It may not be everyone’s vision of maternal bliss, but for more and more women, single parenthood is not some “alternative” lifestyle. Despite growing recognition by social scientists that children do better in two-parent homes, the number of women going it alone jumped by 60 percent in the last decade, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released this month. Put another way, nearly a quarter of never-married 18-to 44-year-olds–3.9 million in all–have had at least one child. And though mothers like Pfeifer–older, professional, financially stable and emotionally independent–are only a tiny fraction of the whole, the dramatic rise in their ranks reflects a fundamental shift in how we view marriage. Especially for women who can afford it, marriage is no longer necessary. “What is uniquely associated with being married?” asks University of Wisconsin sociologist Larry L. Bumpass. “In our culture, it was sexual privilege-co-residence, having children. We’re seeing each of those traditional benefits of marriage being progressively separated.”
The uptick in single parenthood dates to the mid-1970s, when women started making enough money to support children without husbands, but the latest statistics underscore how widespread it has become. The sharpest increases are among white women (up from 6.7 percent in 1982 to 14.6 percent now), college-educated women (from 3 to 6.4 percent) and professionals (up from 3 to 8.3 percent). In absolute numbers, their significance is small-by contrast, about half of never-married mothers are black women, women who have less than a high-school education and women who aren’t working. But symbolically, the repercussions are seismic. It’s one thing to dismiss single parenthood as the act of petulant teenagers; it’s another to ignore professionals having babies alone.
But are these Murphy Browns any less self-absorbed than teens? “It’s really an extreme ego statement to say a single woman can do it by herself,” says Jeanne Kavanaugh, 42, an unmarried Chicago teacher whose son, Matthew, is 8. Though most women say they’d prefer to marry first, that’s not always realistic. For women who define marriage as an emotional and economic partnership, there are too few marriageable men. For others, the biological clock overrides social convention. Kavanaugh remembers how she celebrated as relatives announced their pregnancies and struggled with her own “deep drive” for a child. “I was a white, college-educated woman. I thought, ‘Why not?”’
While this may be the first generation of women with the economic viability and social muscle to embrace single parenthood on a large scale, that doesn’t make day-to-day existence any easier. Perhaps the greatest problem is the burdensome loneliness that begins the moment the home pregnancy test turns blue. “I used to think I wanted a partner for the hard times, like when the baby’s sick all night,” says Jane Bernstein, 34, a Seattle naturopathic student with a 22-month-old son. “But now I feel a lot of pain when nobody’s there to share the joyful times. Like the other day when Peter learned ‘When You’re Happy and You Know It’ and was running through the house singing and clapping.”
Avoiding isolation is sometimes as much work as the baby. Jane Saks, 46, a West Newton, Mass., management consultant with a 4-month-old adopted daughter, took an activist approach: she had another single .mom move into her home so they could share child care, as well as rent. “It took me a long time to find the right person, to find a compatible roommate with a compatible child-rearing style and child.”
Despite the controversy set off last year when Dan Quayle blasted TV’s Murphy Brown for “mocking the importance of fathers, " most unmarried mothers say they’re rarely criticized–at least overtly–for their choice. Parents whom they expect to be furious support them. Employers treat their child-care problems no differently from any other mother’s. If there’s any reaction, says Pfeifer, it’s from men. “That’s a role they play in the world, and that’s one more role we might take away from them.”
The greatest burden of single parenthood falls on the children. As research increasingly shows, children reared in one-parent families tend to have more educational, emotional and financial difficulties than those who grow up with two parents. Since the problems are often economic, some of the effects may be eased for children of well-educated, middle-class women. Psychologist Anna Beth Benningfield argues that children can accept any situation as normal, as long as there’s a strong sense of family. Though Saks would have preferred a more conventional setup, she believes it makes little difference in an era of sky-high divorce rates. “I felt as long as so many children were growing up in single-parent households anyway, it would be an advantage to be the child of a single parent,” rather than feel “tom” between two sides. What is critical is how mother responds when her child asks: where’s Dad? Says Syracuse University professor Alice Honig, “What will happen when the child feels the deep neediness for his father?…On the other hand, how can you stop this person from her deep neediness to have a child?”
But how do unmarried women find male role models? Often, it’s easy to cling to just anyone. Marilyn Levin fell into the trap when she was dating a man and her 6-year-old, Cate, began fantasizing that he would become her dad. “I explained that it wasn’t enough that she really liked someone for me to marry him,” said Levin, 49, of Winthrop, Mass. That, in a sense, leaves many women where they started-accepting that there’s no “rescue” by Prince Charming. “You realize from the beginning that [you’re] all that’s going to be there,” says Pfeifer. Though her daughter’s father is involved in his child’s life, Pfeifer says, “It’s just you in the delivery room. It’s just you going home with that baby…You have to realize you’re in charge of everything, and that’s the way it’s always going to be.” For many, the only thing worse than the responsibility of raising a child alone would be the prospect of not having a child at all.
