Do I or Don't I???

I have just recently made my decision not to become an SMC. I should also preface this by saying that I came to this quandary late. I am 46.

Letting go of the dream of having a traditional family, i.e. a husband and kids, is a very big deal for most women. That's probably one of the first steps in deciding to become an SMC. And that's a rough one. I always had this assumption that it would happen, so it was hard to face the fact that it might not just "happen." What if it doesn't? How could it not? How long do I wait?

All kinds of people meet their mates and start families. My confidence about myself as an attractive, smart and lovable woman is a bit tangled up in that dream. I never wanted to visit the possibility that it might not happen. It's negative. It goes against the idea of having faith. But as time went on, I had to start to untangle my sense of self and my specific hopes from that dream. And I thought long and hard about starting my non-traditional family on my own. But for me it was also the ease of a traditional family that I needed-- having someone else to share in everything--emotionally, practically, financially. And lucky me, I'd finally found that -- a partner to share in everything -- it's just that he already has teenage kids, and is not up for any more.

At age 36 (had I seriously considered this then) my decision could have gone the other way. I always trusted that I would meet that fella I wanted to share my life with; I just assumed it would happen sooner than it did. I was never willing to go it alone...until the point when it became very real that I may never have children if I didn't do it as an SMC.

So I weighed everything-- financial feasibility, flexibility, willingness to make whatever change necessary, priority of motherhood, etc. For me, the partnership with a soul mate always came first. That may not be the case for everyone. You could go ahead and become an SMC and then meet someone afterward (there does come a time when the age appropriate men who are looking for age appropriate women aren't necessarily looking to become a first time dad, and would welcome someone who's already got a child).

It's so hard to know. And yes it's scary, it's a huge leap of faith, but as they say, with great risk comes great reward. I would encourage everyone to read as much as possible, and to talk to as many women as you can who have gone through this before making a decision. The women in this group are a fabulous resource.

Martha

My Journey to Motherhood via Adoption

I am single by choice. Did you know weird girls in high school who never wanted to get married (and/or have children)? That was me. I had my own philosophy about what marriage does to a woman's career choice and trajectory, self esteem, independence, you name it. My mother worried I'd never "get a man" with that attitude.

Though I knew I didn't want to marry, I was on the fence about becoming a parent. I put it that way because I never wanted to birth a baby. I always knew that I wanted to become a parent through adoption. At the age of 40 - two failed marriages later - I recognized I did indeed want to be a mom. So I dated while preparing to begin the adoption process.

Like many of us, I went the online dating route. My criteria were pretty strict: no kids, wanted or would consider having kids, age difference no more than +/- 5 years. It seems that most men in their late 30s/early 40s seek younger women if they want kids. One even said, "I like you, but I really want kids, and I don't know whether you'll be able to produce them." I chuckled and advised him to get a health check from a "young breeder" because age doesn't guarantee a woman can conceive or deliver a baby.

Anyway, I met a wonderful man (4 yrs my junior). His profile listed "undecided" in the kid category, but he said during our second date that he was leaning more toward no kids. We talked about my adoption plan during that date. I was very clear that I wasn't looking for a co-parent. Fast-forward two years when I informed him that I was beginning the adoption process. I gave him the opportunity to bail before the madness started. He just laughed.

Now, 4 months and 1 day into being a single parent at the age of 44, I know I did everything just right! I have an amazingly beautiful baby *and* an incredible boyfriend. I am a single mom by choice! I should have stuck with Plan A all along!

Joy

Seeking Happily Ever After

Are Women Redefining the Fairytale?
By Michelle Cove

Three years ago, I was sitting with my friend Becky at a coffee shop talking about how lame the media was when it came to reporting the rise of single women. Sure they were reporting accurate U.S. Census numbers (such as New York Times’ 2007 posting that 51 percent of adults are now single). But in terms of reflecting who these women are and what they think about, they were totally off the mark. For the most part, single women in their 30s and older are portrayed as desperate to marry.

Ever year, a gaggle of women battle one another for a wedding proposal from one man (a stranger) on “The Bachelor.” In today’s hottest sitcoms, single 30-something women act like mindless fools to get a date. “Emma” in “Glee” spent a whole season mooning over the married Mr. Scheuster; “Liz” on 30-Rock planned a root canal for herself on Valentine’s Day so she wouldn’t have to deal with being alone.

