The day after the healthiest relationship of my life ended, I went online and bought some sperm.
I haven’t had a lifelong desire to be a mother. But when I hit 36, I realized that once my parents pass, my already small family will shrink to nothing. There was some power in deciding to have a child by myself, but I mostly felt alone — I was the only single person in my friend group, and I didn’t know anyone else who had pursued this path. I felt like the world’s biggest loser for not attracting someone who wanted a family with me.
Support came from my sperm bank’s newsletter, of all places, which recommended a podcast called “The Single Greatest Choice” hosted by Katie Bryan, another single mother by choice. And like me, she’s based in Austin. At the time, I was going through fertility treatments and felt like no one understood my situation. Hearing Bryan echo everything I was feeling in her own words, on her own podcast, made me sob with relief.
In 2018, Bryan was 36 and had just started dating someone promising when she took an at-home fertility test on a whim. She was shocked when it indicated she might have diminished fertility. She rushed to freeze her eggs but retrieved fewer than expected, and she went into a tailspin as the pressure of a ticking fertility clock went from perceived to actual. That promising relationship imploded from the pressure, she said, so she began trying to get pregnant on her own.
“It was such a mind fuck,” Bryan told me in a phone interview. “I couldn’t find anybody talking about this. I wanted motherhood so badly, but not like this. I was so sad that that was going to be my life — but I didn’t know what else to do.”
When the pandemic hit two years later, Bryan got pregnant through in vitro fertilization. Stuck at home, she dragged out the podcasting equipment she’d bought for her full-time job, but instead, her fertility story poured out. Before launching her podcast, Bryan couldn’t find the resources she wanted in online groups. Now she offers them, covering myriad journeys to motherhood along with expert interviews on topics like fertility, the plethora of legal and administrative considerations involved in single parenthood, and financial planning. As her platform grew, she began helping others find their path to parenthood through coaching.
“Statistically, the men we’re waiting for don’t exist.”
I reached out to Bryan as soon as I found her podcast, and she added me to a WhatsApp group full of other women in Austin who either were already single mothers by choice or were considering the same path.
It was a revelation. I was surprised by how many people were in the group, but maybe I shouldn’t have been.
You’ve likely seen that dating sucks these days, especially for women. Especially in Austin, a city where men are 549% more likely to ghost their dates. A recent book, “Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs,” posits that as more women than men attain higher education, they seek an equal partner and then can’t find him. Some women freeze their eggs in an attempt to buy more time — though it’s far from a guarantee — but at a certain point, you have to make a decision.
Katie Comer, a business development representative I met through the WhatsApp group, chose solo motherhood for reasons similar to my own. When her partner wouldn’t commit to having a child, she became single at 37 in a city infamous for “Peter Pan” men who don’t want serious relationships.
“I did the apps,” Comer told me. “I hired a matchmaking service. Friends set me up with people. I went on so many dates.” At 40, she decided to have a child on her own. “Finally I was like, ‘This is ridiculous. I’ve done everything that I can do to try to meet my Mr. Right, and it’s not working.’”
“I can’t imagine spending this limited amount of time for myself — which is already not enough — trying to fulfill the emotional needs of another adult.”
If the age of kids in the WhatsApp group is any indication, COVID-19 and the subsequent lack of in-person dating was a significant catalyst to pursue solo motherhood for many women. “We were in a pandemic, I’d just turned 38, and there wasn’t a man in sight,” Kate Koscheski, a single mother by choice and a paralegal at a family law firm, told The Barbed Wire.
It’s hard to pin down the number of single mothers by choice in the U.S., as most surveys do not differentiate between single parents by choice or by chance (interested researchers: call me). However, signs point to more women pursuing it as an option, and trend pieces abound. Cryo sperm bank reports 50% of their clients are single mothers by choice, and that the number is rising. According to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, around 2,500 people froze their eggs in 2012, the first year it was widely available. In 2022, that number was 29,803.
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Bryan said her coaching clients with hesitations about solo parenting generally fall into two camps: those who are processing the grief, sadness, and perceived shame of having a child without a partner; and those who worry about finances and logistics — like affording fertility treatments or caring for a child on their own.
It’s hard to get past the idea that not having a partner means there’s something wrong with you, and finding this community of fun, normal women helped me see that. “It took me 39 years to begin the process of decentering men from my life and dismantling the belief of what it takes to make a family,” added Koscheski. In fact, as it turns out, at least one study shows that children of single mothers by choice do just as well developmentally as those in a two-parent household.
