I’ve been meaning to review Knock Yourself Up for awhile now; I read the book over the summer as part of my research on an article for Bitch magazine, and thought it was a fun book, albeit one that is about as far from my personal concerns as you can imagine, since I don’t want kids regardless of my coupled status. Still, I’m interested in people who make non-traditional life arrangements, and I’m curious about the patriarchy-undermining possibilities of literally not having any kind of patriarch in the family, so I ate the book up. Luckily, this interview in Salon with Louise Sloan reminded me that I needed to write about it.
The book is a personal-touch sort of thing; Sloan takes you through her process of getting pregnant by donor sperm, how it took a long time, how it was hard to feel alone at times, how to compensate for some of the drawbacks to doing it alone. She also interviewed a number of women on the subject, and the one thing that really jumped out at me was how the women were really certain that if you were going to go it alone, then donor sperm was the way to go. Going down to some bar and/or tricking some guy into fathering a child for you was almost universally rejected as problematic and unethical—so much for MRA fever dreams about women who are dying to get them personally on the hook for making a baby and of course coughing up the child support. Most of the women in this book felt that not having child support was a small price to pay for not having the headache of quarreling over baby care with the father or giving a near-stranger that much control and access to your life.
Sloan also punctured a stereotype that I didn’t realize that I basically held until I read the book, which is that most or even a very high percentage of unmarried women who get pregnant this way are lesbians. Not especially—there were some, but not a lot. Of course, she interviewed women who identified as single mothers by choice, so partnered lesbians would be excluded from that category. Thinking it over, there’s no reason to believe that single mothers by choice would be a group that was especially gay. She also punctured the myth that women are single in their 30s and 40s because they’re ugly or unwanted—it’s true that a lot of the women report having a slow sex life, but that’s after the baby is born, which I hear is endemic to new parents, coupled or not.
One quibble I had with the book was that Sloan didn’t spend enough time exploring the ways that being a single parent can be superior than being partnered. She mentions a couple brief advantages, but they come off as cheeky jokes, not serious suggestions. Throughout the book, she tends to fall into the idea that it’s better to go at it partnered than alone, and that going at it this way is the option if getting a stable relationship first just didn’t work out. To be fair to her, the interviews she had all pointed to roughly that narrative—would have preferred a partner, didn’t happen, moved on to this—with only a couple women filing a minority report about how they prefer it this way. But the idea that it’s automatically easier with a partner assumes a partner who shares the workload and provides emotional support. In more traditional (read: sexist) straight marriages, that’s not only not a given, but it’s also likely that the husband might actually make life harder for a woman, putting way more demands on her in terms of workload than he relieves by occasionally deigning to sit for his own kids. Not that all men are this way, but enough are. Having a good partner might be automatically better than being single for most mothers, but some partners are more work than they’re worth. I’d have liked to see a little more language about that, but it was a small drawback in an otherwise good book.
Obviously, it’s a book with a particular audience in mind—women who are thinking about becoming single mothers by choice. But if you fit that category, I suggest that you pick it up, because it’s full of information that will be quite useful to you, and all presented in a cheeky style that makes it a real page-turner.
30 Responses to “Whatever you do, don’t drop the baster”
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Partnered, or some kind of respite care, is just so much easier as ways to raise a kid go. You can see how people would be attracted to it just to solve the shower problem…
In the days before the storied 1950s, a time when the nuclear family could actually almost work as an economic unit, most married women both worked and were expected to tend to the children, much as a single mother does today. These women managed to raise kids, if not bathe once in a while, because they were not afraid to put the baby down for whatever length of time it took to do hazardous chores or wash up or cook.
The idea that a woman need be a 24/7 entertainment and sustenance center for a child is a modern romantic fantasy, not a classical reality. Note the 17th century contraptions for containing a toddler in museums.
These women managed to raise kids, if not bathe once in a while, because they were not afraid to put the baby down for whatever length of time it took to do hazardous chores or wash up or cook.
