They call it a five-to-midnight thing, says Annabel Dearing, senior legal counsel at EnBW, an energy company based in south-west Germany. As she turned 39, Dearing, then single, realised time was running out to have a child.

She was working in Geneva in a commodity trading house and was “busy, busy, busy,” she says. “I always worked hard and played hard and travelled a lot . . . But I never really felt like I had a purpose.” Then a friend suggested she have a baby.

In 2017, aged 43, Dearing joined the ranks of single parents by choice. There were 3.2mn single-parent families in the UK in 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics, 85 per cent of which were lone mothers.

As more people enter their late thirties and forties without a long-term partner, within that group is a growing demographic — mostly women — choosing to embark on parenthood alone.

The number of single patients undertaking fertility treatments including IVF and donor insemination in the UK rose from 305 in 1999 to 4,660 in 2022, according to data from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

Single people and female same-sex couples are two demographics bucking the UK’s declining fertility rates, says Victoria Pratt, a senior lecturer at Oxford Brookes University who is also researching solo mums’ experiences of returning to work after maternity leave.

For “solo parents” — a term used to describe people choosing to bring up children without a co-parent — the challenges of balancing work and family life can be particularly acute: they will be relying on one income, have less capacity for time-off, school pick-ups or being flexible when something goes wrong, and must shoulder all the childcare costs.

“The thing with solo parents is: it can’t fail,” says Ruth Talbot, who is bringing up three children alone, while running the group Single Parent Rights, “because obviously you’re the only one bringing in the money and you’re the only one providing the care.”

Michelle Highman, chief executive of The Money Charity, who chose to have two children, now aged five and seven, without a partner, says flexibility at work is crucial. Her charity, which focuses on financial education, has a work-from-anywhere policy and Highman splits the hours of a four-day week over five days.
But she says it is important to acknowledge that solo parents have limits. “You literally can’t be in two places at the same time in the way in which a two-parent family can.”

The flexibility of remote work has also been a big help for Dearing, who joined EnBW in 2022 and now has two children. She can work on energy transactions, which she loves, while accommodating family life.

Other professional single mothers say they rely on individual managers allowing them to flex where necessary. “I’m very lucky in that my boss is very flexible and very empowering and trusting,” reports a full-time FTSE 100 HR director who is the single mother of two children. “I don’t think you could make it work if you didn’t have a boss or a company culture that was like that.”

Anna Diamant, who welcomed her child in 2021, works four days a week as a deputy headteacher at a primary school in south London. She combines being in school with some homeworking where schedules and duties allow.

It has been helpful that her headteacher used to work flexibly. “I think that makes a difference as well, to have a boss that has had to consider her own childcare and how that’s impacted on her work,” says Diamant. “That understanding filters down into how you manage your staff.”

But fitting in work and care demands sacrifices, including working extensively outside usual hours. Diamant tends to work on Saturday and Sunday evenings, and the HR director in the evenings when her children are in bed. Dearing either works on her day off, a Friday, or pays for a babysitter on a Sunday. “I’m pulled in so many different directions and I’m paying money all the time to have sanity and to have breathing space,” she says.

Without the option of “shift parenting” with a partner, childcare costs can rack up fast. At one point Diamant says she was paying double her mortgage on childcare; Dearing notes half her salary goes on caring help; while the HR director says 41 per cent of her monthly pay cheque goes on two lots of nursery fees. Evening events, overnight work trips and emergency childcare for sick days are an added expense.

Pratt’s research shows some employers are trying to help, such as by providing emergency or out-of-hours childcare support. But this can be challenging for parents who feel obliged to use it and for children who may not want to be looked after by strangers. “Inviting someone that you don’t know to come and look after your child so that you can go out in the evening to a work event can feel very uncomfortable,” she says.

There is also the risk of a wider impact on career progression when you cannot easily undertake extra tasks and events. The HR director does not think being a solo mum has harmed her career “yet”. But her inability to take on extra projects and attend evening drinks means she is less “visible”, which she thinks could, over time, affect her ability to get promoted.

Dearing also talks of a “self-imposed ceiling”. She could chase a partnership or head of legal position and “outsource everything to the nanny”. But she chooses not to as she wants to be “available emotionally and physically” for her children.

Sarah Lambert, head of policy at Gingerbread, a charity for single parents, says the onus is on employers as those “who don’t make their workplaces single-parent friendly are missing out on a huge pool of talent”.

“However people come to be single parents, their need for support is the same,” she adds. “Research tells us it’s not the shape of a family that is important but the support and resources available.”

One certainty, Dearing says, is “how much the children are wanted and loved . . . You don’t go to all this trouble unless it’s something you really, really, really want.”

This article originally appeared on FinancialTimes.com.