To be sad about reasons behind niece’s choice

Did you miss the part about her having fibroids? If they are significant already at 23, all the frozen eggs in the world won’t help her have a baby in 10 years time if her uterus is full of fibroids.

Agree Op. Seems sad for her and also her future children. Hope she’s not anti relationships to the extent she influences her childrens thinking in any way. They’ll miss out on a lot if they don’t entertain the idea of a healthy supportive and affectionate relationship of their own way off down the line. Seems a bit sad and cynical I must say.

Has she had any bad experiences in her life that have brought her to this decision - you mention she doesn't want a stepmother situation and obviously doesn't want a biological father in the picture which is fair enough, but reasons like that would maybe come from someone who has been hurt by a biological father and stepmother - or is aware of stereotypes and what usually happens. Is there more to it do you think?

👆🏻this with bells on quite honestly! If she has the means and ability to bring up a child well on her own I don’t blame her and I say that as a step parent to a lovely teenager who is very much influenced by and compliant to their other parent and her mother, it’s incredibly sad to watch and is history repeating itself as her mother has kept her so close that it ruined her relationship with my DH and has gone on to ruin her marriage (she is now living back at her mothers with all three children).

The things parents do their children can sometimes be incredibly unkind, I think that my DH’s coparenting relationship and, as such, his sons wellbeing would be so much better if his ex’s mother was not around. The sad thing is that her ex husband tells us that she totally acknowledges the power her mother has over her, but can’t seem to find the ability to break free of it.

So, to be honest, don’t be sad for you niece, celebrate the fact that she is switched on enough to realise the world has changed and this way forward is a better option, if, like I say, they can still maintain a good quality of life.

YANBU and yes, I think it's sad. But she's old enough to make her own choices, though no one really knows what being a parent is like until they are one.

IMO having a dad who is divorced from the mother is better than no dad at all. But it's also rather cynical to assume a marriage will fail - many do, many don't, but sad to assume at her age that she won't find someone to parent with.

I don’t think it’s sad or cynical at all. Picking a man to have children with is one of the biggest gambles of your life. 1 in 2 marriages will end in divorce and you only need to look on here, or simply look around you, to realise that most of the remaining marriages are miserable and the husband rarely pulls his weight. Deciding to have children by yourself is an incredibly sensible decision imo. She may meet a man down the line who is somewhat half decent, but at least her parenting of her child won’t be affected if this relationship breaks down, she can just move on with her life with her child without the interference of a useless man.

Agree. Freezing her eggs at her age would probably be quite worthwhile, unlike when you get into your thirties. It’s very sad and cynical at her age to be thinking she will never find a decent man to have children with.

As a previous poster has said this sounds very immature to me, she needs a pet not a baby. To do this at 23 is very odd. Should looking into freezing eggs not going the whole hog alone.

Relationships failing is not a 'sometimes' thing though, is it? It's a 50/50 shot. And in a world where (mostly) men get away with not supporting their children when the relationship breaks down, I wouldn't blame any woman for going it alone.

Women contemplating this should watch DNA secrets and see the angst that not knowing their father ,and sometimes mother , causes people for many years . Of course relationships fail sometimes but to choose this route is very selfish.

I’m assuming she has a great job with flexible working and fantastic maternity provision? Or are her parents going to support her financially?

If her fibroids are significant enough to present an issue with future fertility I can kinda see her reasoning, and tbf I can also understand her on the point of not having a co-parent, considering how fucking useless so many men are as fathers. But I also agree with others that she probably has no real understanding of how much work a baby/child is.

It’s not like that now, thankfully.

I think it’s a great idea. No annoying in-laws either 🤣

If I could turn the clocks back I’d do the same as your niece! My children’s Father left ALL parenting to me. When I divorced him, he refused to agree to a parenting plan. He then dragged us through the courts seeking sole custody of my DDs claiming he’d been alienated. It was so traumatic for them being interviewed by social workers and psychologists and being forced to spend time with a man who had never been their caregiver and was furiously angry at having been rejected. When he wasn’t awarded sole custody he stopped seeing them completely…six years now. It would have been a whole lot less stressful to simply have a donor.

