Becoming a Single Parent by Choice, with Troy Smith & Jennifer Anderson

Most of life’s major decisions come with centuries of accumulated wisdom. Think of any coming of age decision — picking a marriage partner, selecting a vocation, or making religious commitments— and you’ll never find the bottom of literary, philosophical, and spiritual discussion on it. Becoming a single parent by choice is not one of those decisions. The assisted reproductive technologies (ART) that make this choice possible have only been widely available since the late 20th century. Like many new technologies, ART open up a way to build a family that have never before been available before, and the intimate decision to use them to start a family of one’s own is relatively unexplored.

This week on The Soloists, we sit down with Jennifer Anderson and Troy Smith—two Latter-day Saints who chose to become parents on their own. Jennifer is a strategic consultant with a five-year-old daughter. Troy is an economist and solo father to two boys. We talk about how they each approached this decision in the absence of clear cultural or spiritual scaffolding, what the process was like—physically, financially, and spiritually—and how life feels on the other side.

“The fact that those options exist in the world today is a miracle for me,” Troy told us. “I felt that my heart would never, ever heal again,” Jennifer shared, “But my daughter healed my heart.”

You can read more from Troy at singlefatherbychoice.substack.com.

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