SART Fertility Experts - Single Motherhood

In this episode of the SART Fertility Experts podcast we are joined by Jane Mattes, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Psychotherapist, and founder of an organization called “Single Mothers by Choice”. Here, we explore some of the personal experiences that led to the creation of this important organization, as well as some of the many considerations faced by those pursuing single motherhood.

Welcome to this episode of the SART Fertility Experts podcast. My name is Joseph Findley, and I'm a physician in reproductive endocrinology and infertility at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. Today, we'll be discussing patients who elect to pursue single motherhood.

And I am joined by Jane Mattes, a licensed therapist and author from New York City, who also happens to be the founder of an organization called Single Mothers by Choice. Welcome. Thank you so much.

So Jane, if you wouldn't mind beginning by telling us a little bit about yourself and what led you to establishing Single Mothers by Choice. Sure. Well, I was 36 and I was pregnant and I had decided I'm going to have this baby on my own, but I didn't know anybody else in a similar situation.

I only knew divorced moms and married moms. I knew that I was going to be raising him on my own and I wanted to meet some other women that were doing the same thing. And I was hopeful, although not certain, that there must be other women like me in New York City.

So I actually put out the word through social networking. In those days, there was no computer. This was 1980.

No, 1979 when I got pregnant, actually. No social media, no email, no web, nothing. So I just put out word of mouth notification that if anybody knew somebody similar to me, a professional woman in their 30s, having a child on their own, they should tell them to come to my house for coffee and cake, such and such a date in October.

And to my amazement, six women showed up. And then we got some media coverage because we were interesting, apparently, still are. And we got enough media coverage that we got email, I'm sorry, no, snail mail from all over the country from women like us who either were thinking about having a child on their own or had already done so.

And we started matching them up by location. And then before we knew it, we just had an organization on our hands, the original group of us. So we started incorporating as a nonprofit organization.

And we have chapters, which some of which started way back then in major big cities across the US and eventually into Canada. Fantastic. 40 years.

That's incredible. Can you tell us a little bit about how your philosophy came about and developed over that time? Yes, we really had a very similar point of view in terms of what we saw as our, I guess you could call it our mission. We decided that we wanted to help people understand what single motherhood by choice was about, and to not be an advocacy group, but to be a support system for women who were thinking about it, attempting to become a mother or adopting, and for women who are already mothering.

So we really felt it was something we wanted to get support for as a choice, because we wanted our children to feel supported and welcome in the world. And we also felt that we needed people to understand us in order for them to best support us. Because really, you can't do it alone.

You can do it as a single mother, but you can't raise a child alone. As Hillary said, it takes a village. So we really wanted to encourage everyone to get as much support as possible from every possible source, including what became our organization and their peers.

Fantastic. And I see, based on some of your previous talks and materials that came out, you've broken patients down into different groups as far as ones who are thinking, ones who are trying, et cetera. Would you mind talking about that with us a little bit? And how is your approach to people in each phase of this process different? Yes.

Well, we do have resources for all those different parts of our organization. We call the thinkers. Thinkers and planners really is what it becomes.

Women who are really not sure at all if this is the right decision for them, but who want to have a place to discuss it, think about it, talk about it with people who are going through it and people who've already been through it. So we provide support for the thinkers by giving them that kind of connection with others. And we also occasionally have, for example, I do consultations with women who are trying to make the decision whether or not this is the right way for them to go, whether this is their path to motherhood or not.

So that phase is a very, very important phase because I really do want to mention that if you're ambivalent about motherhood, single motherhood is not really a good idea. It's hard enough if you're a married mother and have really good relationship with your husband or spouse or partner, but if you're alone and you're ambivalent, it can be extraordinarily taxing and difficult. So that's the kind of thing that we try to help people figure out if this is right for them now, or maybe wait a couple of years, or maybe not at all.

Maybe their priority is to really have a spouse or a partner, and to sort all that out is really important. Then there's the planning. Once they do kind of turn the corner and decide they're going to do this, where they really get an idea from our other members about what it's like and how they can do it most effectively, what they need, what kind of actual things they need, what kind of support they need, what kind of money they need, what they need to know.

Then the next group are the triers, who you're probably most familiar with. The triers are the women who are attempting to become pregnant or adopt. We have a small percentage, but consistent percentage of women who are adopting.

Both of those groups actually have their tremendous emotional ups and downs because neither process ever seems to go completely smoothly. So that's a very emotionally demand. The trying to become a mother phase is a very emotionally demanding phase, and physically demanding as well in some cases.