I don’t think it’s fair to assume that her experience would be exactly the same as yours, I had my first child at 24 and found it nowhere near as bad as everyone around me wanted me to believe.

Might be better off with a donor rather than a kebab.

No one knows the future, but deliberately giving a child only 1 parent is selfish.

This was my thought too!

"All those saying it’s a “wise” choice- are you aware that studies show boys do better with a father/strong male influence in their lives?"

I think the key here is a POSITIVE male role model. Unfortunately those are difficult to come by.

My ds won't have his father growing up (his father's decision which I imagine will be difficult for my son as he gets older). His father figures will be his two grandfathers, his uncle and other positive male role models I can place in his life like sports coaches etc.

I waited until I'd met someone who I really, really trusted to have a child and he let us both down completely unexpectedly. As you well know, just because you have a child in a relationship doesn't mean that child will grow up to have their father. Unfortunately a large portion of young men also grow up with horrendous father figures in their lives which creates a myriad of other issues stemming from inter-generational trauma. Ops neice hasn't suggested that all men are pointless. She's looked at the reality of 1 in 4 women being abused and over 50% of marriages ending in divorce and she's made a decision to be a constant in her child's life. There's also nothing to say that she won't go on to get married in future to someone who may step into that father figure role but she will always have full responsibility for her child. She has made a choice to have a child with a doner not to remain celibate for the rest of her life.

I do agree with you about the full access to medical information though.

My best friend raised 3 alone with no man from when her kids were 2, 1 and a few weeks old. Their dad upped and moved to a different country and hasn’t been seen since. When he was around he was as much use as a chocolate teapot, and she has no family and I didn’t know her then. She was 21 when he left and she’s the best mother I’ve ever known.
having a family around or a partner doesn’t mean you aren’t doing it alone, sometimes it just means you have another adult sized child. Her cynicism of men is justified a lot of the time and she is making a considered choice. Seems very sensible and has her head screwed on to me.

Yes, so were others but not by donar. You were presumably married and knew who fathered your children, you were not going it alone. I think she is far too young to decide to have a child fathered by a donar and, tbh, I don't have much respect for donars (not that that would bother them). It's a bizarre idea. I do get that has a fibroid but we don't know how big, it may be removable and, if not, small enough not to cause miscarriage. Women with fibroids, and other things, have children all the time.

It's the young woman's cynicism about a married relationship which is more concerning than her fibroid, or her age.

I think that is a really sensible choice.

Has she been accepted by a clinic for treatment yet? Because when I did donor conception as a single woman, admittedly 20 years ago, there were very strict rules. It wasn’t just a lifestyle choice. I had to demonstrate it was my only option, as well as proving I had men in my life who’d be role models. I also had to see a counsellor to assess if I was mentally robust enough to cope. Then my case went before a panel which took 6 months! This wasn’t NHS, it was all private. I was mid 30s at the time, with proven declining ovarian reserve. I doubt I’d have been accepted if I was in my early 20s.

Speaking as the former owner of a very large fibroid, I’m really glad we didn’t start properly trying before I had the fibroid out. We’d have liked faced a much higher miscarriage risk.

The assessment of the size from scans was underestimated.

Regardless of what method your niece wants to have her children, make sure she considers her options asap (incase she needs to get on an NHS waiting list) as getting them removed early will likely be a ‘minor’ op. Fibroids are a law unto themselves and can have sudden growth spurts, if it reaches a certain size it will be a much bigger operation with longer recovery.

Certainly her reasons for pursuing this do seem a bit sad - to be motivated by a potential negative thing that might happen if there were a partner. And it does seem like not a very healthy attitude to parenting to want a child entirely to yourself and not 'share' them. Risks the child who experiencing too much pressure to be everything to their parent.

I know a few women who have successfully had kids on their own by donor, but in their cases it was because they hadn't met anyone by their mid 30s and really wanted kids.

I get her doing it with worries about fibroids, I suppose, and obviously, you can't say anything, but I would say that you and your sibling should keep an eye to make sure she has an emotionally healthy relationship with the child as he or she grows up.