SBS Insight: Why are more people choosing to be solo parents?

SBS Insight: Why are more people choosing to be solo parents?

ANTHONY Stralow has always been desperate to become a father. But seven years ago he woke up at age 40 — single and childless — and realised he needed to act fast.

“I still really wanted to have kids, so I needed to do it sooner rather than later because I didn’t want to be an older parent. I wanted the energy to give to my kids,” Mr Stralow, 47, from Sydney, told news.com.au ahead of his appearance on SBS’s Insight program on Tuesday evening.

This week’s episode explores why more Australians are choosing to become solo parents, as advancements in fertility technology allow single women and men to have children without relying on a romantic partner.

Mr Stralow looked into adoption, fostering a child and even co-parenting with a woman, but decided to use a surrogate.

“It was the option that sat with me the best,” he said. “I did a whole lot of investigating for a couple of years, on and off, and I had to really think about the ethics of what I was doing and the impact on the surrogate and the egg donor. I spoke to lots of people who had done it before.

“Knowing the women going through the process of surrogacy would be able to buy a house or put her kids through an education, ethically, I was OK with that.”

He signed with a surrogacy agency in India in December 2011, using an egg donor from Ukraine. Nine months later, his first daughter Asha was born.

Mr Stralow has since had a further two children, twins Mischka and Malachi, now 15 months, through a surrogate in Nepal. He says each child cost around $40,000.

Commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia but is a thriving industry overseas, particularly in the US and Asia. It is also illegal for Australian women to receive a payment for donating their eggs.

Altruistic surrogacy — where a woman agrees to carry someone else’s child for free — is extremely rare.

Around 312,000 babies are born in Australia every year, but only about 20 of those are born via a surrogate. Altruistic surrogacy means the surrogate is only reimbursed for medical expenses and incidentals, such as maternity clothes and pregnancy vitamins.

It is up to each parent and surrogate to decide the terms of contact moving forward.

Mr Stralow maintains a friendship with his Ukrainian egg donor, but not his surrogates. He has their contact information available, should his children wish to meet their birth mothers one day.

“[The surrogates] normally are fairly anonymous and they don’t really want ongoing contact,” he said.

“It’s not encouraged and it’s very difficult because generally they don’t speak English, so it’s hard to maintain some sort of contact.

“But when the kids are old enough I can take them to meet them, if they like,” he said.

Mr Stralow said his eldest daughter Asha, 5, is proud of the fact that she was born via a surrogate.

“Asha knows how she came into the world and all the people who helped make that happen,” he said.

“She’s very vocal and strong with people who assume she has a Mum. I often hear her correcting people in the park or at school, saying ‘I don’t have a Mum, I just have a Dad’.

“She’s never upset about it, that’s just the way it is. She says ‘Stop asking me that question’.”

As for managing three kids as a single parent, Mr Stralow says he’s very organised and maintains a consistent routine.

“They’re in daycare three days a week and my mum comes over and has them one day a week and I work from home one day a week,” he said.

“Mornings are probably easier than the evenings — they can be crazy with tired tantrums, but I’m getting better at getting the five-year-old to go to sleep. Normally they’re all in bed by 7.30pm and luckily I don’t work very far from home, so that helps.

“It’s amazing. I’m really tired, but I’m really happy. It’s a joy just watching them grow and develop. I’ve got what I always wanted.”

Insight airs on Tuesdays at 8.30pm on SBS.