Our babies, ourselves

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 21, 1999 | by Julia Duin

More single women are becoming mothers through artificial insemination or adoption. The process is costly, and critics say fatherless children have more problems as they mature.

Finding themselves at the edge of their fertility, a growing number of middle-class single women are making the same choice: motherhood.

The ranks of single women wishing to become mothers are swelling by leaps and bounds. According to the U.S. census, nearly one-quarter of the nation's never-married women have become mothers, a 60 percent jump during the last decade. The largest increases were among white women and college-educated women, particularly those with professional and managerial jobs.

These are not Murphy Browns carelessly getting pregnant but middle-class career women who say their lives are incomplete without children. Most are women for whom Prince Charming never arrived.

"It's a growing choice for a lot of single, older, professional career women,' says Jane Mattes, founder of the New York-based Single Mothers by Choice and author of the 1994 book by the same name. "They can always marry later on -- and significant numbers do -- but they need to tend to this first because of their biological clocks."

The typical woman in her 4,000-member organization is in her mid to late thirties and willing to take out a second mortgage on her house and borrow from family and friends to gather the $12,000 to $15,000 needed to adopt a child or pay for donor insemination. "The average process takes several years to work up the nerve, the resolve and the finances," says Judy Katz, coproducer and codirector of And Baby Makes Two, a new film on single mothering. "These women think about it so hard. They have to be prepared and get their finances in order to where they are more prepared than many married couples."

The film will be released June 25 in New York and shown this fall on PBS. It traces two years in the lives of a support group of eight New York women, all of whom are trying to become mothers.

One is Jan, a Manhattan psychotherapist left bereft at age 39 when her boyfriend dies. She turns to donor insemination at age 41 -- although her mother, Rosemarie, has serious reservations. "Artificial insemination is so alien to me and to all the values of giving your child a father," says Rosemarie. "You know what it's like to grow up without a daddy. Is that what you want to give to a child?"

"I would love to have a father for this child and I hope to," Jan answers. "But if it's that -- artificial insemination or not a child at all -- I don't have great options. I never wanted to be a single mom. This was not my first choice."

Oren Rudavsky, codirector for the film, believes society misunderstands these women. "One assumption people jump to is somehow these women who are single are more selfish for wanting a child of their own than a couple," he says. "Most of them, I think, never thought they would never marry. It was a big disappointment in the lives of these women. These aren't lesbians or radically antimale in any shape or form."

He airs one opposing viewpoint from writer and social critic Lisa Schiffren. "There's a tremendous narcissistic element to making a decision to bring a child into this world without a father," says Schiffren. "The bottom line is the child and what's good for the child."

Her remarks are paired with those of feminist Gloria Steinem, who points out no one would condemn these would-be mothers if they had become pregnant through rape or were abandoned by a husband. "It's okay for women to be victims," she says with some sarcasm. "It's not okay for women to affirmatively choose what they want to do."

Chosen or not, single motherhood is no easy ride, maintains Wade Horn of the National Fatherhood Initiative: "Studies show that regardless of income, kids without fathers are at greater risk for just about every danger you can imagine: failure at school, emotional or behavior problems, trouble with the law, teen pregnancy, and they're four to five times more likely to commit suicide."

Only a few men are adopting as single fathers, admits Rudavsky. "I think that says something about men and women, either that women are brought up to be mothers or they have that need, emotionally or biologically."

Of the eight women profiled in the film, all become mothers. But one woman, who becomes pregnant through donor insemination, discovers her fetus has Down's syndrome. She aborts it and later adopts a girl from Guatemala.

As for Jan, she flies to China to adopt an 8-month-old girl (after 10 failed attempts by artificial insemination and $18,000 in medical bills). "About a million baby girls are abandoned each year in China," she says. "They have a one-child policy and they prefer the boys. All of us who've been there wish we could help the girls we left behind. My family is thrilled. They absolutely adore the baby."