I’m not looking for a male role figure for my children – is that wrong?

Across the UK, 2.7 million children have no father at home, representing almost one in five of all dependent children - (Getty/iStock)

I’m a single parent – I’ve never known it any other way. It wasn’t exactly the plan. My partner died while we were in the middle of our IVF journey, and I went on to have his two children after he died using his banked sperm. Like many women, I didn’t want being single to mean the end of my dreams of motherhood.

I’m not alone. The number of single women undergoing fertility treatment in the UK has more than trebled in the last 10 years, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. One in four families with dependent children in the UK are also headed by a single parent – and a whopping 89 per cent of them are single-mum families, according to the Office for National Statistics in 2024.