So we try to give them the peer support from our members who are in the same phase, and also some help from women who have already been through it, who can help them know how to get through the rough times. And then the mothering phase is very complex because we, in our membership, have mothers of infants, toddlers, preschoolers, elementary school, middle school, high school, and even college and beyond because we've been around so long. We have parents who are now grandparents, including myself, babies.

So it's a whole, the last phase of mothering, it never ends. It just keeps changing so that we have the mothering phases all covered in our online forum and in our local chapter discussions. And those are the main phases of our membership.

Fantastic. And I like how you kind of take a all-encompassing approach, considering patients at all phases of this journey, because certainly there are different considerations that go along with each part. And I'm sure they greatly benefit from your experience.

And they're all hard in their own way. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Since starting 40 years ago, what have you noticed that has changed socially, et cetera, for patients who are pursuing single motherhood? So much has changed. It's really amazing. The first big change is what I had hoped for, which is that this would become understood and appreciated as another lifestyle choice.

Some women actually are telling us, and this is different than when we first started, that they want to have their child while they're still young enough to have two and physically fit enough to have two. And that they don't want to wait until their mid to late thirties when who knows where their fertility will be at that time. So women are coming in earlier and viewing this not as much as when I did it and my peer group did it, where it was really kind of mysterious and perceived as a radical choice.

Some people call this radical feminist and asked us why we hate men and crazy. Somebody actually told me my son would either grow up to be a drug addict or be put in jail because he didn't have a father figure in his house. So, well, A, my son had a father figure, but it wasn't in the house.

And B, even if he didn't have a father figure, that's not why people go to jail and become drug addicts. So that has certainly changed. People haven't said that to me in about 15 or 20 years.

So the popular public perception of us has dramatically changed. And Dan Quayle, I don't know if anybody listening to this can remember Dan Quayle in the early nineties, but he had said that he was afraid this would become just another lifestyle choice. And I'm actually delighted to say that it seems to be becoming just another lifestyle choice.

Not everybody is good at marriage and they could be a really good mother and not such a great partner in a relationship and vice versa. But the other thing that's changed is that the range of our membership has broadened. It used to be the two coasts and the big cities in the Midwest predominantly.

And now we have members really from all over, from small rural areas, not just big cities and not just the coast, but the middle America, the South, that's become also a big change. And the one other change is that the age range has tremendously grown from the late twenties to the mid forties, whereas it used to be mostly in the mid thirties. And that later change is really because of the fertility treatments and the improvement in them.

And the earlier phase is because of what I mentioned about this becoming more of an active choice that people are not looking at the same way as such a radical choice. Fantastic. And, you know, that leads me just sort of in the next part of the discussion, what sort of changes have you seen over time for patients who are considering single motherhood with the advent of new fertility treatments and advancement of those therapies? It's interesting that the actual fertility treatments have gotten more successful.

People can freeze their eggs now, and that also has gotten a higher success rate. And people actually can get pregnant at much later ages than they ever could before and have a successful pregnancy. It's interesting that women now are both coming in earlier and later, because I think they know that at least for the later ones, that it's still possible.

And they may have frozen their eggs when they were younger. So that's also made it possible for them to come in later. Fantastic.

And I imagine this is something that you frequently talk about with patients, especially the egg freezing aspect. Sure. It's a big decision.

It's not an easy process, as you know, but it certainly is what many of our members call their insurance policy. Even though it's not 100% of a guarantee, it does help give you peace of mind if you're not ready for motherhood, for sure. I think that's a good way to look at it too, because some patients have different life situations going on, changes in relationships, work, education, etc.

And they don't know where the future will take them. And it does really provide some sort of an insurance policy. And some patients don't even need to use or will not use the eggs in the future, but it can give them some solace proceeding with their life, knowing that there is a little bit of a safety net that is there.

It is exactly that. Yes. Do you have any special considerations that you would like to convey to providers taking care of patients pursuing single motherhood or any advice that you could give us as people caring for individuals in this situation? Yes, I really do.

Unfortunately, well, let me start with the positive. Fortunately, it's less and less common these days, but we still occasionally do hear about a provider who is skeptical or disapproving even of a single woman having a child on her own. And it seems to have nothing to do with the individual per se, because they may be extremely high functioning, stable, financially comfortable.

It seems to have to do with this sort of lingering idea that somehow the children will not be okay if there is no father in the home. So I would really encourage providers to look at the 40-year history that we have now. We've had an amazingly great success rate in terms of how the children have turned out.

It's astonished me. Actually, we were all worried. The original group of us, that was our big worry.

Would the children be okay? And they have turned out to be more than okay. It's interesting. I expected the religious community to be more opposed to us than the medical community initially.

And that was not the case. It was the opposite. We had more trouble with the medical community being skeptical of this concept, whereas the religious community said something very interesting, which was, these children are obviously so wanted.