They also weren’t afraid to force older daughters into taking over chores and childcare, and had no choice but to accept that sometimes a child would walk in front of a tractor or drown in the creek. Didn’t mean to interrupt a good Parents These Days! rant, but y’know.
Amanda, not having read the book, I don’t know if the author was extolling having a partner, but certainly having a child is a lot easier if you have help. That doesn’t have to be a husband, of course.
but certainly having a child is a lot easier if you have help. That doesn’t have to be a husband, of course.
Mythago beat me to it. I know plenty of single mothers raising happy children - the constant is that they all have a good support system. You can raise a child without a husband; I don’t think you can raise a child without a support network. Or rather, you can but it’s damn hard and, IMO, not good for either mother or child.
It has to be hard for a woman who is raising a child with a husband who isn’t helpful and no family or friends, either. I’ll just say it: I don’t think the isolated nuclear family, period, is healthy for parents OR children.
That is one thing that the Bad Old Days had that all too many women these days do not; women in those days could shower (or sponge-bathe, more likely) because Grandma, Auntie, or Neighbor could watch the baby for an hour. Nowadays, all too often Mom is on her own unless she wants to pony up the cash for a babysitter.
I knew a woman who became a single parent by choice when she was 46. She dearly wanted a child, and she also wanted a husband, but the desire for a child, coupled with her age, put a lot of pressure on her dating life. She was modern orthodox, so her choice was already unconventional, and finding a live donor would have been out of the question. Her daughter was the same age as my own, and I really enjoyed her company, but true single parenthood seemed from my perspective to be extremely isolating. She had a full-time live-in to care for her daughter because she worked full-time, and she went back to work almost immediately. When she wasn’t working, she spent time with her daughter and fulfilled her religious obligations. She said having a child took the pressure off any man she might date. I guess that’s sort of true.
When people want children, they can be a source of indescribable satisfaction. That was certainly true of the woman I knew, despite whatever drawbacks she encountered. In her case, and in the cases I’ve heard about casually, the women tend to be pretty well-educated and financially secure. That probably explains why they’d suggest partnered parenting would be ideal–when they imagine a partner, he’s similarly educated and financially situated, and recognises the equality of women and men.
Speaking as a parent of two, I’ve found raising children is incredibly fun and rewarding — but a HUGE amount of work, and our culture doesn’t provide a lot of readily accessible family members and close friends who can help pick up the slack. Having some kind of close living or at a minimum, right next door, arrangement to have help is pretty critical, imo. It doesn’t have to be a partner — i’ve got a partner and we also had a child care co-op with three other families. But man, the thought of going it completely alone certainly makes me blanch.
They also weren’t afraid to force older daughters into taking over chores and childcare, and had no choice but to accept that sometimes a child would walk in front of a tractor or drown in the creek.
Yep, Mythago, that was part of the equation, too. People also had elders around who were expected to watch kids while the parents worked.
On the other hand, part of the whole “you can’t go it alone” is the extreme expectations that are placed on mothers - expectations that are effectively intended to keep women home with kids, and sanction single parenthood. Rejecting those often romanticized and unrealistic “what a mother has to do or she’s a bad mother” expectations is important for at home mothers, working mothers, and especially single parents by choice.
Parenting is really, really hard work; I always say I really respect people who don’t want to do it, because to put it bluntly, your kids require everything you have and then some, and if you can’t give that, you’re better off not having them than trying to do it halfway.
That said, if a single parent really wants a child, then by all means, they should have and/or adopt one. One parent giving it his or her all with support from friends or family can do better than two parents who aren’t trying.
Support from someone will be necessary, though; I can’t imagine either my ex-wife or myself making it through the first seven weeks of our daughter’s life alone. But with the proper support in place (be it family, friends, or a mixture of the two), a child can be just fine.
Oh, and incidentally, you figure out by about week two or so that you can take a shower while the kid is sleeping and they won’t mind a bit. By week ten, you’ve mastered cooking and eating one-handed. Parenting is tough, but it isn’t impossible, even when you’re the one at home and your spouse is off at work.
