Choice vs 'Choice'

I can’t stop thinking about this Guardian article my friend A share with me this week.  Entitled ‘There’s no stigma: why so many Danish women are opting to become single mothers’, the article is, on the surface, about how the liberal mindset of Denmark has led to a new class of family led by ‘solomars’ - single mothers by choice.

There’s a lot of talk of why women are having children alone, making it clear that most of these women were “waiting it out”, trying to find men who wanted to have children with them until they were (on average) thirty-six.

But in reality, it’s just an outline of what a whole host of women in many countries would love to have access to:

“Denmark is famously family-friendly, with 52 weeks’ paid parental leave for a new baby and a generous welfare state paying three-quarters of the costs of childcare, enabling 85% of mothers to return to work. “It’s easier to be a solomor in Denmark than elsewhere because society accepts and supports you – we’re pretty liberal about most things,” says Erb.”

And later:

Won’t women’s job prospects suffer if they’re grappling with small children while trying to finish degrees and get on the career ladder? “Not if men and women realise they have to play a part,” she says: “Denmark has the highest employment rate among mothers in the world – we have the day care, we have the welfare state – it shouldn’t harm women’s careers to have their children a little earlier.”

My tweet to A after reading the article was “Man, if I had free fertility care, a year of maternity leave and cheap child care after that, LIFE WOULD BE DIFFERENT. Sigh.”  A’s reply was “I just read it and cried.”

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Choices women make can only be compared when all the decks are stacked the same. 

I say I’ve made a “choice” to not have kids on my own. But in reality, U.S. society is not set up to make it possible for a single woman of my income (and my income is pretty high, statistically) to have a kid alone. Insemination is not covered by my insurance. Neither is sperm, if I wanted to go through a donor bank. My (very well-established) non-profit offers no maternity leave. (Women have to use up all of their sick and vacation time; after that, they are eligible for disability if they want more time at home with their babies.) There is no subsidized child care. Once I had a kid, my health insurance premiums would go way up. And don't even get me started on saving for college.

My grandfather was born and raised in Denmark. I wonder if it’s time to consider going back?  (JK, if I wanted to be a Danish citizen in my childbearing years, I should have moved there a decade ago.)