Well, as the Orthodox Rabbi Burstein explains, it's for the kids: on an Israeli panel titled "Parenthood at any Cost," he condemned the selfishness of single women who go in for in-vitro, citing the dire consequences for family structure and the "suffering" of said much-desired children. For a while, the rabbinate was okay with single Jewish women having kids. (After all, Puah's stated mission is "bringing more Jewish children into the world.") But they've changed their minds. Maybe. Possibly. Says ynetnews,

Speaking during an event at the Ono Academic College, Rabbi Burstein claimed that Rabbi Yuval Cherlow has reconsidered an approval given in the past to a single woman approaching the age of 40 to get pregnant from a sperm donation.

But Cherlow, the alleged single-mom-frowner, will neither confirm nor deny, saying only, "Those who want to know my stand on this matter should turn to me."

Whatever the hell the official word is - not that I don't love ridiculously cryptic obfuscation - it remains true that Rabbis don't actually have the power to prevent insemination, birth, or the raising of children, however much they may declare it "not allowed." They do, however, have the power to alienate a large number of people, lose a lot of women, and generally risk undermining their overall authority, all the while causing a greater rift between the religious orthodoxy and the rest of Israel. They're also tackling the issue of gay parents, you'll be glad to know: as Transracial puts it with admirable understatement, "We can't wait to hear what they think about that."

Rabbi Burstein: Single Women Not Allowed To Procreate [ynetnews]
BANNED: Rabbs Say Single Jewish Woman Can Never Have Kids [Transracial]
Puah Institute: Ensuring Kosher Embryos [Wahrman]

As Sharon Jayson reports in USA Today, single motherhood is very, very different in Europe. According to Kelly Musick, a professor at Cornell:

"The relationships of the parents are much less stable in the U.S. than a lot of other countries," she says. "In Europe, where there are high levels of childbearing outside of marriage, when childbearing is not happening in marriage, it's happening in cohabitation. Cohabitations are reasonably stable."

Is it even shocking anymore to point out that with access to contraception, sex education and abortion — let alone less puritanical attitudes toward talking about sex in a normative way — that women are more able to choose when to get pregnant?

Mike Stobbe, writing for the Associates Press, gets someone to say its about America becoming more permissive, of course.

Experts are not certain what's causing the trend but say there seems to be greater social acceptance of having children outside of marriage.

"The values surrounding family formation are changing and women are more independent than they used to be. And young people don't feel they have to live under the same social rules that their parents once did," said Carl Haub, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C.

There's certainly less stigma attached to women who have children outside of marriage, but there's a bigger factor at play here.

In the United States, unmarried mothers are more likely to be on their own and - traditionally - they are more likely to be poor and uneducated, experts said.

In other words, many women aren't necessarily actively timing reproduction to be single mothers, they are often still stuck that way.

The problem is, of course, that if you stop defining single mothers as only those who aren't married to the fathers of their children, and start defining mothers as coupled or not, experts agree that the U.S. would likely look like a huge outlier, given how many women in Europe are "single" on a government survey but, in reality, are actually happily coupled.

In northern Europe, men and women more often live together in unmarried, long-term, stable relationships, Haub said. Because of declining birth rates in some European countries, people tend to be more focused on whether the baby is born healthy instead of whether the mother is married, Haub said.

Yeah, what a strange attitude.

But if we focused more on the fact that of the number actually-single mothers in the U.S. (who, often, are poor and under-educated) far exceeds the number of actually-single mothers in most of the rest of the developed world, we might have to start thinking more about the necessity of reproductive planning, sex education and a healthier societal attitude about sex. So it's just easier to define women's lives in terms of their participation in a government insitution.

Births To Unwed Moms Rising, N. Europe Beats US [Associated Press]
USA In Middle Of World Trend Of Births To Unmarried Women [USA Today]

Women can opt out if they have a valid reason, such as not knowing the father's identity, but men will also be able to file a separate declaration of parenthood, giving them automatic parental rights unless the mother goes to court to challenge them. The British government says the new law will make it easier to enforce child support payments, as well as offering "official recognition of the importance of fathers in children's lives." But charity organizations are worried that the measure could put single moms at increased risk of domestic violence. Jane Allbeson of the organization Gingerbread says, "A pregnant woman could, in theory, escape domestic violence only to find that her abuser has registered himself as the father of her child and has automatic rights to the child." [Telegraph]

The moms take care of each other's kids when needed, and provide a tight social network Bazelon refers to as "a kind of monastic motherhood." Fran McElhill, single mom to girls MeiLin and Lili, says, "If I had a great job opportunity somewhere else, I wouldn’t move now. If I went somewhere else, I’d have to reform what we have here, and I don’t know if I could." And Eileen Fishman describes her routine with friend and fellow single mom Tammy thus: "She calls at 6, and I’ll bring my kids over in their pajamas, or they’ll all take a bath together. It’s like what I’d do if my sister who has kids lived here."

Most of the women eschew dating in order to provide complete stability for their kids. Fran says, "my children don’t worry, Will Mommy get married, will he love us, does he like us, will he want to stay?" And most don't miss it. Single mom Anne-Marie (who didn't want her last name used) says, "for me, it seems like adding on a big mess to something that’s comparatively stable." Bazelon points out that, with no partners to negotiate with, the moms she spoke with "have the autonomy to raise their kids the way they want to."

But the women do struggle to find male role models for their kids. And Fran's limp — she needs a knee replacement, but put it off because "who would have taken care of MeiLin while she was laid up for weeks?" — shows that even though these women may have more financial means than other single moms, their job is still a hard one.

The most affecting part of the story comes when Bazelon watches Fran's daughter Lili play with her dolls. "This is the little sister," she says. "She broke her leg, so the doctors are operating on her [...] She is going to be O.K. Look, she has a lot of sisters. And friends. These are all sisters and friends." Some people never learn what Lili already seems to know — that love and support, not gender, are what make a family.

2 Kids + 0 Husbands = Family [NY Times]