They didn’t set out to be rebels. Most of them assumed they’d eventually meet nice guys, get married, have children–all in the standard progression they were brought up to expect. Then, usually at some point in their 30s, the realization set in: they were unmarried, and by the time they could conceivably meet their special someones, get married, and be ready to have children, they’d be too old to have them. But the desire to have children remained, and being strong, contemporary women, they did something about it. They became single mothers–by choice.
“I jumped into it,” says Ramer of single motherhood. “When I was 34, the guy I had been dating for two and a half years and I decided to try to have a child together. I miscarried the first time. The second time I got pregnant I told him, ‘I think this one’s a keeper.’ And he said, ‘I think I’ve changed my mind.’ He said he’d get back to me. That was eight years ago, and I’m still waiting.”
There are also one or two outings a year, to the beach or to the zoo or to a farm. “I really don’t like to think of it as a support group. That sounds like we have a problem, and I don’t think we have a problem. We’re just an information and socializing group, swapping maternity clothes and things like that.”
Reactions of families vary, she says. “Some have had a lot of support from their families–‘Yeah, we’re getting a grandchild!’ One woman’s parents sent her some sexy negligees. One woman’s father was her Lamaze coach.” Others get negative responses: embarrassed parents, jealous siblings, friends who desert them.
It’s not all upbeat–even when you’re part of a loving couple there are difficult moments when a child is fussy or sick or just demanding. And it’s that much harder to deal with life’s emergencies standing alone. Ramer remembers the burden of being in a hospital emergency room with a very small, very sick Cristina “all alone, with no one to talk to or express my anxieties to.” With a small child “there’s a juggling act–trying to get one child and three bags of groceries into the house. And finances of course are a struggle.” When Cristina asks questions about her father, as she has since she was two, “I just answer–I give her as much information as she’s asking for.
Like most of the women interviewed for this article–and most of the women in SMC–Locke is white, professional, and financially comfortable. “This is a phenomenon embraced mostly by women who have the wherewithal to do it without leading a life of grim sacrifice.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
She says she had “a pretty easy pregnancy–I was incredibly comfortable and healthy,” though her water broke at 33 weeks, and a difficult labor ended with a C-section. She took her son, Nick, now two and a half years old, home a week later. “It’s been great. It’s been challenging. I’m always a little tired, but I think that all mothers of two-year-olds tend to be a little tired.