“They also weren’t afraid to force older daughters into taking over chores and childcare, and had no choice but to accept that sometimes a child would walk in front of a tractor or drown in the creek.”
“Yep, Mythago, that was part of the equation, too. People also had elders around who were expected to watch kids while the parents worked.”
That might depend on how prosperous the family was. In my neck of the woods people were poor and got old very quickly, so your parents might well be (a) ailing or (b) dead once your kids were born. Of course you could take in an unmarried female cousin to help, but that meant having one more mouth to feed. In many cases a mother might not even live to see her own children grow up. Or she might be forced to send the oldest children away as soon as they were 6 or 7 and could work as servants.
(All in all, I rather enjoy living in the 21st century.)
I think that’s true of most single moms, too, regardless of how they became single moms. I know many women who would rather have full custody than any child support or who would rather have a father fully involved than any child support. The money really is usually their last concern.
Absolutely. I think you really need a very strong and stable relationship before you have kids. Then, sometimes just having kids can destroy a relationship if only one partner is truly involved in raising the kids.
I think alot of women have my situation, they have a husband but are still raising their children as a single parent.
Sometimes it seemed I had all the disadvantages of couple parenting and all the disadvantages of single parenting. That was before my divorce. Now as a true single parent it is much easier and tranquil.
The idea that a woman need be a 24/7 entertainment and sustenance center for a child is a modern romantic fantasy, not a classical reality. Note the 17th century contraptions for containing a toddler in museums.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, Ms. Kate.
My ex and I divorced when my now 22-yr old daughter was 1 year old. I worked 3 jobs because he didn’t think it was really necessary for him to pay child support as I “had rich parents that wouldn’t let us starve.”
I adore my kid above and beyond anything in my life (and she knows that without a doubt, but she is not, and never has been, the entire, complete focus of my life. Wasn’t practical, and certainly wouldn’t have done that even if it had been.
Myth, she was extolling a partner, not “help”, in part because a partner isn’t an invasion of privacy the way that even your mother is. But she was obviously thinking of the ideal partner who is a partner, instead of another source of work. Sloan is a lesbian, though, so her idea of a partner is a woman, and thus she is not thinking about a partner as someone saddled with male entitlement.
Unfortunately, identity rights is not something that is often brought up in these types of books or articles (although I haven’t read this book, so maybe it does talk about that).
Many European countries have moved to systems where anonymous donations are not allowed. By law, donor identity is protected and not public, but not anonymous to the children. I believe this would be a good move for America. When children grow up they have the right to know who their parents are, to connect with half-siblings… the information should not be hidden from them.
Ethical reproductive technology allows children to contact their sperm OR egg donor, so that they don’t have to go through life wondering where half of their genes came from. I’m not one of them, but I know just from a little research that this is a big, big issue for them.
Of course part of the problem with being a single parent nowadays is what to do with the kid when you are at work.
In the old days, c.f. the comments above, most people worked out of their homes, so it wasn’t such a problem. But what do you do when your commute time + the hours you are at work > the hours the daycare center is open without a ridiculous surcharge? Most bosses don’t take too kindly to “sorry I was late arriving at 8:45 instead of 8:30, but daycare doesn’t open until 7:30 and you know how the subways sometimes are — it took me over an hour to get here!”.
At least when you have two parents, hopefully they work slightly different hours so one can drop off the kid and not be late for work while the earlier-start-time (and presumably earlier end-time) parent can pick up the kid.
Of course, as Michael Moore points out, smart employers that have the resources to do so would provide day care that way parents don’t have to be so harried about day-care-issues. But most American businesses are good at nothing as much as making some rather stupid choices to maximize their short-term profits.
Look! An elephant!This is so, so important and cannot be emphasized enough. Sometimes a partner (read: husband, boyfriend) is an obstacle to motherhood and single parenthood would be the better course.
Parenthood is hard and it really does take a village to raise a child (sorry to burst the conservative bubble). That’s why mom’s groups are becoming so popular– it’s a way for women to extend their social support network outside the home, a network they can exploit for practical ends, like exchanging childcare services.
