Today at my consultation I attended a 37 year old woman who wanted to get pregnant with donor sperm.

She was so beautiful that before I knew it I was speaking my thoughts out loud: “Well, if you can’t get a man, I don’t know what’s going to happen!”

Laughing, she told me she has a boyfriend (38 years old), who lives with her but doesn’t want to have children and, apparently, he was waiting for her in the waiting room!!! To keep her company!!

I commented the case at the medical conference, where they all explained they’ve had similar cases.

More and more, we see similar cases at our consultations. We treat a rising number of single women who request treatments with donor sperm because they can’t find the ideal father… and they aren’t sure they will ever find him. Regardless, they don’t want to depend on the theoretical “him” in order to become mothers.

Nowadays, in our society, to fall in love does not necessarily imply wanting to have a child with your partner. Moreover, the need to be a mother doesn’t imply finding a man.

Maternity no longer entails having an emotional commitment; reproductive assistance dissociates life with your partner from sex. To have a child is slowly being envisaged by many as a personal project, more than a common one.

The writer José Antonio Marina states: “A family was stable when it was regarded as an economical institution necessary to survive. In poorer societies, singletons don’t survive. When the economical situation changes, the family drive is based on emotional ties, leading to greater expectations, therefore greater chances of failure.”

Women no longer need a man in order to have a fulfilling life. Therefore, the prospect of being a single mother is not so alien anymore. One substitutes the love for the husband with the love for the child.

It is a prospect that’s socially accepted in countries like Spain; according to a survey carried out by the NSI (National Statistics Institute), 92% of women do not censure the fact that they have had a child without a partner. And nor do the men.