To wonder how people manage to afford to have a baby without a partner?

[redandgreenfern]

I know benefits help those on a low income, but if you have a moderate income plus mortgage, childcare and other bills, it doesn't seem possible? Has anybody actually managed it?

@Awwlookatmybabyspider if they planned ahead they would have saved.

Hence my point. Planning ahead.

🙂

Crumbs. Go back to 1700s. Where you clearly belong.

Do you know what Crumbs, I totally agree. All else being equal, a baby should be born to two loving parents.

But, st the age I am (37) I do need to acknowledge that this might not happen. Maybe it is selfish, but it would be so much worse to begin an abusive relationship with someone ignorant or violent or unkind and put myself and a child through the trauma of divorce and custody and possibly rejection.

So thinking in terms of possibly having a child alone, the answer seems to be that I need enough in terms of savings to act as a buffer for those first three years. Maternity leave would actually be OK - it's the combination of mortgage and childcare that's the killer.

I can look into getting a better paid job but actually the job I'm starting soon is the better paid job - I could look for promotion in a few years though.

OP - If you feel ready now, then with a few adjustments as you say, you could go for it. In the meantime you could consider a fertility check, to give you an idea of roughly how long you have? A couple of my friends have done that when single in their late 30's or in the case of one when she was 39 and her marriage was rocky, and said it was v helpful.

Or wait until you have a committed partner to father the child and raise it in a stable union? Much better for children.

Interestingly, it's not. Very lengthy studies of lesbian parents found that children had no adverse effects as a result of lacking a male parent. It seems likely that ill effects of single parenting are, really, the effects of relative poverty.

It’s possible. I work term time, wage is quite low, topped up with UC. All in I have roughly 1700 pm. Rent is 600. I have 2 children, and do not receive maintenance or help from father. After all bills are paid there is not a lot left to play around with. I try to always make sure I have at least some small savings for emergencies. We manage a little trip away every year even if it’s a weekend in the U.k. We live in London, I run a car etc. It’s a struggle but sort of manageable.

On the figures you've given, I think you'd definitely get help from tax credits (or more likely to be Universal Credit by the time you'd be claiming). You may find you'd actually have more money by working part time in the early years (until 30hrs free kicks in at age 3).

Look on Entitledto and play around with the figures, then work out from that how much you'd maybe need as a buffer. Like others have said, could you take a mortgage payment holiday or extend the length of the mortgage? What maternity pay would you be entitled to, etc?

As an aside, there's a long running thread on here about donor conception that you might be interested in, and the Fertility Friends website also has a section for single mothers by choice.