years later, she foster-adopted Charli's newborn brother, Justice.)

To my surprise, although a few choice moms mentioned the occasional loneliness of not being able to discuss her kid with someone who shares the connection, all rhapsodized over the benefits of not having an official co-parent. These include no disagreements about parenting styles, no getting irritated when someone isn't doing their fair share of housework, and nobody to question your choices. That said, most remain on the dating spectrum: not dating yet but hoping to start, actively getting themselves out there, or negotiating a live-in relationship.

Again and again, the women I spoke with described how they'd wanted to be a mother for as long as they could remember and how the urge to get there became so overpowering, it felt less like a rational decision than a compulsion. This conviction — that no matter what, they would have a child — is, I've concluded, the most fundamental common denominator uniting all choice moms.

Which brings us back to my long, dark night of the soul. Probably because I've always been curious about adoption, when I interviewed Stephanie Schroeder, 51, who adopted her daughter, Grace, seven years ago, I confessed that my inquiry into choice motherhood wasn't merely journalistic but also personal: Is this something I could do as well? Schroeder is a lawyer and today holds an executive position at a big entertainment company in Los Angeles. She described how she did extensive research before she made her decision, looking into both foster and domestic adoption and six different international agencies, but all along she had Ethiopia in the back of her mind, which is the country she ended up choosing. "Ethiopia was an emotional choice, then I did the groundwork and found plenty of objective reasons to support it. But on some level, I'd always known that was where I'd adopt from. I can't explain why. It was as if I had this mystical sense that that's where my kid was."

I teared up when she told me this, in part because it's romantic but also because I understood so well what she meant. No matter how much critical thinking I apply to a decision, I always go where my emotions lead me — and wavering, as I've been doing for quite a while now, is, in my case at least, usually a form of saying "no." Schroeder was clear on this front: "If you're still on the fence, you're not ready. You only should do it when you're in a state of mind where you're not making a decision anymore." She added, "You have to want it so badly, you can't stop yourself." Mandell unknowingly echoed the sentiment when she told me, "I often equate being a single mother by choice with being a musician. Just like I couldn't not be a musician, I couldn't not have children."

I feel the same way about writing, living in New York, and certain people in my life — but not about having children.

Possibly, deciding not to have a child is, on an individual/emotional level, as significant as deciding to have one. After reading about New York psychotherapist Jeanne Safer's idea of the "affirmative no" — the refusal to pursue a course of action that is not right for you — I called her to learn more.

Now in her 60s, Safer has been married for nearly four decades — and it took her five years, and a lot of anguish, to decide not to have a child. "I made lists, pro and con, did everything logical I could do. Eventually, I realized: I don't really want to do this, I want to want to do this. That was the turning point. It opened up a whole world of what I was supposed to be and what I really was."

I told her about my tumultuous night of the soul two years ago and asked for her armchair opinion. The first thing she said was, "I'm interested that it hasn't happened again. If that night really stirred up something that needed to come out, you'd be having dreams about it. You'd make love thinking about getting pregnant as a joyous thing."

I still don't know which way I'm leaning on the child question. To complicate matters, after finishing my reporting, I received a medical diagnosis that compromises my ability to become biologically pregnant (without major reproductive-technology assistance). But the more I feel and think my way through the matter, the calmer I become. I'm taking on faith Safer's words: "We grow into our lives. We make decisions that lead to other decisions. All you can do is say: this is who I am now."

Kate Bolick is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and author of the book Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own.

This article was originally published as "Should You Have a Baby on Your Own?" in the June 2015 issue of Cosmopolitan. Click here to get the issue in the iTunes store!