Confronting ‘Social Infertility’ with Art: Solo Motherhood

Christine Schnor, UCLouvain
Denise Musni, DEMO-UCLouvain

Motherhood postponement and difficulties finding the right partner to form a family contribute to ‘social infertility’, as parenthood normatively evolves within partnerships. The option of assisted reproduction has contributed to a new form of single mothers who decide to become a parent deliberately on their own. Qualitative studies describe such ‘solo mothers’ as older, mostly highly educated and well-abled to provide support to their children, which contrasts with the image of the young and poor single mother with an unplanned birth. This study is the first to quantify different single mother types by conception mode and to describe their socio-demographic heterogeneity. We use Belgian population data covering first childbirths in the years 2010-2019 and distinguished 6 types of mothers according to whether they are partnered, conceived their child naturally, and declared a co-parent. Solo mothers were single, underwent ART treatment and had no co-parent declared. Only 4% (N=2,914) of single mothers classify as solo mothers. Solo mothers were older than all other mother types and as highly educated as partnered mothers, educational level was substantially lower in other single mother categories. We demonstrate that solo mothers, a small but growing group, differ from ‘traditional’ single mothers and from partnered mothers.

Keywords: Families, Unions and Households, Fertility, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination

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