Look what a woman has to go through to do this on her own. How lucky that these children are so wanted, because they see children all the time, they told me, who are not so wanted and who are abused or neglected or just not really wanted. So I think that is a reason why our children are turning out as well as they can, because we're a very upbeat community.

We want children, we want a mother, and it's our high priority. I think that's a very important point that you bring up, that it is the quality of the parenting that is more related necessarily to the outcomes of how children do when they grow up, rather than the structure necessarily of the family or household that they came from. And you as a groundbreaker, 40 years ago, these were things that you had to learn and fight and find out on your own.

Whereas now, there's good evidence to suggest that there are all sorts of different types of families and different family structures that can result in children being functional, fantastic. Yeah. You really said one of my favorite phrases there.

It's not the number of parents, it's the quality of the parenting that makes all the difference. I mean, as a therapist, pretty much everybody I've ever seen in my practice had two parents, but they didn't all turn out not to have issues. I mean, everybody has issues, but I mean, two parents is no guarantee of anything.

It's really sort of a strange thing to me that people would say any dad is better than no dad, when that actually is not the case. There are good mothers and bad mothers and good dads and bad dads. Fantastic.

Are there any other organizations like your own that you know of that provide support and care for patients seeking single parenthood or single motherhood? Not that I know of at the moment. There were a couple of other organizations that came and went, but we are right now, as far as I know, the only one that's an actual organization that has a structure and a membership and an administration and has a broad coverage throughout this country and Canada. How can patients or providers interested in your services, how can they reach out to you? We have a website, it is singlemothersbychoice.org. And we're actually in the process of coming up with a brand new exciting website, but our old one is still pretty good.

And we can be found easily on the web, just with that URL, singlemothersbychoice.org. Do you happen to have any final thoughts for our listeners today? I think it is great for a child to feel that they are loved by both a woman and a man, at least one of each, since the world is made up of men and women. So I encourage people to get a father figure or a male role model or whatever you want to call them from as early on as possible. Because I do think that it's a plus, you know, a child can do just fine with a good relationship with their mother.

But if they also have a man in the world who loves them, I think it makes it easier for them to relate to the male part of the world. So that is, I was very lucky, my son had somebody in his life from the time he was a newborn until he was nine every week, once a week. And they visited, went to the playground, had dinner with us.

I mean, it was just great asset. And when my son got married, he and his wife walked down the aisle with my son along with me. And so it's been, in my experience, just a wonderful addition to our lives to have a man, at least one, maybe more even, so that your child really feels comfortable with both men and women and has a positive experience with both.

Fantastic. And then it sounds like they don't necessarily need to be somebody who is a family member or... They have to be screened carefully. Mine was somebody I had known for 25 years or something.

Somebody who I, no, not that long, because I was only 37. But somebody who I'd known from college was actually my sons. So if somebody who you know well enough, not just some stranger.

Actually, if you're going to let anybody near your child, you want to screen them carefully, obviously. But I did think of just one more thing I'd like to add. I have heard of women who are going to sites on the web where you can find a known donor.

And I wondered if we should cover that a little bit, the risks of that. Certainly. Certainly.

Yeah. There are these days, in addition to the sperm banks, places where you can find known donors on the internet who want to be donors and have varying degrees of interest in being part of a child's life or not being... Just helping a woman get pregnant is all some of them are interested in. And some of them want to actually be a father figure.

And I just want people to know, from my perspective as a therapist, that that can be very, very complicated, emotionally and legally. And it's something to think very carefully about before you do it. And to certainly do major screening through a physician and also have a lawyer involved to draw up legal documents so that everything is crystal clear.

But it seems easier to some women because there's no sperm bank involved, there's no cost involved, but there can be an emotional cost and there can be a legal cost. And it's really something that I think has to be looked at with some skepticism. I agree 100%.

When patients are in this sort of situation, it is strongly encouraged to not only involve providers from a psychological standpoint, but also legal counsel as well, because there's a lot that can happen in the future from a medical legal standpoint, as well as from the standpoint of parental rights. And those rights vary by state. So when there is a known donor in this situation who happens to be somebody that is not known well, it is very important to have things drawn up so that they're crystal clear and airtight so that you don't end up in a bad situation in the future.

Exactly. And I do think if you have a known donor who you know well, you still need all that. But if it's somebody you don't know well, then it's like a thousand percent more important.

Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. We greatly appreciate your insights.

Sure. It's a pleasure. And this concludes this episode of the SART Fertility Experts podcast.

Please join us again next time. The information and opinions expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of ASRM and its affiliates. These are provided as a source of general information and are not a substitute for consultation with a physician.