Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: The selfishness of the single mothers

You are an aspirational woman of our time. In this post-feminist Nirvana, the world, you believe, is yours for the taking. So you jog energetically through life, pump up the juices of ambition, reach your targets, keep moving and wanting and getting. You are ballsy, have money, looks, mates, a robust liver, gorgeous and well-heeled lovers, paid help for all your needs, a penthouse to die for, a sleek car, designer clothes, shoes, jewels, but alas no permanent man to give you the baby which you now decide you must, must, absolutely must have. You have hit 30-plus and the biological imperative is flashing warnings but, even more importantly, you realise motherhood is getting ever so trendy - the sharpest, most successful and loveliest of modern women now carry expensive handbags and babies with weird names. Geri Halliwell has just joined the It mums with her little Bluebell Madonna, probably setting off another wave of despair among child-free ladies.

So what's a frantic girl supposed to do? Take executive action of course, seek a supplier. Many desirable men don't want real commitment. A determined and growing battalion of wannabe mums seek out males for one-night stands, or a short, sexy spurt of a relationship with premeditated intent - to ensure impregnation. A total of 82,000 mothers a year now have children on their own, twice as many as in 1995. Public opinion is shifting as dramatically. In a recent poll, more than 60 per cent of females in a sample said they thought it was fine for a financially secure woman to arrange her own pregnancy and bring up a child as a lone parent. I declare myself one of the doubters.

In Britain and the US, new groups of women are forming who choose single motherhood because they can. They frankly can't see the point of fathers beyond conception. Once fertilisation has been achieved the women are off, happy to go on to be lone parents with no further contribution demanded from the father. The more cautious women are choosing mail-order sperm - no risk then of sexually transmitted diseases, or irritating dads suddenly wanting to share the child. Spermdirect.co.uk will get a motorbike courier to the door at exactly the most fertile time for a women for a mere £450. The spermatozoa is not frozen, but freshly milked. Mail orders from Scandinavian and American companies are frozen but give detailed profiles of donors and DNA information.

I am sorry, I have tried to open my mind to these latest trends, to understand how childless women feel, but stealing or buying semen seems to me both creepy and unethical. The phantom child is objectified even before conception; its being subsumed to the desires of the woman fixated on her own longings.

What could I possibly object to, I hear many readers ask, some perhaps alarmed at what appears to be an attack on personal liberty and choice. Adult, super-confident singletons are doing it for themselves and a wanted child is brought into being. I know there are extraordinary lone mothers in all classes who bring up contented, well-adjusted children. I accept that married parents can be vicious or neglectful and that all kinds of families can fuck children up. For a feature I once wrote on late motherhood I talked to many women who would have given anything to give birth. They described their sense of emptiness, as if they lacked an essential part of their femininity. A few had tried to commit suicide and most had had fractured personal relationships because this deprivation ate into everything. My children are my gold. I experienced miscarriages before I had my second child, our daughter. There was a time when we thought it would never happen and in spite of having a son, I went through an agonising two years. So I do understand the longing to have children but I cannot understand how this then leads to a position where any means can be used to justify the end.

Robin, (not his real name) a friend of mine who works with families before and after IVF treatment disagrees fervently with my reservations: "What you can't stand really is that childbirth is finally set free from the shackles of old institutions. You should celebrate - look where feminism has taken women, to a point of real autonomy to decide whether to have children in the first place and then when and how they want to arrange their lives to bring kids into their very fulfilled world. You read too many Victorian writers, girl."

He may be partly right. I do tend to have old-fashioned views about parenting, divorce and the upbringing of children. But the perils of DIY motherhood are less to do with the hearth and home, much more to do with fast changing expectations and experiences of life in the 21st century.

DNA technology, the right to trace biological parentage and the need for this felt by millions of adopted and fostered children and the centrality of the father/child relationship all mean that it is not just incredibly selfish for a women to unilaterally arrange for the birth of a father-free child, it is reckless.

One thing that strikes me is how these women always talk of "having a baby" not "raising a child". The dream for them is to hold the bundle, wheel him/her proudly in a top-of-the-range pram, then walk with a toddler just like one of those adorables in TV nappy adverts. As the cute baby grows up, turns into a troubled teen, what will the mother say when asked about the dad who never showed up? Who has no name, no face, no presence? Will Kevin and Kevina be impressed to learn mum just had it off with some bloke and took off, that they were the result of a planned raid in the bedroom? Or that they arrived in a box and were duly inserted? If the woman belatedly informs the hoodwinked dad and then stings him for financial support - as is happening - only the most saintly man would then find it possible to have any kind of loving bond with the child. Children who have no contact with their dads tend to idealise them in their heads and ( according to some studies) spend all their lives searching for the fulfilment which never comes.

Women who are about to add a kid into the shopping basket because they have the income and perfect home, need to remember that this item cannot be returned if the customer is not satisfied, and that one day they may regret bitterly their impulsive actions. Their child most probably will.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk