When Jane Mattes, a psychotherapist, was caring for her infant son in 1981, she realized she didn’t have a support system. “No one fully understands how hard it is to care for an infant until you are doing it,” she says.

She believed then, as she does now, that a support system is essential for single mothers raising a child of any age. Finding help was her impetus for forming Single Mothers by Choice (SMC), a community that supports women who don’t have a partner and choose to have a child, knowing they will be parenting alone. Jane was decades ahead of her time.

The prevailing thinking has long been that children need a mom and dad—and siblings—to thrive. What was once the traditional family with a mom and dad and two kids is fading fast. But in decades prior, even in the 1990s, it felt and was revolutionary to choose to be a single mother.

Attitudes about single mothers have changed dramatically, and the research shows no significant adverse effects on the children. In short, children without siblings and two parents and kids who grow up in single-parent homes do equally well developmentally. One reason for the good outcomes is that most single mothers go to great lengths to become parents. “Being wanted is one of the key factors in development,” Mattes told me. She notes, “The children of single mothers do much better than expected.”

The science confirms what Mattes sees. Young children whose mothers made the choice to be solo parents were quite similar to those raised by partnered parents. After looking at 51 single mothers and 52 coupled heterosexual parents with children ages 4 to 9, conceived by donor insemination in both groups, the researchers report that “the only difference was lower mother-child conflict in the solo mother families.” According to the study, which was published in the Journal of Family........

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