Of course part of the problem with being a single parent nowadays is what to do with the kid when you are at work.
It’s also a problem for the vast majority of partnered women who have jobs. Red herring.
It’s also a problem for the vast majority of partnered women who have jobs. Red herring. - Amanda Marcotte
It certainly is: especially given the degree to which women are often left to be entirely responsible for child-care. But it’s potentially more of a problem for single parents, because, hopefully, when you are part of a relationship (with someone who lives with you), you can arrange a schedule whereby one person picks up and another person drops off, etc.
Two comments, in addition:
(1) where is the so-called pro-life crowd? … if you want people to not abort fetuses, you need to make it so they can live (you know, as the Bible puts it “choose life”) with the resulting babies. why aren’t they pushing for better family leave, more flexible hours, etc? that way people, both single and married, can actually raise families?
(2) part of the problem the left has in gaining political traction in this country is that people are basically selfish: they only care about their problems. and single women do not an electoral majority make. pardon the MRA-whine like quality of this point, but if we on the left want to do better politically, we need to do better at pointing out how our ideas help out Joe and Jane Sixpack … dismissing a concern that surely, disproportionately even, affects single women, because it also affects married women is not a way to do well politically.
I know there is a tendancy to dismiss concern trollism, which is more than justified especially when those trollings are more trolling than concern … but we liberals are perceived as only about special interests — so the last thing we should do is to dismiss bits and pieces of a larger picture as concern-trollish red-herrings. Liberalism should be all about synergies — and ideologically it is — but this should extend to our politics and even how we analyze things in terms of blogs, etc.
The child-care issue is certainly important to single parents, married parents, etc. And it especially impacts single parents. Doing something about it will help single parents. That it helps married couples should be seen as a feature — as it’ll gain us allies in advancing the liberal agenda and maybe even allow people to see how liberalism helps THEM — not as a sign that it’s a red herring.
Check out the comments thread in the original Salon piece. It never ceases to amaze me how many commenters are not only anti-feminist, but seem to take things like art-sem as a personal insult: “I’ve been marginalized by Feminazis,” etc.
There’s a creepy parallel to racists getting all het up about black guys with white women.
I don’t think having a child by sperm or egg donation is unethical, but I do think anonymously donating or selling sperm or eggs is unethical. Deliberately creating children you have no intention of even meeting? Interesting how the ethics of the mothers is usually questioned, whether they are having babies by sperm donors or donating eggs, but the ethics of sperm donors is never examined. As if the resulting children were conceived without fathers at all. Or look at it this way: a poor man fathering children he has no intention of supporting is an irresponisble monster. A medical student who sells his sperm to create children whose welfare he will never know is just a dirty joke.
I agree 100%. Also, I think taking the children’s future feelings into account is vital for everyone. If you’re a gay couple, a straight married couple, a single parent, with biological children or adopted, the same ethical principles should ideally apply.
But it doesn’t mean parents need to sacrifice their individuality and unique lifestyles and personalities to become a parent.
“Interesting how the ethics of the mothers is usually questioned, whether they are having babies by sperm donors or donating eggs, but the ethics of sperm donors is never examined.”
Very true!
I read the first part of the interview and noted that Louise Sloan went with a “known donor” and researched children-of-donor issues… good for her!
Bitter Scribe: The MRA movement and white racism have a considerable overlap. I remember an article in “Men’s News Daily” (notorious right-wing MRA rag) about how the increase in interracial marriages was attributable to feminism and this was A Bad Thing - I cannot recall the MRA’s reason why, though. Probably because it kept white women from breeding more white babies or something.
As far as child care for single parents, etc. is concerned, I’m going to take a leaf from Stephanie Coontz, uber-liberal and former single parent herself: the isolated nuclear family is of very recent and rare vintage, and not at all the ideal child-rearing situation. Single or coupled, parents need a backup/support network/”village” to help them. Given that it may not be possible to revive the extended family and close-knit neighborhood, there needs to be some kind of government or societal support network for single and coupled parents alike. I’m in favor of universal child care, available to all parents with pre-K kids and all ill children of working parents (school doesn’t help if kiddo is ill and needs to stay home). Call me a bleeding-heart pinko commie liberal, but I’d willingly pay higher taxes to insure that children are well taken care of.
