Poll finds single motherhood is on the rise
As Christy Everson was nearing age 40, she made a decision: She wanted to have a child, even though she was single and it meant doing it all alone. Her daughter, conceived via a sperm donor, is now 21⁄ years old, and Everson hopes to have a second child.
“Was it worthwhile? Well, I’m thinking of doing it again, aren’t I?” she says.
Everson and women like her are part of a shift in American society. More than 2 in 5 unmarried women without children in the United States — or 42 percent — would consider having a child on their own without a partner, an Associated Press-WE tv poll of people younger than 50 finds. That compares with 24 percent of men.
The poll, which addressed a broad range of issues on changing family structures in the U.S., tracks with a recent U.S. Census Bureau report that single motherhood is on the rise: It found that of 4.1 million women who’d given birth in 2011, 36 percent were unmarried at the time of the survey, an increase from 31 percent in 2005. And among mothers 20 to 24, the percentage was 62 percent.
The new AP-WE tv poll found that few Americans think the growing variety of family arrangements is bad for society. However, many have some concerns about single mothers, with some two-thirds — or 64 percent — saying single women having children without a partner is a bad thing for society. More men — 68 percent — felt that way, compared with 59 percent of women.
The survey found broad gender gaps in opinion on many issues related to how and when to have children. One example: Women were more apt than men to say having children has negatively affected their career.
And this was true especially among mothers who waited until age 30 or older to have children. Fully 47 percent of those mothers said having a child had a negative effect on their careers. Of women overall, 32 percent of mothers reported a negative effect, compared with 10 percent of men.
Joyce Chen, 41, a hospital occupational therapist and a single mother, is happy to have work that she can balance easily with caring for her 10-year-old daughter.
“I’ve been blessed,” she said. “I have a decent income. I don’t feel like I need to climb the ladder. I enjoy what I do, but I can leave it at the end of the day and not think about it.”
Chen also credited a strong community of friends from church for helping make her family work, and she hopes to get married one day if the right situation comes along. But she feels that a single momcan do just as good a job of raising a child as two parents can.
Overall, the poll found mixed results on that question: Thirty percent of respondents said yes, 27 percent said no, and 43 percent said “it depends.”
At 26, Jacqueline Encinias is at a much less established point in her career. Amarried mother of a monthold baby, she wants to go back to school to study accounting. She said she probably would not have made the choice to be a mother alone.