Robyn Became a Single Mother by Choice and That's Not a Failure

Robyn — yes, the same Robyn who gave the world the absolute gift of the banger “Dancing on my Own”, among so many other great pop standards — had a child as a single woman in her 40s. 

That still feels like a bit of a revolutionary path, though based on statistics around the rise of women opting out of marriage, I suspect it won’t be that way for long.

Like many (but not all!) mothers, Robyn always envisioned doing parenthood with a partner. And when it didn’t shake out that way, when she realized she would have to make compromises she wasn’t willing to make in order to have children in a conventional heterosexual relationship, she opted to do it on her own…and she’s reflecting on the complicated feelings that came with that choice.

“I had seen myself having a kid in a stable relationship. I was sad to let go of that. It felt like a failure,” she told The Guardian.

But here’s what Robyn is truly doing by getting real about these complicated feelings: She’s normalizing this path. And she’s telling other women who want to be mothers, who feel like their time is running out, yet don’t feel like they’ve found a partner with whom they want to build a family,  that they don’t have to wait.

Thanks to both improved fertility technologies and a greater scope of what is truly possible for women, you can choose single motherhood. Doing it on your own may feel like the uncommon choice, and society may view it as a "last resort", but people like Robyn will change the narrative. Because it’s not a failure. And by sharing the things that led her to single motherhood by choice, she’s pointing out something important: It can be an intentional move. 

“I think motherhood in a conventional heterosexual relationship, in my life at least, has been really hard to reconcile with what I think I would have to do to make that work,” she shared. 

Choosing to do it on her own instead? It’s the farthest thing from a failure. It’s a powerful choice. As a mom myself, albeit one who had children after getting married — the more traditional path — I applaud any woman who is designing her own life and uncovering her own possibilities, like Robyn did.

It’s worth noting, though, that solo motherhood is a different ball game for someone like Robyn, who not only had the means to afford egg freezing and IVF, but also the ability to support a child and enlist childcare on her income alone. Her experience is probably not relatable to many single moms. But it’s also important that she challenges our ideas of what women can truly do, of all the options we have at our disposal. We may not all have the privilege to access all these opportunities, but the normalization of them? That’s important too.