Here comes a book, from a progressive corner of the United States (Brooklyn, New York), that tells us that a single lesbian has had a baby with an anonymous sperm donor. About which many British people would privately think, so what? It happens here all the time, even if many don’t like it. Only last month we read about Andy Bathie, a 37-year-old fire-fighter, who donated sperm to a lesbian couple five years ago and is now being made to pay child support because the couple separated.

But Louise Sloan’s book has irritated people, even here. Her own story – single lesbian conceives child via anonymous sperm donor – is sufficiently unconventional to make the social conservatives wrinkle their noses. And even some liberals are unsettled by the contents of Sloan’s book. A jaunty part-memoir, Knock Yourself Up – “a tell-all guide to becoming a single mom” – is provocatively subtitled, No Man? No Problem!Alongside her own experiences, she has interlaced the stories of more than 50 single mothers – most straight, all “the new breed of single moms”.

The tone is flip and matter of fact and occasionally gynaecological. We find out that some women masturbate while inseminating themselves with turkey basters because they are more likely to conceive. Others light candles and play soft music. Nicole loves it “when my inseminations are on a Saturday. I read the paper, and then go out for breakfast. Last time I scheduled a pedicure for afterwards. Married couples have fun making a baby – why shouldn’t I?”

Carol found prince charming in a sperm bank: “He’s stellar in the sciences, whereas I’m a more liberal arts person. We’ve got a complete overlap of hobbies. He’s tall and slim – with dimples! And even, straight teeth without braces! He’s a great addition to the family tree.” When Jenny first saw a picture of her sperm donor on the web she thought: “Oh my God, I would totally have sex with that guy.”

Eva tells Sloan: “There’s a reason I’m single – relationships involve a lot of compromise and I want to keep my voice,” but never suspects that she comes across as an unbearable control freak. Kimberley complains that: “I am a magnet for alcoholic crazy lunatics,” but doesn’t ask herself why. Sloan writes that women are beginning to see their lives in a different order: children, then, if you’re lucky, a partner. But “for most single mothers by choice whose libidos remain intact,” writes Sloan, “looking for love or sex becomes logistically or emotionally complicated. The solution? A vibrator.”

Sloan is a graduate of Brown University (comparative literature), then glossy magazines such as Glamour and Golf for Women, no Andrea Dworkin is she. Her career high before the publication of Knock Yourself Up was the award for a piece she wrote for a woman’s magazine on coming out as a lesbian at work. It’s what I’d call “celebratory” journalism, factual and yet gloopily soulful and upbeat, atmospherically much like an organic food shop – at least half the women she interviews are either “energetic and attractive”, or “strikingly attractive”, their children are frequently “adorable”.

Before I read the book I had hoped to meet a firebrand proponent of the “choice motherhood movement”. But Sloan is disappointingly meek and likeable, a little stunned that her research has prompted such an outcry, a little vague on the impact that “choice motherhood” will have on society. She opens the door to her medium-sized Brooklyn apartment in jeans and no make-up. She looks a lot less exhausted than some married mothers I know.

Sloan makes tea while her two-year-old son, Scott, is bustled off for a walk by the nanny. “I was not one of these, ‘oops I forgot to have a baby’ people,” Sloan says’ “I was a romantic procrastinating idiot.” At 19, she came out and, by the time she reached her mid-twenties, had settled down in a stable relationship. At 28, she was ready to have children, but her partner put off having them. After eight years, they split up. “Women don’t understand the concept of a time limit. I think some in their forties haven’t got to grips with that. There’s a kind of wilful denial, which is what I was engaged in. I didn’t anticipate that relationship to end,” she says. “I certainly ended up paying for my arrogance.”

Scott was conceived two days before Sloan’s 42nd birthday – it was her 13th attempt at pregnancy. She had tried to inseminate herself with sperm from a donor eight times and there are vivid descriptions of her disappearing up the stairs at her Republican mother’s house with a Fed-Ex parcel to go to her room and “baste” (from “turkey baster”). Scott was conceived in stirrups in a doctor’s surgery. His father is a tall, handsome, green-eyed actor (“Favourite colour: blue. Favourite pets: dogs”). Twelve vials of green eyes’ semen are still sitting refrigerated in liquid nitrogen. What does she intend to do with them? “There are women who would probably want to buy it from me. I’ve discussed the idea with a lesbian couple who are trying for a child. I think it’s a nice idea for the children to know they have siblings elsewhere. It’s probably not legal to actually sell it.”

What upset her critics most is Sloan’s take-’em-or-leave-’em stance on men, this despite the death of her own father when she was a child, an experience she describes as: “Difficult. When I saw bonding experiences between fathers and their children it felt very sad.”

In her introduction, she writes: “We single mothers by choice have children – or are thinking about having them – because we believe that we have a lot to offer as moms. About the only thing we didn’t have to offer our kids was a guy named Dad.” Farther down the page she continues: “Most of the women in this book would love to find the right guy but, when push came to shove, decided that finding a husband just wasn’t their No 1 priority. Having a child was.” Sloan quotes Kimberley, who chose an anonymous donor: ‘“I don’t know anything about this person. I don’t want my child to have a false sense of connection.” Kimberley doesn’t fret too much about how her child will feel if, as an adult, he or she will be denied access to information about their father: “That can be sad and I’ll never know what it is like for them – but everybody has something they are sad about at some point.”

Having grown up without a father, Sloan was initially wary of bringing another fatherless child into the world. “I spent a lot of time thinking about it. When I think of my own father, he is the best father in the world and probably a fantasy person who never existed.” But she was reassured when she talked to the adult children of sperm donors: “It is hard for me to understand how it cannot be a huge issue, but they don’t seem curious. Most don’t seem to have even that much interest in their fathers. They don’t feel that this is a crushing issue in their lives. I hope that’s true for Scott.” Sloan talks about “coming out” as a single mother by choice, a process that she found infinitely less awkward than coming out as a lesbian. To her face, most people have been perfectly nice, especially, she says, married parents: “They can understand what it’s like wanting a child.” The most pointed hostility comes from childless women her age who, she thinks, may “feel threatened and angry. It’s bursting the bubble. It’s, ‘how dare you contradict my vision’.” Samantha, one of Sloan’s interviewees, suspects that she was cut off by a close friend after she decided to have a child because “it’s something she wouldn’t feel comfortable doing, and she’s envious”.

Times recommends

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