"It is a relief that my daughter has no father." Cristina Serra is 44 years old, is a Physical Education teacher, triathlete and mother of Carla, a 19-month-old baby she looked for and had alone, with a sperm donor. She is part of that "explosion" of women who decide to live their motherhood alone, from the freedom of assisted reproduction . In Spain, this profile rose by 13% in 2018. In some communities such as the Balearic Islands, the increase is 96%.
"I have separate friends who tell me that I wish they would have done the same as me," he says with laughter this force of nature that comes to the interview loaded with two backpacks and his girl in his arms. Pure fiber and energy, it is difficult to imagine her tired. The meeting is in the Illes Marratxí, the gym where I usually go to train: «The only thing that worried me was the sport, that I could continue preparing my triathlons». And he could, when Carla was born, Cristina already had her whole life organized, she had looked for kindergartens, kangaroos ...: «Look, I only have five girls' phones on my mobile when I need a hand».
When he approached 40, he was already wrong with his last partner, but he did not want to "make the mistake of looking for a pregnancy" with someone with whom he no longer got along . Two years after the breakup, treatment began at the IVI clinic in Palma. In total, two attempts and 18,000 euros, "you see, the same as a car costs." He says it and laughs looking at his off-road girl who goes up and down the high chair, who walks through the cafeteria, paints and comes and goes with her baby gait, like a free and happy baby. When he said he was in treatment to get pregnant, a relative suggested that he "buy a dog, they are much easier and cheaper . " Another reminded him that "having a child is not like buying sneakers, you can't change a child." They told her life, as if Cristina were a baby and not the adult and free woman she is. He ignored them and now, he says, they see her so happy that they only tell her how brave she has been.
“In the last year the demand has doubled and in the last three it has risen 70%. It's an explosion, ” says Javier Marqueta , director in Mallorca of IVI . According to the doctor, "single women who want to have children are no longer socially limited as before , have more information and access to techniques and are aware that age is extremely important." Lesbians and also single straight women without a partner go to their clinic: "We are seeing an increase in separated who decide to have children and put that desire before the couple."
From IVI they look at the phenotype of women when choosing the donor father. They take into account your race, eye color and blood group. "It is important to understand that the man donates his sperm to the center, not to the women," says Marqueta. They go to the clinic concerned about the health of their future child and that greatly influences the selection of the donor: «We provide tests, genetic compatibility test with patients. Thus we seek to avoid mutations, diseases ».
Cristina enters the usual profile of those single mothers by choice. "For the most part, women who make this decision when they are around 40. As professions, we find that teachers, administrative staff and nurses dominate," they indicate from IVI.
In the middle of the debate about the «repentant mothers» Cristina assures that she has never felt regret about having her daughter, «not even for a second»: «I float on a cloud since I had it, it was my big dream, I don't remember a day bad not a bad night, that's the truth ». He says it and it seems a lie, so he explains it in more detail with the intention of convincing the journalist: «My girl has always been sleeping well, with me in bed. The colecho is doing great. I had her as a cesarean and I never needed anyone, not even the first day after having had her as a cesarean ».
«As I do not have help from my parents, because they are very young and have their life, I have a lot of kangaroos to throw, the nursery to which it goes, that of this gym ... I have it very well mounted to enjoy of my daughter without forgetting myself, for me that is very important ».
«I have five friends who have been single mothers by choice . Every time we are more and that is because we have realized that couples are continuously breaking up and we do not need it to be mothers, ”says Cristina, who when she had her daughter felt“ very calm, fulfilled and free, because no It depended on no one ». "I ended up understanding that my daughter and I are a family."
That has been one of the main struggles of the Association of Single Parent Families of the Balearic Islands (FAMOIB) : to be recognized by law as a family nucleus. They got it in July 2018. «That means being able to have a series of social and psychological advantages. That it is recognized that my son and I are a family means that he has no lack, ”explains its president Nika Zurano , for whom “ the fact of recognizing single parenthood broadly makes society more fair, more real ”. In their association, in addition to single mothers by choice, there is one whose son has a father who did not want to recognize, three men who have had their children with rent bellies and a widower.
"I didn't grow up with the idea of being a single mother, but time goes by and you realize that if you don't have it like that, you won't have it," says Nika, a 46-year-old nurse who started the process in a public hospital with 38 to have his son Hugo, who is now five years old. She had a year of waiting, although she says that in others there may be up to four. In the public they give you three opportunities to get pregnant from an anonymous donor, you have to be under 40 when you start treatment and not have other children. Nika became pregnant with Hugo on the second.
At first he was embarrassed to tell it at work, but once the process began he began to see it "as normal." "People see us as very brave people, if there were more help it would be seen as something more normal, because it is normal, single parents are 30% of the Spanish population, two million people," explains Nika recalling the latest data published by the INE.
She, unlike Cristina, acknowledges that she has had days of downturn, fatigue, "like everyone else, and also many joys." Hugo knows that he was born without a father and lives it normally. Once a month, he goes to the association with his mother, where he plays with other children from single-parent families: "He is not a child who asks for his father, nor do I think that is a question he is going to ask."
For Nika, choosing to be a single mother has nothing to do with feminism, but "with individualism, with the personal freedom to decide." «If I had a partner, I would have had it with him, but I didn't have it and I decided to be an equal mother. My son was born of love ».
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