The Single Most Important Thing to Know Before Becoming a Single Parent

How To! with Mike Pesca

Peach Fish Projects

Education, How To

4.3 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stacie is in her early 30s and is ready to have a baby. There's just one problem—she doesn't have a partner. As much as she wants to be a mom, Stacie is worried about being a single parent by choice. On this episode of How To!, we bring on Lori Gottlieb, therapist, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and solo mom herself. Lori opens about her own experience having her son on her own, navigating people's judgment, and finding ways to consider herself "enough" as a single parent. The hardest part? "Every decision you make is ultimately yours. On the one hand, that might seem liberating, but on the other hand, it's very paralzying because there's so much pressure," Lori says. What does Stacie ultimately decide?

If you liked this episode, check out: "How To Decide Whether to have a Baby" and "How To Talk to Your Son About Sex."

Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone, I'm Susie Weiss, and I've noticed there's just simply not enough podcasts in the world. So I'm launching my own. Let's go. Let's go, baby. Second Thought is a weekly show about pop culture. The stuff everyone's been binging, arguing about, obsessing over. Here's the thing about heated rivalry. I mean, even the most devoted swifties, I think we can agree, not our best work. We'll be hosting thoughtful conversations with culture's most important figures. Talk about genius.
0:22.6	Talk about generational talent.
0:23.7	Coming to headphones near you
0:24.8	on April 17th with a first guess you won't want to miss. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
0:30.2	This was not Plan A. It wasn't like I grew, I was growing up and thinking one day I'm going to
0:34.9	buy sperm on the internet and that's how I'm going to have my family. That was never planning.
0:39.3	What really?
0:43.9	Welcome to how to. I'm science writer David Epstein.
0:48.7	Deciding whether or not to have a kid, that might be the most anxiety-inducing decision imaginable.
0:57.0	We actually did a whole episode on it a while back called How to Decide We brought in author Cheryl Strait to help our listener decide if it was the right time for her and her husband to have a kid.
1:04.0	Spoiler alert, we heard back from them a few months ago, and they now have their very own bundle of joy.
1:10.0	But, all right, that was a couple.
1:12.0	The decision's much tougher when you're making it solo.
1:14.7	And that's the situation our listener this week finds herself in.
1:18.2	My name is Stacy and I am a 32-year-old woman who is living in Washington State.
1:27.1	And I am getting my master's in special education.
1:33.8	Stacey reached out to us now because she was diagnosed with a medical condition that makes it
1:37.9	more difficult to have children. So I have endometriosis, and I went to a new doctor and basically he asked me, would you consider
1:50.8	getting pregnant in the next six months to a year? And that was a huge question to be asked.
1:57.6	I'm a single woman and I just started thinking maybe I would want to be a parent by
2:06.2	myself. Maybe that would be a consideration. And that is kind of a big, brave new world for me.
2:15.3	Stacey always imagines herself having kids, but not quite like this. I thought, you know,
	...

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