IT DOES undermine traditional family values but it could be the ultimate in women emancipation.
The Camden primary care trust in London is about to introduce a pilot scheme giving free fertility treatment to single women who want to have children without a man.
The trigger for latest plan on the National Health Service: the huge rush of single women in their 30s and 40s opting for motherhood.
Many of the women had had bad relationships or had partners reluctant to become fathers or were unable to find the right man.
Doubts, however, remain. Current figures indicate that children in broken marriages and those brought up by a single parent develop more slowly than those who grow up in secure families. But according to a report in the Independent there is now growing evidence that babies born to single mothers through donor insemination thrive just as well as those born into two-parent families.
A study by the Family and Child Psychology Research Centre at City University in London was also cited. It found that go-it-alone mothers coped just as well as women supported by a husband or boyfriend.
The study, however, also discovered that two-thirds of the women surveyed resorted to donor insemination because they felt they had no other choice open to them -- and not because of a deliberate desire to exclude a man.
{{/usCountry}}The study, however, also discovered that two-thirds of the women surveyed resorted to donor insemination because they felt they had no other choice open to them -- and not because of a deliberate desire to exclude a man.
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