Renouncing ‘Good Enough’

The choice to become a single parent is my feminism.

Have you noticed the way women describe themselves in terms of their relationships with others?

‘I’m a loving wife/partner/mother/daughter/dog owner’.

I have never been a loving wife, or even a loving partner to a wonderful man or woman. For me, the defining relationship is of ‘mother’. I am a loving mother to two beautiful children. I have never met their father, and I like it that way. This is my feminism.

What We All Want

Growing up, I wanted what every little girl wants in our patriarchy — to marry the Knight in Shining Armour and to be whisked away to a castle. More fundamentally, I expected to be a mother, raising five or six children effortlessly like my own mother. That expectation was a constant from my earliest memories.

As I reached adolescence, I expanded my horizons slightly. I would also have a brilliant career. But I would still meet and marry Mr Right at an appropriate time, probably my mid-twenties, have broods of children and live happily ever after.

There was just one problem. The boys who were available for young love experiences were, well, repellent. Was I a lesbian, then? No; sex with girls was unappealing too. I dated a few boys and men through the years, but a combination of my lack of interest and their shyness meant nothing lasted long and I was happy to see the back of them.

I couldn’t understand the girls around me, my friends, who partnered up with, to me, seriously flawed individuals. They openly acknowledged their partners’ imperfections, but they just got on with it. I simply couldn’t. Good enough just wasn’t, not for me. I did not see why I should make significant changes to my happy and comfortable single life for a man who wasn’t exactly what I wanted.

Seeking Perfection

Where did my expectations of perfection come from? As a child, I idolized and admired my father. I didn’t have a particularly close relationship with my mother. We seemed to have little in common, and there were always other siblings vying for attention. It wasn’t until she was injured a few years ago and I moved in to take care of her for several weeks that we finally forged a close and intimate relationship. Before then, my father was undoubtedly my favorite parent, though the path of our relationship was far from smooth.

My father is not perfect. Like any human, he has flaws, and as I matured, these flaws only became more visible. He is a selfish man, pursuing his ambitions regardless of the cost to others. But then, he also bends over backwards to support his family in everyday, domestic ways. He is moody, frequently exploding into raging temper during my childhood. With age, he has mellowed significantly, but remains far from calm, going from overly excited to melancholic with little warning. He is not perfect. And perhaps from childhood, watching his relationship with Mum, not consciously noticing at the time, I saw something that I didn’t want for myself.

My mother is a giving person, a selfless person. She never stops. She has a traditional view of marriage, that you support your husband and never put yourself first. Everything my father has wanted to do, she has gone along with. As a family, at his desire, we lived overseas in Singapore and Brunei for many years, years that my mother was never able to recapture with her own ageing parents. Later, back in Australia, she allowed him to re-mortgage the house not once but twice to fund a business idea that never succeeded. This has meant that she cannot retire, though she longs to. Instead, she fights fatigue every day at work to repay the home loan yet again, the victim of a business that never sees a profit.

Living Selfishly

There’s no doubt that when it comes to selfishness, I am my father, not my mother. As a twenty-something, I threw myself into life, travelling, building a career, indulging myself. I kept assuming that Mr Right would still turn up. I wasn’t sure exactly when or how — he’d have to be pretty determined to convince me to add him into my life. But ‘there’s someone for everyone’, right? He was bound to appear sooner or later. Then I would implement my long-held ambition to become a mother. And having an adult companion would be okay too, I supposed.

Then I turned 29. It was the Year of Angst.

Panic Mode

Being a person who likes to plan and research, I knew that it was better to wait at least a year between pregnancies. I also knew that the chances of having a healthy baby dropped like a stone when the mother turned 35. Suddenly, that was just a handful of years away, and I wanted at least two to four babies.

The numbers just weren’t adding up. Even if I met the Perfect Man today, I’d still probably be at least a year away from baby number one. And Mr Right was nowhere in sight. Even though I was surrounded by men every day (I was working in the mining industry at the time) there were absolutely no prospects on my horizon.

And so I made the most selfish decision I will ever make in my life: to become a single mother by choice.

All About Me

I emphasize ‘selfish’ because this decision was all about me. Almost everyone I told (and I told everyone) said how ‘brave’ I was. This completely threw me. It’s not brave to indulge yourself. It’s not brave to pursue your ambitions — is it? This was the single most important ambition in my life: to become a mother. I didn’t care how I did it. I just knew I had to.

Clearly, my mother had made an impression after all. I wanted some of that!

I knew nothing about my options. I eventually discovered the procedure known as IUI (intrauterine insemination), and I began the process with a single-woman-friendly fertility clinic. I attended counselling sessions, health check-ups, waited seven months on a list for a donor and then had a week of daily blood tests to identify the perfect day. Finally, in May of the year I turned 32, I attended the clinic for the big moment — it was a simple, fifteen-minute procedure which I did during my lunch break. On the way back to the office, the question whirled around in my head: am I pregnant? Did it work?

Success!

It did; I was pregnant. Every health worker involved did a double take when they heard: the chances of successful pregnancy first try were so slim. But my daughter is like me: determined. She wanted to exist, and she didn’t let the odds get in her way.

A couple of years later, I added a little boy to our family, through the same amazing donor. Who said there were no awesome men in the world? We call my children’s father the Marvelous Mystery Man and though we know very little about him, we know the most important thing. He is generous and kind to strangers. My children were created from love, just in a different way to most.

Reflecting Back

Eight years on, do I wish for a co-parent or adult partner? Should I have settled for ‘good enough’? Honestly, no. I LOVE being independent. I LOVE calling the shots. I get to decide what’s best for me and my kids, without having to compromise on things I would rather not. My family is close and opinionated: I don’t lack for advice and alternate points of view. But ultimately, I get to make the call and that satisfies something fundamental in my soul.

Do I worry that my children will suffer from the lack of a father figure? Not at all. They have a grandfather and various uncles, one of whom they are very close to. They have deep roots in family and place, something I sacrificed career to achieve, moving to small-town Tasmania to keep them close to their extended family.

Do I hope that my children learn independence and feminist principles from my example? Absolutely. They are stubborn and not afraid to stand up for themselves. I applaud their sense of self and their confidence of belonging in the world. And while I have always been happy on my own, I don’t expect my daughter and son to follow my example, but to forge their own path to love, as I did, with whomever makes them happy and fulfilled — even if that person is themselves alone.

‘Good enough’, for me, was what I have now. It turns out that, although I am not willing to turn my life upside down for an imperfect partner, I am more than happy to do so for my children. They are my perfect ‘good enough.’ This is my feminism: my life, my choices, my way.

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