S5E1: What Is a Single Mother by Choice?

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to Start to Finish Motherhood, a. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Podcast for those thinking or already single mothers by Choice. [00:00:10] Speaker C: Just looking for practical advice for navigating life's relationships. When you decide to have children on. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Your own, it doesn't mean that you're completely alone. [00:00:19] Speaker C: I'm Aisha Jenkins and I'm partnering with you every step of your journey. [00:00:26] Speaker B: So, looking back on this episode in this particular season of my life, I am on the cusp of 50 now and I can't believe it. I feel so lucky to have gotten to this point in my parenting journey. I now have a 6 year old who will be 7 and I have an 11 year old and they're thriving. The world has drastically changed and so has my life. I went from being in a really stable work situation and now having pivoted into consulting. I've gone from a host of two lifestyle parenting podcasts and I've created a professional podcast. My children are fully themselves who they are. They're in school, they've got friends, they've got their own social circle. They can guide me on their likes and dislikes, they've got opinions. And so the daycare days are far. [00:01:23] Speaker A: Behind us, thank goodness. [00:01:25] Speaker B: I also have created my own community called Melanie at Single Mothers by Choice. I'm surrounded by love, support, and really good people. I consider myself lucky. As I look at this episode, I wanted to give some updates from where I was back in 2020 when this episode was first recorded. I am still happy, content with my singlehood. I am absolutely loving parenting my children as a single parent. I cannot imagine having done this with. [00:02:00] Speaker A: A partner and the partner that I. [00:02:02] Speaker B: Had, most of this still be in my wheelbarrow. On top of keeping the house, on top of working, I am beyond happy. We're in the thick of gelling as a family and carving out our own individual spaces. We, we each have our own space in the house. We have activities that we love. We have our strengths, we have our weaknesses. When I close my door, all of the external drama stays outside and we just live and function as a family. And so I'm not going to lie, there are challenges because we each have our own distinct personalities. We do things that get on each other's nerves. I know as a mom, whenever I call my children's names, they cringe like, what did I do now? We each have our own individual needs. Needs in terms of downtime, in terms of space. But we are gelling. It is what it is. We bump heads, we negotiate, we take time out in our rooms. I am trying to firmly keep my room as a kid free room at times during the day. It can be really intense and we can all be really silly and really fun. Another update. Now that the children are 6 and 11, I'm happy to say that I am able to sleep in again. I take naps on the weekends and get to go to bed early. I lock up the house, let the kids do them and I go to bed. They happily veg out, eat popcorn and just do what sisters do. For those of you who are at the beginnings of being a parent, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Those early days of parenting are intense, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The early days of parenting to children can be doubly intense at times, but there will be future opportunities to sleep in and take naps. I am still not in a long term relationship, which I'm okay with that my longest relationships have been the most nurturing of girlfriend relationships. I have enjoyed being in the company of good decent people. Some of those people are male people. Those times male company have been really nice. It's been lovely in fact, but still not enough to make me want to change my single mother by choice status nor change my marital status. I love men because I love people, but I am also content with the life I have chosen to build. So now let's get into this episode. [00:04:47] Speaker A: So my name is Aisha and I am an SNC to two little girls, six and one and a half. I began the thinking process when I was in my early 30s and a few years post divorce. And I recall the actual day where I decided the SMC path was going to be the path for me. So it was right around the time that Halle Berry was pregnant with her first child. And I remember crying to my stepmom who was in her 50s. And so I remember crying to her saying that I really wanted to be a mom. I was divorced and dating and it wasn't going well and I was like, I want to be a mom. And so she eventually was like, you want yourself a baby? Go get yourself a baby. Go get a sperm donor. And I was just like, huh, Come again? And that was when the seed was planted. And so I did and went and found a cryobank. I found a reproductive endocrinologist. [00:05:48] Speaker B: So once you decided on the SMC. [00:05:50] Speaker A: Path, what was the next step in your journey? I was on Baby center is where I started to do my research and the women there really helped me to get on the path. I will say that it Took me from my early 30s into my mid-30s before I started. But that was where the seed was planted. And I actually started actively trying when I was 37 and I conceived my first child. On my second IUI, it was 1, 2, 3, easy peasy. The pregnancy was uneventful. I worked out up until 36 weeks, no complications. And then I delivered my daughter when I was 38. And I say all of that to contrast with my second pregnancy, which was a journey that I could never have anticipated. [00:06:40] Speaker B: Can you share with us a little bit about the experience with your second pregnancy? [00:06:48] Speaker A: It was a rough road to get pregnant. The pregnancy was just a total shit show. But both of my girls are here, they're healthy. And so I delivered my youngest at 43. And so my journey to my second daughter was a real turning point for me. When I say my first pregnancy was easy, I'm pretty sure after that pregnancy I said some pretty cringeworthy things. I was on the top of the world. I was like, this is easy. I knew I wanted to have a second. But I can tell you that experience was so humbling and life changing, and it ultimately prepared me for being an admin in a space where we're discussing and trying to do things that a lot of black women just have not been exposed to. And so throughout my three year journey to my second daughter, I'd accumulated a wealth of knowledge and resources. And so I find myself healing from that traumatic conception experience through helping and supporting other women. And yeah, the journey to my second daughter really stretched the bounds of my love, my faith, because you'll find that I had some pretty low and dark moments. But I love my girls and they're here and I wouldn't change it for the world. [00:08:04] Speaker B: It sounds like you've had quite a journey. Can we discuss the societal perceptions of single motherhood, especially in the black community? [00:08:15] Speaker A: I think that when you mention race, it becomes taboo and people want to shy away from it. But I will say, given the stats of single mother headed families in the black community actually provided a bit of a shield for me considering this path. It wasn't a hard leap for me to see that it's something that can be done because I've got almost all of my