Is this really how single women act and feel?

Hell, no. That’s why award-winning producer Kerry David and I have made the feature-length documentary Seeking Happily Ever After: One generation’s struggle to redefine the fairytale. (www.seekinghappilyeverafter.com). We wanted to find out from women across the country how they really feel about being a single woman today. Do they see being single as a choice? Do they feel desperate? Do they want to marry? What do they think about becoming a single mom?

While it’s certainly true that plenty of women are redefining happily ever after (by opting not to marry for various reasons), most of the single women we interviewed do want to get married and have babies. But what’s different about “happily ever after” today is that these women are not willing to settle for the wrong guy. They are the exact opposite of “desperate”; they feel good enough about themselves to wait until the right guy comes along, no matter how long it takes. In fact, headlines from The Washington Post last week reported that there are now more women giving birth after age 35 than there are teen moms giving birth (hear, hear!).

And if the right guy doesn’t come along at all, most of the single women I interviewed said they will find a new path towards happiness. As the main character we follow in our film puts it, “You can have several happy endings for yourself, and happily ever after is putting the steps in place to get to any of those endings.” Now there’s a single 30-something woman in the media women can cheer for…

Michelle Cove is the Director and a Producer of the feature-length documentary Seeking Happily Ever After, and the author of Seeking Happily Ever After: How to navigate the ups and downs of being single without losing your mind, which will be published this September by Tarcher/Penguin.

The Back-Up Plan - not that one

Lately, the subject of single mothers by choice has been all over the media because of a movie that recently came out, starring Jennifer Lopez, in which her character becomes pregnant with the help of an anonymous sperm donor, only to fall in love with Mr. Right immediately afterward. I haven’t seen the movie, and, as a “real” single mother by choice, I’ll never have the time to see it, but I have viewed some of the recent TV news stories and discussions about it. And while it’s nice to have a celebrity like J-Lo showing single women that they do have options, I can’t say this movie is anything like my life—nor is “back-up plan” an appropriate term for the process by which I came to have Jayda.

I never pictured myself as a single mom; but then again, I didn’t always picture myself as a mom, period. Unlike some of my friends who were always talking about having babies during their 20s and 30s, I said things like, “I’ll have kids if I marry a guy who I know will be a great dad, and who really wants to have kids,” but I wasn’t obsessed with being a mother at all. I wasn’t even comfortable around children, and didn’t think they liked me very much. In fact, before I had Jayda, I’d never changed a diaper, and could count on the fingers of one hand how many babies I’d actually held. And yet, as soon as the nurses put my newborn child on my chest, I knew I was put in this world to be Jayda’s mom and care for her.

There was a point in my mid-30s when I had an epiphany and realized that I’d be incomplete if I never had a child, and that I’d just been suppressing my desires for fear of never meeting Mr. Right. I was flooded with maternal feelings and became baby-obsessed almost overnight. It took a lot of thought and planning to have Jayda (as well as plenty of drugs and monitoring and money, since I didn’t get pregnant on the first try like J-Lo’s character did in her movie), and I can hardly allude to the process as a back-up plan. “Back-up” to me implies second-best, and having Jayda was an ideal plan for me, because I can’t imagine my life without my amazing daughter in it.

Unlike J-Lo’s character, I didn’t find Mr. Right while I was pregnant (though I did date during the first two trimesters), and I still haven’t found him now that Jayda is about to turn three. But that doesn’t trouble me at all, and I hate the implication that a woman “needs” a man to be a good mother. Or that having a husband is always the ideal “plan.”

Most of my friends did find their Mr. Rights before they had children—or at least they found someone whom they thought was the man they’d be with forever—and I can’t say their lives are all better than mine. A few of my friends are going through nasty divorces now—and are battling over custody issues. Several others actually married someone as their “back-up plan”—fully knowing the man wasn’t exactly what they wanted or needed in their lives—but rushed to settle down because they felt their clocks were ticking. Those friends (and their spouses) are all pretty miserable. And then there are my friends who are happily married (or at least appear to be), but just about all of them admit that having a husband is a lot of work, and they’re forced to divide their attention between their children and their man. There’s nothing wrong with that—and I know having a good husband is a worthwhile investment—but I can’t say that these women’s children are thriving more than mine is…or that the moms are so much happier than I am. We’re all just experiencing life the way it happened to us…and most of us are realizing that you can’t plan everything, especially when it comes to being a mom.

