«Solo mother»: a modern type of single motherhood or a new form of family-parent relations?

The article considers the socio-demographic problems faced by women who voluntarily give up marriage in favor of independent motherhood. Analysis of the historical, statistical and publicistic information shows the processes of formation and development of the phenomenon of «single motherhood by choice», which is fundamentally different from «forced» single motherhood. Among the voluntary «solo mothers», there are «social» ones, whose children have a real father, and «biological» ones, whose motherhood is possible only with the help of reproductive donation. According to public Russian and foreign Internet sites, the self-assessment of both categories of solo mothers is summarized, which makes it possible to identify their main characteristics, causes and prospects. The growing number of women who consciously make a choice in favor of having or raising a child outside official or unofficial marriage, their self-organization and qualitative differentiation within the group suggest that this family option reflects current and future socio-economic changes taking place in post-industrial society, and indicates a further separation of marital and parental functions of the family. The social permissibility of such family relationships is determined by low birth rate, when the fact of the birth of a child is more important than its status in the parental family, and the choice in favor of voluntary maternal monoparenty is determined by the possibilities of modern professional female employment and the established system of state social protection. The continued willingness of solo mothers to form new family relationships and the desire to create a circle of kinship contacts for their children, similar or equal to marital family, testifies both to the dominance of traditional matrimonial choice and to the permissibility of voluntary maternal monoparenty as one of the forms of modern family.

births in not registered marriage, mono-parenthood, single motherhood, reproductive donation, marital status