Lily is not waiting for her biological clock to tick any louder. At 33, she has given up on dating. So she is planning to have a baby on her own next year, via a sperm donor.
While she has told some supportive family members of her plans, the Toronto resident has looked elsewhere for both practical and emotional advice: an online group called Choice Moms.
“I've always felt like an outsider because almost everybody is married with kids, so it's hard for me to find people who understand my feelings,” says Lily, who asked that her full name not be used.
“I feel like I've found people who understand me.”
For women like Lily, the choices never stop. First, you have to choose how you are going to become a mother: adoption, sperm donor or unprotected sex? If it is via a donor, will it be a known donor or anonymous?
Then, there's what to call yourself. Are you a Choice Mom? A Single Mother By Choice?
As a social movement comes of age, this may sound like a branding exercise. But for those on the inside, how you identify yourself is a crucial part of the process.
For one thing, it is difficult to know exactly how many like-minded women are out there – or where to find them. According to Statistics Canada, 25 per cent of births in this country in 2005 were to single women, but the circumstances of those births are not collected. Some may have started out with a co-parent. Still other solo moms may be classified as divorced even though they chose to be parents for the first time post-divorce. So, the demographic pieces itself together from within.
“It's like you're inventing yourself all the time and figuring out what your priorities are and your values are,” says Mikki Morrissette, the author of a new advice book, Choosing Single Motherhood: The Thinking Woman's Guide, who created the label Choice Moms.
She started the Choice Moms website in this last February, and it is now attracting about 2,000 visitors a month. A Yahoo message board she started a few years ago has about 800 regular members. She is hoping to find more. “There's a lot of us out there, we just don't know it,” she says.
Ms. Morrissette is the new solo mom on the block. A group called Single Mothers by Choice is considered the godmother of the genre. It was founded in 1981 by U.S. psychologist Jane Mattes and runs support groups across North America.
Ms. Morrissette, a journalist and mother of two who lives in Minneapolis, credits Ms. Mattes and her work for boosting the acceptability of going it alone. But she thought it could use a fresh moniker. She coined the term Choice Moms when she was writing her book because it was shorter. More importantly, it dropped the word “single,” mention a major distinction for followers.
“A lot of people think we chose to be single,” Lily says. “We didn't. We ended up single through circumstances and we're choosing to be mothers.” (And for Ms. Morrissette, that is not how it ended up. She met her husband when pregnant with her second child, now 4.)
The Choice Moms parameters are otherwise fairly rigid. Ms. Morrissette mostly serves women using sperm donors, but welcomes women who adopt, women who accidentally become pregnant, and single lesbians.
However, she admits she has turned women away if they started with a partner but are now single: “It's a completely different beast. There are different emotions.” Choice Moms don't grapple with child support or custody, for instance.
