“I feel empowered because I don’t need to rely on anyone for this." A family looks different to everyone. Meet the women doing things differently and ditching stale, outdated notions to go it alone, without a partner
Reaching her late thirties, Anneli Svensson had a lightbulb moment when it occurred to her she could become a mother on her own, without a partner. “When I realised that, my longing to become a mother really set in – it was powerful and hard to explain,” Svensson, a police officer in Falkenberg, says.
For many of us that haven't quite met the person they thought they would start a family with, there are those choosing to go it alone without the involvement of a partner. And with that single women all over the Nordics are ditching the belief that a long-term relationship has to precede motherhood.
“Society’s perception of the definition of a family has changed as well as how many of us who are living alone," says Christina Aggesø, of TFP Fertility Denmark, located in Copenhagen. "With the decreasing fertility rate, it can be stressful to be a single woman in her mid-thirties, not knowing if she easily can conceive or has the time to wait to find her love of her life.”
When Svensson initially started looking into sperm donations, Svensson was struggling with negative thoughts. “I felt like a bit of a freak,” she says. “Why didn’t I have a partner? What was wrong with me?”
Photo: Getty.
Choosing to move past her self-doubt, Svensson continued looking into her options, eventually deciding to use a sperm donor through a clinic in Copenhagen. “Going out and getting pregnant by a one-night stand was not for me,” she says. “I decided to have a closed donor where my child could never find out the identity of the donor. He would never be a father figure – he would only be a donor and that was it.”
Svensson didn’t care about the colour of her child’s eyes, hair, height, or any other superficial details – she simply wanted a child. On her third ‘try’, she became pregnant and gave birth to her daughter.
It was empowering to own the process
Anneli Svensson
Years later, Svensson occasionally feels the weight of being a single mother and bearing the responsibility for every decision, but she never regrets her decision to become a mother. “It was empowering to own the process,” she says.
Aggesø says their clinic in Copenhagen has seen lots of different women turning to them for fertility treatment, with different backgrounds and reasons for using a sperm donor. “But they all share the same dream – to become a mother,” she says.
Since she was a little girl, Sabrina Johnson has always wanted to be a mother, but at 36, the Copenhagen-based freelancer had yet to find a partner to raise children with and decided she would become a single mother using a sperm bank.
“I looked into co-parenting, but it can be a very grey area,” Johnson says. “It was just going to be easier to parent on my own.”
Although Johnson’s first choice would have been to have found a partner to raise children with, she would rather be a single mother by choice than bring a child into a complicated relationship.
I looked into co-parenting, but it was just going to be easier to parent on my own
Sabrina Johnson
“I’m looking for the positives and how I can empower myself doing this on my own,” she says.
Recently, Johnson went to a sperm bank in Copenhagen to choose the sperm she would eventually use. “It was kind of fun,” she says. “It feels like dating, except you could have anyone you wanted. I could hear their voice, see their writing, and see their baby photos.”
In a matter of months, after she has moved out of her flat share, Johnson hopes to be pregnant. “I feel empowered because I don’t need to rely on anyone for this,” she says. “I feel like my life is back within my control.”
Zeynep Colpan is still deciding if and how she will go about becoming a single mother. “It would be nice not to be completely alone in the world,” the Sweden-based artist says. “In my thirties, I started thinking more about becoming a mother as lots of my friends were having children.”
Having been approved by a fertility clinic to have her eggs frozen, Colpan is now researching the next steps for sperm donation, but admits that is a bit nerve-wracking. “I’m a little afraid – it’s such a big decision,” she says. “Part of me is postponing it, but in March, I’m turning 37, and I know I need to get on it.”
Certainly it's not an easy decision to make, often requiring a long journey before reaching a destination. “When we have our first meeting with the woman, we understand how much thought they often have gone through before taking the step and reaching out to a fertility clinic,” says Aggesø. “No two women are alike, and all come with different stories and reasons for taking the step to becoming a single mother to a donor child. Some may feel sad that she has given up on the hope of having a child with a love of her life, others empowered and strong that she has taken the step to have a child alone.”