Single Mother by Chocie Archives - Single Mothers by Choice

Meditations on Choosing Single Motherhood

I was interviewing a parenting expert who has written over 23 books on parenting and appears on shows like Dr. Phil and The Today Show about disciplining the preverbal toddler, when I decided to just go ahead and ask her, the expert, what she thought about women who intentionally choose to have a child on their own, a child who would be brought into the world without a biological father.

I did this, I thought, because I want to write about how children of SMC moms fair compared to the conventional mom-dad household (which is actually pretty non-existent today anyway), but after hearing her response, I was surprised by the way I felt. Basically she iterated what many SMC moms who have written on the subject say. I’m paraphrasing here but she said women who plan to have a child are committed to parenting and any kid with a parent … Continue reading

Choices

I recently got together with some folks, including a single mother by choice (SMC) who is a full-time mom and her delightful 14 month old son. She was clearly relishing being his mom, and he was equally clearly adoring her. When we got to chatting a bit, she confided to me that she was feeling a little bit guilty about how much she was enjoying being a mother. After all, she said, didn’t the women of earlier generations go through a lot in order for women to have the right to be liberated from being “just mothers”? Was it okay for her to WANT to spend her time being a mom? And to enjoy it so much?

Having been one of those women whose consciousness was raised in the tumultuous sixties, I pondered her question for a moment, and then remembered — it was all about CHOICE. We believed that … Continue reading

Me, My Mother, and My Children

I called my mother last night. Something I generally do a few times a week, but have done less often in the last month or two. I just don’t feel like talking once I get the kids to bed. But I called her.

My mother was a good mom. I never ever ever doubted her love for me. Even when she told me, in so many words, that “she didn’t really like me right now”. As the oldest of 3, I think I carried a lot of responsibility. Some of it placed on me (mommy’s little helper, type things), and some of it just my internalization of my role in the family. My parents were somewhat free-range, pretty normal for the 70s. I had no actual needs that went unmet, but there also wasn’t lots of extra money, until I was in the middle of high school.

But my mom … Continue reading

He’s All Mine

Mine. All mine.

Now that Elliot and I are out and about town, we often meet strangers who like to have a look inside the bassinet and see who’s in there. I like to watch them smile when they meet him. He makes me smile and so when he makes randoms smile too, I think how happy the world would be if I could bottle his smile and give it away. Pretty sappy, I know. Also, I can’t wait for the days when he is big enough to have on my hip. I have always had a nice image of that in my mind. Though he weighs a ton, he’s just too little for that. If he’s out of the stroller, he is up against my shoulder, where he likes to snuggle in, look at the world and be adorable. Thankfully nobody has tried to touch him, I would bite … Continue reading

All Kinds of Choices

I was a divorced 44 year old woman, busy, happy, fulfilled. Had my own business, loved the freedom, I used to say it was no coincidence that I didn’t have a boss or a husband, or that I drove a stick shift car — I liked to be in control! I was in an on-again-off-again relationship with a great guy who (ironically) I thought was too busy with his sons from a previous marriage to devote enough time to ME (!), and we were in an “off” period. I got on Match.com, and met and briefly dated another guy, it was honestly just a 6 week fling, he was not someone I was interested in long-term, he was really just to get my mind off the OTHER guy! As I said, I was 44, I knew the facts of life. But given my age, and the fact that many friends … Continue reading

Fear

The other night, I climbed up the stairs to crawl into bed. Tate was snoozing away in his crib, and I had decided to sleep in our shared room that evening. I shut the bedroom door, locked it as I always do when we sleep in the same room, and turned on my burglar alarm (there’s a panel in my bedroom as well as on the first floor in the entryway). When we go to sleep I set the alarm to instant, so any breach of the doors or windows causes the alarm to sound immediately instead of waiting the 45 seconds it has when simply set to ‘alarm.’

I climbed into bed and snuggled under the covers. I had gone to bed much later than I had intended, and I was exhausted. My head hit that cool pillow and I exhaled happily.

No more than one minute later, my … Continue reading

Meditations on Choosing Single Motherhood

I was interviewing a parenting expert who has written over 23 books on parenting and appears on shows like Dr. Phil and The Today Show about disciplining the preverbal toddler when I decided to just go ahead and ask her, the expert, what she thought about women who intentionally choose to have a child on their own, a child who would be brought into the world without a biological father.