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Insight: July 4

Tonight Jenny Brockie asks "Why are more and more people choosing to become solo parents?"

Tonight on Insight, Jenny Brockie asks “Why are more and more people choosing to become solo parents?”

More and more single people are making the choice to become solo parents. As fertility deadlines approach, a new generation aren’t prepared to wait for a partner to come along and risk missing out on the opportunity to have a child if that person doesn’t arrive in time.

A popular option is now to go it alone with the help of a sperm donor. IVF clinics around the country are reporting the demand for donor sperm by single women is soaring as women are taking things into their own hands and fulfilling their dreams of being a mother. This week, Insight examines the growing child-rearing trend of solo parenting by choice.

Forty-one year old Anita Fox is typical of a number of professional women who have decided in their late thirties to have a baby without a partner. After a divorce, Anita didn’t want another relationship but did want a baby and she’s now a proud mother of two year old Grace.

Amanda Hendren decided in her late thirties that she wanted to become a solo mum, and soon after gave birth to baby Elijah. But in the first few years she was hit with depression and discovered, much to her shock, that motherhood “didn’t give me any value”. It took her several years to really settle into the role.

Stephanie Holt, at 26, has decided that she doesn’t want to wait to meet the right man to be the father of her children, and is currently embarking on IVF treatment to try to become a solo mum.

Host Jenny Brockie speaks to a number of women who have chosen the donor sperm path about the joys and challenges of solo parenting. She also speaks to those in the process of trying to become solo parents through IVF and the children of single mothers by choice to reflect on the long-term implications of being brought into the world via donor conception.

But it’s not only women choosing to solo parent – a growing number of men are also choosing to pursue parenthood alone. We meet Anthony Stralow, a single dad of three children who used two overseas surrogates and an egg donor to create the family he always wanted.

Tuesday at 8.30pm on SBS.

One Response

  1. You really have no idea. Such a complex subject rhat has been reduced to a narrow view of peoples lives. Many mothers are married and divorced some mothers have no idea of their heredity or siblings because at the time when they were born mothers could not be sole parents. Children were given up.

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