Reviewed by Melissa Ludtke

I wanted to be a mother but I wasn't a wife. The man I'd been dating for three years finally convinced me that he was not ever going to have children; he didn't want to be a father. He did, however, want to marry me. The decision wasn't an easy one, but in the end I walked away from his offer and after much soul-searching I set out to have a child on my own. I was 37 years old.

Those events happened about a decade ago. And though I tried for a year to conceive a child on my own—with the use of anonymously donated sperm—I did not succeed. Eventually I walked away from my solo babymaking efforts as well, but my aching desire for motherhood did not leave me.

Some regard what I tried to do—to give birth as an unmarried mother—as a selfish act; others label it as irresponsible. Still others view it as immoral. A lot more people wonder what consequences a decision like mine might have on a child born to and raised by single women. I, too, gave much thought to the potential consequences of my actions, and decided that my parental skills, the support I had from my family and within my community of friends, and the ability I had to support a family on my own would help to compensate for my absence of a partner.

I thought, too, about the conventional characterizations of unwed motherhood. Were they fair? Or did they fail to convey the complex nature of women's decision-making about childbearing? And how accurate was their portrayal of what it is really like to raise children without the presence of the father or sometimes even the knowledge of who he is [in the case of an anonymous sperm donor]?

These were the kind of questions that interested me in my professional life as a journalist, in which I reported on children and family issues for Time magazine. I became quite curious about why there has been such a startling rise in the number of babies being born out-of-wedlock, not just to women like me but also to younger and poorer and less highly-educated mothers, many more of whom are having and raising children outside of marriage.

My journey of discovery evolved into a bookwriting odyssey, one which weaves my personal quest for answers with a professional scrutiny of what research can tell us about this radical change in family formation. My book, entitled On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America, was published by Random House in September, 1997; it meshes the very personal reflections of unwed mothers with knowledge that experts who study such families have accumulated. By doing so, the book brings women's voices into a national debate from which they have, until now, been conspicuously absent. It's my hope that On Our Own will helpto dispel some of the stereotypic images many of us have of the women who become mothers out-of-wed-lock and inform the debate we, as a society, are having about why this pathway to family formation has become so prevalent and how it is affecting children.

On Our Own examines the day-to-day lives and decision-making of two categories of unmarried mothers, those for whom motherhood arrived during adolescence and women, like me, who waited until we were in our late 30s or early 40s to have or adopt a child. Their experiences and their thoughts highlight three universal facets of motherhood: having a child, raising a child, and dealing the question of "Where's Daddy?". And in the closing chapter of the book, the common ground upon which these women from disparate circumstances walk is described.

Today nearly one in every three babies is born to an unwed mother and, unlike even a decade ago, a lot of single women are adopting children, as well. About the same number of children are now residing in single parent families because of being born out-of-wedlock as are there because of divorce or separation of their parents. And no age group has experienced a sharper increase in such births than women who are over thirty, even though their portion of the total number of such births remains relatively small: from 1970 to 1993, the percentage of out-of-wedlock births to mothers in their thirties or forties doubled from 8 percent to 16 percent. And though many people suspect teenage mothers are the primary source of nonmarital births, in fact such births accounted for only 30 percent of the total number in 1993—a drop from 50 percent two decades earlier. Nowadays it is women in their twenties whose reproductive patterns account for half of the nation's nonmarital births.

When I'd finished writing On Our Own, I began the process of adopting a baby as a single mother. When I went to China in June to meet my orphan daughter, I was 46 years old. It had been nearly a decade since I'd considered trying to become pregnant on my own. The thousands of miles I traveled to meet my daughter, Maya, and bring her home were symbolic for me of the even longer road I feel I have traveled; that road led me over the often bumpy, sometimes treacherous, terrain of self-reflection and professional inquiry. But all of this prepared me well for the rigors of my solo undertaking.

On a broader scope, there are no simple remedies to the many problems now being associated with unmarried motherhood—teen pregnancy, school dropouts, adolescent criminality—nor should we expect there to be. And some of these difficulties commonly ascribed to unwed motherhood are embedded in a much more complicated web of factors than would be solved simply by advocating marriage.

For example, for the child of 17-year-old mother who either does not understand the value of reading to her toddler or lacks the skills to do so, and therefore raises her child ill-prepared for academic success, marriage to a man who is no more attuned to a child's developmental needs is not going to address this societal challenge.

As former New York Governor Mario M. Cuomo observed after reading an advance copy of On Our Own, "Unless we study this testimony [of these mothers] closely and use it to move toward some solutions, the difficulties these families and our nation face will only become more rooted."