Single mothers are constantly asked about the men in their children’s lives. The implication is simple: men are essential to raising children. The reality revealed by my interviews is that—far from trying to create a world without men—single mothers and their children deliberately strive to include them. For this reason, I will pay special attention […]

Fatherlessness is a heated topic in America today. Some observers worry that fatherless families could lead to a generation of children with behavioral prob­lems, to juvenile violence in schools, to adolescent childbearing, and to future economic malaise.1 The executive branch of the U. S. government has proposed marriage incentives in the belief that female-headed households […]

Often women seek out a partnership with the child care provider that mimics family. Those who did found a certain comfort in relationships that more closely resembled a family tie for their children, such as that with a grandmother. While I am using the term grandmother to reflect the gap of age and experience between […]

If there’s one thing I could change about single parenting, it’s the financial bur­den. An extra $10,000 a year net, if I had someone who would sleep on the couch and bring in $10,000, it would be great While conventional lore dictates that middle-class status is established by self — sufficiency through one’s own efforts, […]

After years of being the last person to leave the office, often carrying armloads of work to finish at home, when women become single mothers they would like to be the first to walk out of the building on time and empty-handed. After years of enjoying employment, many women downsize their jobs in order to […]

The sun in all his light and glory was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to direct her own destiny. . . . My hopes also move towards that goal, but I hold that the emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied today, has failed to […]

I wanted a normal child to enter my abnormal life. —Jennifer, known-donor route to motherhood Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Days, based upon his radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, posits a community in which “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average.” In this parody of […]

All women who become first-time mothers begin to see their lives in terms of life before baby and life with baby. For these mothers who adopt children of a different race and culture, this divide between their previous and present lives is further fraught with the process of building a transracial family. They are con­cerned […]

Adopting a child of color catapults women into an experience of scrutinizing and then organizing their lives through a new lens: race. They have never previously seen their whiteness as a socially organizing frame that segregates their public life from those they include in their intimate circle of friends.26 Their status as white women determines […]

Children try to make sense of their situation as they confront definitions of families and life experiences their adoptive mothers can’t control, although mothers are prepared to ease the difference. The experiences their children face are not always ones that their adoptive mothers know firsthand. White mothers have not experienced the same racial discrimination that […]