Study: Children without a father also grow up satisfied

Is it selfish when a woman decides to raise a child from the beginning without a father? Anyway, the charge is in the room quickly. "The poor kid!" Many say, when single women play openly thinking of just getting pregnant without the right man.

But the charge is apparently unjustified. This is shown by a study by the Free University of Amsterdam, for which some 70 single mothers and their children were compared with 60 classical father-mother-child families.

Important here: The women who participated in the study, have deliberately decided to go solo. So there was no separation from the father or quarrel that could have put the children under stress.

Fatherless from the beginning? and happy

The result: The children of single women no longer show mental or behavioral problems than children who grow up with two parents. The same was true for the mothers? they too did not suffer from stress more than the parents did.

The psychologists from the Netherlands attribute this to the fact that most of the single parents studied had a strong social network that could catch up with the missing father. According to Spektrum.de psychologist and study director Mathilde Brewaeys advises the single women, before the birth of the child to worry about who can support them in the care of the child.

Get children without a partner? barely possible in Germany

However, legally speaking, it is difficult for singles in Germany to have a child, for example via artificial insemination. A medical guideline states that doctors in this country do not treat single women with a desire to have children. Those who do, are in a legal gray area, which many gynecologists prefer to avoid.

Other European countries are still there. In Denmark, for example, single women can easily go to a fertility center and become pregnant by donating sperm. Nobody asks for a father here. A service that many Germans use now.