sisters, either through marriage or through circumstance, are single moms. And yeah, I've seen it. I've seen it. Growing up did have its challenges, which I hope to get in front of some of the more common challenges. So it. It wasn't too far fetched for me. Now I will say what I've started doing because I think traditionally in the black community, we are a very private, socially conservative race of people and lots of people spend time in the church and things of that nature. And so what I've started doing in recent years is that when surveys come out about SMCs, I try to make that I participate in those surveys to start to try to change that narrative and starting to blacken the space just a little bit. [00:09:28] Speaker B: For those who might not be familiar, exactly what is a single mother by choice? [00:09:36] Speaker A: I think an smc, a single mother by choice, is a woman who decides either to conceive or adopt on her own, that they are the sole caregiver, sole provider emotionally, financially for that child. No one else can put legal claims on that child. That child is yours, free and clear. And so I will say that when I decided to dive into being a single mother by choice, I was part of the national organization. So that frames a lot of my perspective in my formative years of being an SMC and how I view it. There are certainly different ways to become a single mother, but I do believe that there are some challenges that are very unique when you intentionally decide in your head that I'm going to do this and we're going to talk about that throughout the season. Planning is like that foundational rock, you know, in your mind that you are intending to try to either conceive or adopt, and so that's going to guide your path. You didn't just decide one day, like, oops, right? This was something that was very thought out and very well planned. [00:10:53] Speaker B: What do you think is the biggest difference between a single mother by choice or SMC compared to other forms of single motherhood? [00:11:05] Speaker A: I think that there's something to be said for not expecting someone else to pull weight. Right. And so I think when you go into this knowing that it's just you wake up every day knowing it. It's all on your shoulders. And that can be a bit of a heavy lift. But I'll drink my coffee, I will take my ginkgo and I will take my vitamins and I'm here for this. But I would really struggle with a teammate who was not pulling their weight and there's that added overhead of resentment. [00:11:39] Speaker B: As a single mother by choice, how do you manage your day to day responsibilities? [00:11:46] Speaker A: And so I would imagine having to go through my day and I say imagine, but as I said, I'm divorced. And so I actually know what it's like to go through the day carrying the burden of, hey, dude, are you not going to do your half of the household chores. I could not imagine parenting with that same, same type of framework emotionally. And so I am so glad for this path. It is exhausting and it is challenging. But every day I wake up, I have the joy and the freedom of saying, I know what I'm going to do today and I know it's just going to be me. And I'm okay with that. What I do with my eldest is I share those moments with her and I'll be like, did you just see, did you just see what she did? And so we just there we giggle together. But I do get another adult having skin in the game. Especially like during this pandemic where it's like, mama needs to tap out low. I will say the thing that I find most challenging right now for me is even on a day off, on, during the week, I still have to get up and do daycare, the whole morning routine and drop them off. And in my single days I would be like, yeah, I'm taking off work today, I'm taking a vacation day and I'm going to sleep in late. Right. [00:13:07] Speaker B: How do you distinguish between being an SMC and other societal perceptions of single motherhood? [00:13:17] Speaker A: Walking that line between what we know to be a single mother by choice compared to what society looks at as single moms? Right. I sit on two sides of the fence on this one. I do value the things that make an SMC different. The intentionality. Right. The, the, the, the single minded purpose, the grinding because financially you want to set your kids up. Right. And the planning to become a mom. But then I also, in the larger spaces, the predominantly white spaces, there is a lot of we're this kind of a single mother and not that kind of a single mother. And so I push up against that every chance that I get because behind it is the stigma. Right. They don't want to walk that line of being just grouped together with other single moms. When the world looks at us, the world is not going to say, I know how you conceived, I know how you adopted as a single mother. They're not going to look at that. The world is going to group us all together and say we're single moms. Just from a personal, professional perspective. I think that if we reach out to the margins of us and we pull that in, then we create resources and we create community for us, inclusive. But then we each know what differentiates our path. But to a lot of the white SMC spaces, they are intentionally trying to distance themselves from other single moms. And when we say other single moms, we mean single moms of color, particularly black single moms who are out there on that far region that they may not normally interact within their own lives. And so then they're like, we're not like that kind of single mom. Because I did it this way. I wanted my kid. And it's just there are single moms out there by chance. So I will keep for those single moms by chance. I will keep for a black single mom in a minute and still acknowledge that there are differences in that I woke up one day and said, I'm going to put pen to paper and I'm going to plan. Here's what I need to do. Here's what I need financially because I know every day it's only me. But what I'm not going to do is engage in the conversation separating them out. Because the world is going to look at me as that type of single mom before it looks at me as a white snc. [00:15:32] Speaker B: As you set the tone for this season, what is one of the burning questions you want to address up front. [00:15:39] Speaker A: In setting the tone for the season? A lot of I think will be curious to find out about the life of a smc and one of the burning questions that I want to get ahead of right before we jump into the rest of the season is do you hate men? I will tell you that I love men. I do not hate them. I imagine dating some of them soon in the future. But what I will say is that I wanted to decouple my becoming a mom and what I was a true life passion from being in a romantic relationship. [00:16:17] Speaker B: Thank you for sharing your story and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the season. [00:16:29] Speaker C: Thanks for listening. To Start to Finish Motherhood with Aisha if you want to keep the conversation going, follow Start to Finish Motherhood on Instagram, email me at aishastarttofinishmotherhood.com if you love this episode, please share it with anyone who's thinking of becoming a single mother by choice. Anyone who's already parenting as a single mother by choice and just looking for advice on navigating it all. Or a friend or family member who's looking to support someone else's single mother by choice journey. Until next time. Bye now.