Plan A…Plan B. What’s the difference? Life is what we make of it—and just because our lives aren’t as we always pictured them, doesn’t mean they’re second-best. Mine certainly isn’t. It isn’t movie-perfect, either, but I don’t really know anyone whose life is.

Jamie jmlny@aol.com

Did You Feel That?

Just when I think I am a absolute freak of nature, defying all sorts of social standards and practices (usually by going under, and not over, the bar) something transpires that speaks to me, saying “Tara, you are *not* so bizarre or unique after all.” So, there. I cannot promise I’ll share anything like that with you today, but I’m just saying…

Being a member of SMC has been one of the most valuable and meaningful aspects of my life. Although I am awkward to connect and put out disjointed, sporadic posts on the email lists, the generous, informative women who share a listserve help to alleviate my seemingly irrational feelings or quell the ridiculous tsunamis of fear in which I try to keep above the water. Some of the concerns I see on the listserve are internally referred to as “Standard Issue Issues”- pretty much every SMC, thinking, trying or otherwise, seems to have some feelings about them, though responses may vary from the passionate, frothing types, to the wispy, lighthearted jesting of women who seem to take most things in perfect stride.

These standard issue issues come up, one in particular, year after year, in one form or another, and quite frankly, when I see it, I get that “freak factor” feeling all over again. When I say this, I feel I should be locked away in a garden shed, possibly with a beard, drawing up a handwritten 200 page manifesto, but I never, really, could picture myself having a child or a family in any type of relationship. I remember that even as a young child, the idea of being married or partnered with kids, just felt, well, yucky. I tried, oh how I tried, but it just never “clicked” for me. I was never opposed to the idea of marriage, I just never felt I had what it took to pull one off.

I always loved kids, though I didn’t think about them in a maternal way until I was about 24.While sitting in my mom and dad’s kitchen one day, chatting on the phone, I heard a little girl’s agonizing, dramatic scream. I found the girl, maybe about 6 or 7 years old, splayed out on the sidewalk, tightly gripping her Polly Pockets which had left angry, red indentations in the palm of one of her hands. I casually asked if she was okay, and through the tears she nodded. I then casually asked if she needed help getting up and again she nodded as I nonchalantly held out a hand for her to grab and pull herself up. She looked at it as though it was some mutant alien she saw in a horror movie. Uh-uh. She didn’t want a hand or arm, she wanted a ‘bear hug-lift me gently’ type of job. So I obliged. As I lifted her, arms encircling this child, I can only describe what transpired as a heavenly, divine intervention. Maybe it was a rush of blood to the head or out of control hormones, but I felt a hot, searing rush of joy, lightness and purpose. I cannot say what it was, but it was something big. And I was never the same. My mother chuckled and snorted when I told her, but I knew it was BIG.

I never grieved the loss of a dream- the white dress, the vows, the passionate love- I never *had* that dream. My parents, though deeply and passionately in love now, had one hell of a marriage- it was a twisted wreck of tears, control, abuse and constant fights. I can easily say that had nothing to do with my choice, but maybe on some deep, cleverly disguised level, it did. I honor those horrible years of my life by working against the principal of a miserable home filled with fearful, exhausted occupants.

I was 28 when I decided to have a baby a la carte. My mom and dad, in a word, went ballistic. They were scared, frantic, and desperate for me, and I didn’t blame them. I was scared for me, too. I remember the process of deciding was excruciating, though- could I pay for diapers, daycare, formula, clothes and a million other things while working full time with a high powered publisher?

I remember the fear covering me like a heavy, wet blanket at first. As I learned more, that ‘blanket’ got lighter and lighter, finally ‘drying’ out and lifting away. My turning point came when I called a local daycare and discovered that I could, indeed, afford to send my baby there. Thankfully, I was pregnant shortly after beginning the TTC process and celebrated my 30th birthday knocked up.

I am young by SMC standards, I know. My pieces fell into place at a young age- a house at 27, a great career and then, well, a baby by 30. I have all sorts of strange, quirky regrets in life, but having a child is not one of them. She is 8 now, sometimes gets wound up over not having a daddy, but we get by. Sometimes I want to pack up my cats and go live under a quiet bridge with no responsibility, but I like to think that the rush of blood to my head that long ago day did lead to something good.

Tara