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| Many women choose to raise a child alone in loving home | |
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Date: 03/30/99 By Janet Kinosian It's not exactly the place to look for a revolution. On a Sunday afternoon in Van Nuys, Calif., moms are chatting and kids are playing. Only if you asked somebody would you know that this backyard group is a monthly meeting of a local chapter of Single Mothers by Choice, a national organization of unmarried women who have had or are contemplating having a child on their own. With unconventional families on the rise and social stigmas dropping -- at least for celebrities like Jodie Foster and Madonna -- many women say that short of the traditional ideal of two loving parents, the healthiest environment for a child is to be wanted, to be reared by adults happy with their own lives and to live in a peaceful household. Contrary to common assumptions, of the one in three babies born in the United States to unwed mothers, 60 percent are born to women older than 30. According to the Census Bureau, of all children born in 1993, 6.3 million were born to single women, up from 3.7 million in 1983 and 243,000 in 1960. "It's not an insignificant number, certainly," says Jane Mattes, a single mother of a 19-year-old son and the Manhattan psychologist who started Single Mothers by Choice in 1981. "And despite what many people would like to think, these kids are doing fine." She quotes a recent child-development and adjustment study tracking family structure. As expected, never-divorced couples had the most well-adjusted children. Single mothers were second, Mattes says, followed by divorced parents. The key, Mattes says, is stability. "Loss and disruption of any degree are far more detrimental to children than some sort of abstract or perceived loss. If my son never had a father, there's no person who left him, no ache, no resentment." Her son, Eric, says the father issue "really isn't a big thing" and says he'll be a good father. "I've been given a lot of love by my mom. So I'll know the most important thing -- how to love." "Baby makes two" does seem romantic. No unwanted relationships, bad marriages or divorces. But single motherhood has a slew of complex issues for women to work through. They're concerned with their children's psychological welfare and with the "daddy issue." "It's the one thing I do worry about," says Linda Eisenberg, 42, a single mom who chose to have her son, Seth, 6, by artificial insemination. Eisenberg decided in her late 20s that if she hadn't found her life partner by 35 she would have a child -- alone. "Perhaps this is selfish, but I knew I didn't want to have a relationship with a man simply because he was the father of my child," she says. But Eisenberg says she and others have opted for the anonymous donor mainly because of potential custody problems. Today, even if a man agrees to certain scenarios like waiving his rights, biological parental rights are strong, binding and potentially overriding in most states if parents want to pursue them. "It's a strange dance these women must dance," says Jane Bock, who heads group counseling sessions for members of the Single Mothers by Choice. "After all, if you really look at it, they're proving that women, not men, are the dominant, more important factor in reproduction, and men are becoming less and less needed in the equation." But Bock found single mothers generally far from radical separatists. "Really these women are usually highly traditional, family-oriented women," she says. "They'd not be making the motherhood choice if they weren't. They just want to love and raise a child as best they can." "Murphy Brown moms" are considered a selfish bunch by groups that describe themselves as conservative. Yet one man raised by a series of stepdads sees single mothers as infinite givers. "A single mom presents a child with love, and whoever and however a parent can make a child feel secure, that's all that matters," says Erik Himmelsbach, who has written about his own troubles with three of his mother's husbands. "My mom never felt secure enough to imagine she could do it on her own, and the result was far less for me. Culturally marriage might have been easier for her, but not for me." As time goes on, he says, the rule of thumb will be that good parents are good parents, however they come. "Someone asked me the other day if I thought this was a good way to raise children," Mattes says. "And I told her, `Well, I guess there are worse things for a child to have than an intelligent, capable, mature, loving mother who wants you desperately.' " All content © 1999 The Kansas City Star |
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