Laura Terry dreamed of having kids — a family she could call her own. But there was one challenge: She wasn't interested in dating, marriage, or partnering up.
So, she came up with an idea for an unusual present to give herself.
"For my 39th birthday, I bought a vial of donor sperm," says Terry, who lives in Nashville, Tenn., and works at a top management consulting firm.
She started the process of having a baby via in vitro fertilization, or IVF, soon after. This path hadn't occurred to her initially, even though she has a Ph.D. in cell and developmental biology. There just wasn't anyone in her orbit who had done it. Her epiphany came from a book in which the author described her own journey with IVF.
"I had never heard of being a single mom by choice before that," says Terry, who is now 44. "It was like a light bulb went off."
That light bulb is going off for a lot of single women. Today, 44% of women in America are unpartnered; finding someone and settling down has become less of a priority when they're in their 20s or even 30s. And when some of them are ready to have kids, they aren't letting singlehood deter them.
Who gets to be a parent is being reshaped by increased access to IVF
The nation's first IVF baby was born in 1981, when the process was such a novelty that she was referred to as a "test tube baby." Since then, its use has surged in the United States, and today, IVF accounts for almost 100,000 births each year. That's up 50% from 10 years ago.
With IVF, which accounts for around 2% of births in America, a woman's eggs are retrieved from her body and fertilized with sperm in a lab. The resulting embryo is then implanted in her uterus, with the hope it will lead to a pregnancy.
This process has opened the door for many people who couldn't otherwise conceive children and reshaped who gets to be a parent, including more LGBTQ+ couples.
It has also become a big driver in the number of older single mothers in the U.S. at a time when the country's overall birth rate is declining. The number of unmarried women in their 40s who are having babies has grown by 250% in the last 30 years, according to data from the government. A portion of these women have partners, but many don't.
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There are many reasons for this rise, says Rosanna Hertz, author of the book Single By Chance, Mothers by Choice. Increasingly, she says, young women are pursuing higher education, focusing on their careers, or fulfilling personal goals such as traveling around the world or buying homes.
And when they're ready to partner up in their mid-30s, "there's no one to settle down with," says Hertz, a sociologist with a focus on gender and family at Wellesley College. "So, am I going to spend my time waiting for somebody to come along?"
Hertz says her research shows most women who want a family would rather do it with a partner. For them, IVF is Plan B. But as their reproductive windows narrow with age, some decide to move forward by themselves.
Becoming a mother is a marker of adulthood for them, Hertz says.
"There is a sense that I'm now ready to do something that is selfless, that involves the care and nurture of another human being and be part of a broader community," she says. "What a child does is tie you into a community."
Do I really want to have a baby? How do I choose a donor?
Terry saw that care and community in her own sister's family, when it drew her to Nashville to spend time with her nephews.
Once she knew she wanted to be a mom, she started mapping out her path through the language she understood, which is spreadsheets and PowerPoints.
"I made a decision tree," she says.
The root of that tree was a fundamental question: Did she really want a child? It branched from there to examine how she would become a mother and which path would give her the best chance of having a baby. It led her to IVF.
Soon enough, she was faced with another decision: choosing a sperm donor. Faced with an array of choices, she resorted to another spreadsheet "that was like 30 rows long and 30 columns wide."
In it, she started by listing factors like race, height, ethnicity and education. Then she narrowed it down to a few that really mattered to her: "I cared about some physical attributes to look like me. And I cared about family health history."
Terry was extremely lucky with her IVF process: She got pregnant on her first try. She gave birth to Eleanor in 2021 and Margaret came two years later.
"I should be quite grateful for what my process was," Terry says. "The results were beyond what you statistically expect."
She's right: The odds of conceiving a child with just one try of IVF are below 50% after a woman turns 35. And the chances drop rapidly each year after that. Many women try multiple cycles of IVF with no guarantee that they'll get pregnant.
Pregnancies at an older age can also carry health risks for both mom and child, with a high chance of miscarriage. All of this can take a huge physical and emotional toll.
Women with higher education are the top users of IVF
When Kate Snyder, who lives in northern New Jersey, was ready to have a kid, she looked for the right guy. "And, you know," she says, "it didn't happen."
Snyder was already in her 40s when she started thinking of IVF.
"Once I came to terms with the fact that the father of my child doesn't have to be the person I end up with, and you separate the two, it's very freeing," she says. "And it just took the pressure off."
Now 48, she is the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, who loves to talk and fills their home with chatter. "She comes home from day care with gossip," says Snyder, who is an interior designer and artist. "She's telling me who pooped their pants and how the teacher had a lollipop today and this person got out of her cot."
Snyder says Google, her former employer, covered a small portion of the cost of freezing her eggs. But she paid for the IVF process herself.
Each time a woman tries to get pregnant via IVF, the cost can range from $15,000 to over $30,000. It's why IVF is out of reach for many.
It's gotten the attention of President Trump. In October, he announced proposals to help reduce the cost of the drugs necessary for IVF. He also encouraged employers to offer broader infertility coverage directly to workers.
Some people go into debt, while others like Snyder use up their savings. Some women, like Terry, have theirs covered by insurance. Even that is not common — only 1 in 4 companies with more than 200 employees pays for a part of the process.
Women with higher education — especially master's degrees, doctorates or professional degrees — are more likely to use IVF than those with less education, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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These women, on average, have higher incomes. All that gives them the agency to start and support their own family.
"My knees hurt"
Both Terry and Snyder were financially comfortable enough to step off the career treadmill and create time and space for their new families. Snyder now works four days a week. Terry took a pay cut for a different role that was less intense — it allowed her to work from home and requires less travel. Neither has qualms about it.
Still, parenting in your 40s is hard.
"It's so physical being a mom. I don't think I expected that," says Snyder, thinking back to her first two years of motherhood and carrying her daughter up and down the stairs or getting her in and out the car. "Motherhood in your 40s, you know, my knees hurt and there's things that are starting to fall apart."
For Terry, one of the hardest parts of being a single mom is not being able to take a break. "If I'm tired or had a rough day at work or I'm frustrated, I'm feeling overwhelmed and I want to step away from my kids, I often can't," she says. "I have to meet their needs first and meet my needs later. And that's hard."
And then there is the weight of decision-making. She discusses her choices with her friends and family, "but ultimately all of that rests on me and that feels really heavy," she says.
"Was he sorry I didn't have a husband?"
Even though there are more families like Terry's and Snyder's today, they're still rare. And society hasn't quite caught up with them.
Like when Terry moved to her new home in Nashville, she introduced herself and the girls to a neighbor, who asked what her husband did for work. Terry explained that they were a "mom and kids family" with two cats. The response took her aback.
"He said, 'Oh, I'm so sorry,'" she recalls. "Was he sorry I didn't have a husband? I still don't know to this day. But there is very much like a moment of feeling other and different — and that's often an uncomfortable feeling."
Terry worries about how her daughters will handle such questions. She prepares her oldest child by role-playing with her. But even then, sometimes it doesn't quite play out the way they've practiced.
Recently, she recalls, one of her daughter's classmates said, "'Hey, Eleanor, is that your mom?' And she said, 'Yes.' And they said, 'Well, where's your dad?' And Eleanor just froze in that moment."
But more often than not, the tenderness of motherhood triumphs over such unsettling interactions. Terry treasures the sweet moments she shares with her kids, like when they climb onto her bed in the morning to wake her or when they sit next to each other on the couch to read before bedtime.
"I love moments where they say, 'Mama, I need a snuggle.' Just holding them for a minute or two and seeing how that calms them is really, really powerful."
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