They call it something from five to midnight, says Annabel Dearing, a senior legal advisor of ENBW, an energy company based in southwest Germany. When he turned 39, Dearing, then single, realized that time was running out to have a son.
I was working in Geneva in a commercial house of basic products and was “busy, busy, busy,” she says. “I always worked hard and played hard and traveled a lot … but I never felt I had a purpose.” Then a friend suggested that he had a baby.
In 2017, 43, Dearing joined the ranks of the single parents by choice. There were 3.2 million single -parent families in the United Kingdom in 2023, according to the National Statistics Office, 85 percent of which were solitary mothers.
As more people enter in the late thirties and forty without a long -term couple, within that group there is a growing demographic group, mostly women, who chooses to embark only into paternity.
The number of individual patients who perform fertility treatments, including IVF and the insemination of donors in the United Kingdom, increased from 305 in 1999 to 4,660 in 2022, according to data from the data of the Human fertilization and embryology authority.
Single people and same -sex couples are Two demographic data The fertility rates in decline in the United Kingdom, says Victoria Pratt, professor of the University of Oxford Brookes who is also investigating the experiences of Solo Mms to return to work after the maternity leave.
For “solo parents”, a term used to describe people who choose to raise children without being parentful, challenges to balance work and family life can be particularly acute: they will depend on an income, they will have less free time, school collection or be flexible when something goes wrong and should assume all child care costs.
“What happens with the parents alone is: it cannot fail,” says Ruth Talbot, who is bringing three children alone, while directing the rights of the group’s single parents, “because you are obviously the only one who brings the money and you are the only one who gives attention.”
Michelle Highman, executive director of the charity organization Money, who chose to have two children, now five and seven, without a partner, says that flexibility at work is crucial. Its beneficial organization, which focuses on financial education, has a work policy from anywhere and Highman divides the hours of a four -day week for five days.
But she says it is important to recognize that solo parents have limits. “You can literally not be in two places at the same time in the way a family of two parents can.”
The flexibility of remote work has also been a great help for Dearing, who joined ENBW in 2022 and now has two children. You can work in energy transactions, which you love, while accommodating family life.
Other professional mothers say they trust individual managers that allow them to flex when necessary. “I am very lucky that my boss is very flexible and very empowering and reliable,” reports a full -time FTSE director who is the single mother of two children. “I don’t think you can make it work if you did not have a boss or a culture of the company that was so.”
Anna Diamant, who welcomed her son in 2021, works four days a week as a deputy director in a primary school in southern London. She combines being in school with some work at home where schedules and duties allow it.
It has been useful for its director to work flexibly. “I think that also makes a difference, having a boss who has had to consider his own child care and how he is affected in his work,” says Diamant. “That understanding is filtered in how it manages its staff.”
But the adjustment in work and care demands sacrifices, including work widely outside the usual hours. Diamant tends to work on Saturdays and Sundays at night, and the director of Human Resources at night when their children are in bed. Dearing works on his day off, on Friday or pays a babysitter on a Sunday. “I stop in many different directions and I am paying money all the time to have sanity and have space to breathe,” she says.
Without the “breeding shift” option with a partner, child care costs can accumulate rapidly. At one point, Diamant says he was paying twice as his mortgage in the care of children; Dearing points out that half of his salary continues with affectionate help; While the Human Resources director says that 41 percent of his monthly payment check is made in two lots of nursery rates. Night events, night work trips and emergency child care for disease days are an additional expense.
Pratt’s research shows that some employers are trying to help, such as providing emergency support or outside children’s schedule. But this can be a challenge for parents who feel forced to use it and for children who may not want to be treated by strangers. “Inviting someone who does not know to come and take care of their son so that he can go out at night to a work event can feel very uncomfortable,” she says.
There is also a risk of a broader impact on professional progression when you cannot easily perform additional tasks and events. The director of Human Resources does not believe that being a solo mother has harmed her “yet” career. But its inability to assume additional projects and attend night drinks means that it is less “visible”, which believes that it could, over time, affect its ability to be promoted.
Dearing also talks about a “self -imposed roof.” I could pursue an association or head of legal position and “subcontract everything to the babysitter.” But she chooses no, since she wants to be “emotionally and physically” for her children.
Sarah Lambert, Director of Gingerbread Policy, a charity for single parents, says that responsibility is in employers since “who do not do their workplaces are a single friend of the parents are being lost a large group of talents.”
“However, people become single parents, their need for support is the same,” he adds. “Research tells us that it is not the form of a family that is important, but the support and available resources.”
A certainty, says Dearing, is “how much they want and love children … You don’t go to all these problems unless it really is, you really want.”