Rita McLennon watched the birth this week of the baby of unmarried television character Murphy Brown with special interest.
Four years ago she was there herself, a professional woman pushing 40 and puffing in the delivery room for the first time-without a husband by her side or a boyfriend in the waiting room nervously fondling cigars.
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”There was certainly a lot (in the television show) I laughed about, like when she said to somebody, `I`m changing my mind, I don`t want to do this,` ” said McLennon, 43, a Chicago fundraiser. ”I felt the same way: Let me out of this situation.”
But today, she says, 4-year-old Jill, her daughter conceived by artificial insemination, is the best thing that ever happened to her, regardless of what Vice President Dan Quayle thinks.
”I was about to turn 40 and didn`t want to go through life with no prospect of having a child,” she said. ”For me, it`s been a wonderful experience. I really wanted this child and she has really given me life. I have no ambivalence about my decision.”
Her feelings are shared by increasing numbers of women in the United States who today are actively choosing, like the fictional Murphy Brown, to bear or adopt children outside of marriage.
According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, in 1990 there were 530,000 women in the United States who had never been married, who made $30,000 or more a year and who had children. In 1982, the equivalent figure was 189,000. Single-parent adoption also is rising, according to private adoption agencies and the state Department of Children and Family Services.
Altogether, 6.8 million households in the United States with children under 18 are headed by single women, or 21 percent of total households with children. Single men head 1.8 million households with children.
Though most single mothers are young and poor, many new single mothers are Baby Boomers who are reaching the end of their child-bearing years and have not yet found the right man to marry. Others have given up on bad marriages and decided they would rather raise children on their own.
And though some still agonize over the age-old stigma associated with bearing children outside of marriage, they say the kids are worth it.
”I quit worrying about what other people think a long time ago, starting with my mother,” said Kathy Helms, 36, a graphic designer and former newspaper reporter from Jonesborough, Tenn., who gave birth to her daugher Lyra in March, just two months before Murphy Brown gave birth.
”There`s a whole generation of people who would like to have children and they think, `I`ve got to meet the right man and settle down,` ” she said. ”Why wait? If the right man comes along, great, but I`m not going to hold my breath. Life`s too short.”
She and other single mothers Thursday expressed disbelief at Quayle`s criticism of the Murphy Brown character this week as a poor role model who doesn`t examplify ”traditional family values.”
”I think the Republicans are totally out of touch with reality,” said McLennon, who comes from a devout Catholic family that has accepted her baby. ”I cherish family values. I wanted a child because I wanted a family.
”He attacked millions of women and children in this country and the families that support them,” she said.
”What Quayle said was absolutely ridiculous and ludicrous,” added Cathy Thompson, 37, the assistant director for budget operations at the University of Chicago, whose son Ken is now 5. ”The important thing is the love and the care and the attention for any child. The family and friend configuration is not what`s key.”
And ”here they put the blame in the mother`s lap again,” said Marty, another Chicago woman with a child outside of marriage. ”Where`s the blame for the father who`s not there?”
This season, millions of television viewers sat glued to their television screens on Monday nights as Murphy Brown, a salty television reporter played by actress Candice Bergen, discovered she was pregnant and decided to have her baby, fathered by her former husband.
Many viewers, and especially other single mothers, praised the portrayal of her grappling over the issues of single motherhood and her experiences with her newborn in the season finale as realistic and moving.
”I think it was great. I was totally moved at the end when she was singing the song about feeling like a natural woman. That`s exactly the way I felt,” McLennon said.
”I didn`t miss the show the whole season,” added Helms. ”When she went to put her clothes on and nothing fit and she said the dry cleaners screwed up her clothes, that was me. I lived in sweats for months.”
Like Murphy Brown, real-life single mothers say they also faced opposition from friends and family over their choice, but those same friends ultimately became their key support network.
”My very close friends sort of couldn`t understand how I would entertain having a baby,” said Thompson, who became pregnant during a short relationship when she was 31. ”My mother was very, very, very upset. She was pretty much emotionally devastated that I wasn`t going to have an abortion.” But driven by a strong feeling that she wanted a child at that time in her life, Thompson continued her pregnancy, and her friends and family eventually returned to her side.
Today she, like most women in a similar situation, says she has never looked back despite the strains on time and finances and the criticism of people like Quayle.
”I would make the same decision again,” Thompson said. ”I can honestly say I have never for one minute ever regretted that decision.”
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Nearly all of the women, however, say they feel it is important to bring a good male role model into their children`s lives. They emphasize ”good,”
arguing that the absentee, abusive or immature fathers they see in many families don`t make those families better than their own.
”Most of the time the father is not around to deal with the child to start with,” said Helms, who had her first daughter 19 years ago as a teen bride and raised her nearly single-handedly. ”It`s easier without a man. I don`t have to pick up the socks and the dirty underwear.”
Other women, however, say they have nothing against husbands, but they aren`t going to let not having one stand in their way.
”It`s better to have a man in the family. In the ideal world, we would all have mothers and fathers,” said Molly Bartlett, a Chicago executive who is raising 18-month-old Alex, a boy she adopted through DCFS, by herself.
”But this isn`t an ideal world.”