“Statistically, the men we’re waiting for don’t exist,” said Bryan, citing research from “Motherhood on Ice,” in which author Marcia C. Inhorn discusses the “mating gap” in the context of her groundbreaking findings from the largest anthropological study to-date about egg-freezing. As she put it: “It is intimidating to be a woman that doesn’t actually need a man and is only open to an equal partnership. But I don’t think the solution is for us to pretend otherwise. I think the solution is for men to get their shit together.”
Still, now that I have a toddler, I can confirm that the logistics of single motherhood are tough. There are so many tasks that require little more than another warm body: someone to carry luggage while traveling, someone to watch the monitor so you can leave the house after 7:30 p.m., someone to take out the trash. Comer recalled one time when her toddler had a stomach bug and threw up on the kitchen floor, where it stayed for eight hours while Comer focused on comforting her child. “I could clean up the throw up later,” explained Comer. “You gotta just roll with it.”
Of course, there is more to long for than the bare minimum. We all like to think we’ll choose a supportive partner who loves us and our child, who will be helpful in the trenches and doldrums of parenting, not to mention provide supplemental income. Someone to share the burden of sick days, to be hands-on with scheduling doctor appointments or cooking meals, to hug us when it’s hard, and to tell us we’re doing a good job. Hell, most of the time I just want another adult to talk to.
But having a partner is not always an advantage — it doesn’t necessarily make parenting easier or better for a lot of women, and that’s before considering the prevalence of domestic violence against women. (Pregnant women are more likely to be killed by homicide than hypertension, hemorrhage, or sepsis.) Comer described an interaction between a couple she knows: The wife wanted to discuss a parenting strategy, and the husband took it as a personal criticism and then needed to be consoled. “I can’t imagine spending this limited amount of time for myself — which is already not enough — trying to fulfill the emotional needs of another adult,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll get married down the line and I’ll love him very much. But my daughter is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I see divorce and custody battles every day, and there is nothing that makes me more grateful for this path I’ve chosen,” said Koscheski, a paralegal. “I would have to share decision-making rights with someone I no longer want anything to do with.” In fact, all three women who spoke to me cited getting to make all the parenting decisions as the biggest advantage of being a single mother by choice, describing it as both empowering and liberating.
The vast majority of solo moms I know are not dating — but they don’t miss it. In fact, some find it laughable to consider. “The Kate that used to date men is not Kate the mother. And I wonder if they can coexist,” said Koscheski. “You’ve created a special bond with this little person and it’s hard to bring someone in from the outside. I want to focus on being a mom, healing myself through being a mom, and I don’t want any disruption from a man.”
All three women also emphasized the importance of planning backup, even when coordinating it can be a headache. Every parent becomes incapacitated at some point, and seeking out and allowing others to help you is necessary, particularly in the turmoil of the early postpartum period. All three women have family available to help — Koscheski lives with her mother, and Comer’s parents bought a townhouse in Austin. Bryan’s dads used to live down the street and still see her son monthly.
Bryan said many of her clients approach motherhood like they are preparing for war, and not enough people talk about the joy of being a solo mother. “I don’t know if it’s just the type of overthinker, overachiever that’s drawn to solo motherhood,” she said. “But I’ve been surprised by how much of it is not hard. And how natural it feels to have this little person with me all the time. I’m not saying it’s not challenging, but I’m laughing more than I’ve ever laughed. I’m having more fun, and I’m more at peace.”
Koscheski often encourages other young women to explore the path she and I have taken, adding that women can find love at any age, but fertility is finite. “I want women especially to know how empowering and invigorating it is to choose this route to motherhood,” she said. “If you want that baby, there is nothing stopping you from trying.”
“Maybe I’ll get married down the line and I’ll love him very much,” said Comer. “But my daughter is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
After two years of fun (not really) medical procedures, I had a son on my own. My experience differs in some ways from the women I talked to: with perhaps unfounded optimism, I am still dating. I often feel weighed down by having to make all the decisions, and, maybe because I am fairly new to parenting, I still get frustrated by a set of neverending what-ifs. If only my son had another set of grandparents to help out, if only I had a husband who could watch him while I run to the gym, if only I didn’t have to do this alone.
But what I’ve come to realize is that parenting is never done alone. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently said that parenting, at its best, is a team sport. I see that in the myriad people who have become wrapped into our lives. My son has an “auntie” who watches the monitor while I get groceries at night and comes over with her dog to give me a mental break. He has “uncles” who comment on every picture and ask for more. He has “cousins” from my parenting group that he’ll grow up with. And of course, he and I now have a community of other strong women who made this same choice.
Right now, he doesn’t have a dad. But he has a whole universe of family.