Usually I understand Amanda’s clever image choices, but this time I’m just not getting it. Rubber ducks? How is this at all connected to single parenting by choice?
In the old days, c.f. the comments above, most people worked out of their homes, so it wasn’t such a problem.
By old days you must mean pre-industrial? Because mill worker families in Europe and the Northeast US had to deal with the “where do you put the children” problem, too.
I’m a single mother by choice (via artificial insemination at age 40). I took/take showers while my child was asleep. I ran/still run errands on workdays during lunch. When my son was young, I found a good care provider (registered home care) who I treated with great respect and gave a raise every year when I got one (same provider from 3 months to 5 years). I go to work when I don’t feel well so I can stay home with my child when he is ill. I moved back to my hometown to be closer to my family when my son got older and needed positive male role models. And I have to say that it is nice to have family to help out in a pinch.
I’m not gay, I’m celibate (by choice) for now. I was married along time ago to a jerk. I’d rather be a single mother than to be married to someone like that.
I went with anonymous donor because I didn’t want to deal with someone who was 1) there at the beginning, but then drifted away, or 2) didn’t want to be there at the beginning, but then showed up suddenly.
No regrets, except for one - I didn’t start early enough so I could have two! When my son is older, we’ll find a sibling registry if he is interested.
But it’s potentially more of a problem for single parents, because, hopefully, when you are part of a relationship (with someone who lives with you), you can arrange a schedule whereby one person picks up and another person drops off, etc.
Eh, I find it troublesome to overinflate the possibility of your husband doing his fair share for women. The story told over and over from women is they were told they’d get X and they just didn’t, maybe got half of what they were promised in terms of husband-effort. And even a well-meaning husband isn’t going to be able to work his schedule out every time.
Amanda: this is why I don’t believe that the isolated nuclear family is optimal. It’s not just about husbands being jerks, either; sometimes you’re married to a man who works 80 hours a week or whose job requires travel out the wazoo, so he can’t really pitch in. I don’t believe it takes anything away from single parents to say that all parents require a support network - whether that’s extended family, friends, professional childcare, or what have you.
I wrote a paper on gender-egalitarian societies, and in the course of my research, became convinced that the matrilocal extended family is as close to the ideal family structure as we can get. (Matrilocal = women live with their birth or adopted families all their lives; egalitarian societies such as the Moso, Iroquois, Trobrianders, and so on have this family structure. Husbands move in with their wives’ families after they are married.) Yes, I know, many of us shudder at the thought of living with Mom forever, but this type of family provides not only support for the children, but an emotional outlet for women - they don’t have to depend on their husbands as sole confidants and emotional support, because their mothers, sisters, aunts and cousins are their as prop and comfort in so many ways. I realize we cannot go back to this family structure (which seems to have been the norm for MOST societies until agriculture came along) but it worked, and worked well, and Ann “Price of Motherhood” Crittenden thinks it was probably the ideal for children. If Dad deserted the family or Mom kicked him out, children were not left impoverished as it was the family as a whole, not just Dad, who was responsible for feeding and caring for the child.
Mattsmom: It sounds like you (and Matt) are doing great! If you are worried about that “only child socialization” thing, cousins and best friends can fill the bill for siblings. It sounds like you live near your family already, which is great.
DAS, as to your “(1) where is the so-called pro-life crowd? “, their take is that childcare is unnecessary if only the Mom would stay where God put her - in the home!!! There’s no need for subsidized or socialized childcare if all the moms would just do what God says and stay home and have LOTS of babeez.
“I don’t think having a child by sperm or egg donation is unethical, but I do think anonymously donating or selling sperm or eggs is unethical.”
Do you also think giving a child up for adoption is unethical?