TV stars make it look easy. Murphy Brown and Friends have shown single women having babies with minimal life disruption. Calista Flockhart and Rosie O'Donnell make adoption look like a breeze. For most single moms, it isn't that simple.

Yet single motherhood is on the rise. According to the 2000 U.S. census, almost a third of all children in the United States today are being raised in single-parent households, with more than 80 percent of them headed by single mothers. Although divorce is still the most common way in which women become single mothers, more than 40 percent of today's single moms have never been married, suggesting a significant shift in societal attitudes.

Minnie R. Dabney, a clinical social worker in Lawrenceburg, Ky., who works extensively with women, children and youth, attributes the increasing number of women entering motherhood without partners to a movement away from the "psyche that a male counterpart was required for live-in parenting, or that having children without one made the woman a 'failure' as a woman."

The majority of women who choose single parenthood, says Dabney, want to experience motherhood fully but either have not had the opportunity, time or resources to meet the man they would want to spend their lives with or feel otherwise unable to make a lifetime commitment to a partner.

Advances in reproductive technology, as well as improved career opportunities for women, also factor into the increase in women making the choice to enter parenthood solo. Those who choose to adopt are finding agencies are more willing consider financially-secure single women as adoptive mothers.

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