This is an in-depth, audiotaped, interview study of sixty-hve single mothers who were over the age of twenty when they had their first child and were economi­cally self-sufficient at the time of the interview.1 Initially, I was interested in the decision-making processes that led to older women becoming single mothers and whether or not fathers […]

This study was triggered by a small but intriguing advertisement in a Brookline, Massachusetts, community newspaper. The headline read “SINGLE ISSUES.” It went on: Is single motherhood for me? 9 sessions on decision-making for women whose biological clock is ticking. Explore single parenting options vs. childfree living. Call Jane Smith at. . . The ad […]

Below are short summaries of women featured in the book. This appendix is meant to connect featured women with basic demographic information, details too cumbersome to include in the body of the book. All women have been given pseudonyms, and I have changed certain details for some women to protect their identity, such as sex […]

These women’s stories had changed much, much more than I ever expected. Hearing the new ways women explained their lives and choices today made them alive for me once again, not simply subjects with paper transcripts. It is no secret that life does not always turn out as planned, and in many ways, this reality […]

When I asked women over the phone about major life changes since we last spoke, many of them told me of their anticipation for life after children. By the time I called them for the update, women had begun to think about their lives once hard-won children left home, heading for college. Preparation for the […]

Joy McFadden, whose story opens the book, had reorganized her life to better accommodate the growing number of baseball, basketball, and soccer games that occupied a substantial portion of her children’s time. One of the few women to have two children when first interviewed, she preferred to be in the cheering sec­tion at those games […]

During the winter of 2005 I called all the women I had interviewed at least four years previously.1 As many had only been in the beginning stages of family building at the time of the first interview, I asked them how their lives had changed in the intervening years. When we had first talked, most […]

High-tech science, such as parthenogenesis, may be slow to reach the masses, but families created without dads are here now. As this book has discussed, the place of men is already being questioned by these women, and the best conclusion many can muster is that men are a luxury item. For children without dads, mothers […]

Middle-class single mothers are here to stay. However, the future is less about women who chanced pregnancy or chose adoption and more about donor-assisted families. These women are challenging norms of both family and reproduction. While it is news that single motherhood has moved into the middle class, and important legally that these women are […]

How better to circumvent the power of the new women than with the idea of mothering not as care but as creation. Every moment for children is a teachable moment—and every moment missed is the measure of a lousy mom. —Anna Quindlen No woman in this study wants to be called a “lousy mom,” especially […]