A dilemma for future mums: date to find the right person – or single parent? | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

A few years ago, I went out for a drink with a friend who had been dating for a while but hadn't met anyone in a long time, and she was adamant that she wanted to have children. She felt her biological clock ticking intensely, but was frustrated that the men she met acted as if they had all the time in the world. "I've decided that I'm not going to wait for a man to get his act together and commit to me and the possibility of having a family," she announced, quoting Danish phenom solomor , or single mother. "I'm going to give him a few more years and then I'll get a sperm donor and go it alone."

I admired him. Being single in your 30s isn't the quagmire it may have been in the 90s, when "singles" had to negotiate a world of "married sufficiency", as Helen Fielding put it in Bridget Jones's Diary . Today's 30-somethings are more open to alternatives to heterosexual monogamy as a relationship model, celibacy is less stigmatized, and in today's post-recession economy, the benchmarks of adulthood are less clear-cut. For the first time in 2020, the Office for National Statistics found that half of women in England and Wales had not had a baby by their 30th birthday, an increase of 32 percentage points in 50 year. This is a radical societal change, which reflects women's increasing access to education and career opportunities. But for 30-somethings who want kids or are open to the idea, finding a partner in the modern dating economy can be tricky.

Pippa Bailey is 30 , she broke up with her longtime boyfriend a year ago, and is now "on the apps" looking for a partner. She is one of the female writers who could be said to have taken over from Fielding in writing candidly and honestly about the experience of modern romance. In a recent column about Joachim Trier's film The Worst Person in the World, whose 30-something protagonist is in the midst of an early-thirties crisis, she hits on a sentiment familiar to many. "[My friends] are buying houses, getting married, having babies, while I carry on with 'more of the same'. I know it's childish and naive, but I find it hard not to feel betrayed, left behind," she wrote.

Bailey thinks she "probably" wants kids, but when she became single, she didn't hadn't anticipated how many people weren't looking for a relationship, let alone kids. This means the prospect of being a parent requires "two extra steps of imagination", as she poignantly puts it. She tries to be more open to the fun of dating without too much pressure, while "balancing that with wanting to be upfront about what you want in the beginning so you don't waste your time."

< p class="dcr-1of5t9g">Applications can facilitate this. Just as you can filter partners based on their vaccination status or whether or not they smoke, you can also filter based on whether or not someone wants children. Bumble even has a basic info badge where you can mark it as a deal breaker. But Bailey says a lot of men just don't answer the kids question.

Men I talk to who go out tell me they don't feel just not the same fertility pressure as women. It's always been that way, you might say. The feeling that women aspiring to have children are a bit "desperate" is nothing new, but the transactional nature of dating apps highlights it.

Although modern women are more confident in expressing all kinds of desires, I am struck by the fact that for a woman to express the desire for a child - especially when it feels deep and urgent - remains in to some extent taboo.

At least scientific advances mean more women have alternative options. My friend didn't need a donor after all; she met a lovely man and now has children with him. But I speak to Sioned, 36, who is now going down this road after splitting from her ex; he already had a child from a previous relationship and did not want more. After several years of dating, she has become increasingly outspoken about her desires and has found the partner screening options helpful, but is less invested than she was in finding someone to start dating with. parenting.

"I like being single and enjoying...