Knock Yourself Up, a new book from the US, has provoked outcry by encouraging women to become single mothers, without men, through artificial insemination

Stefanie Marsh writes:

Here comes a book, from a progressive corner of the United States (Brooklyn, New York), that tells us that a single lesbian has had a baby with an anonymous sperm donor. About which many British people would privately think, so what? It happens here all the time, even if many don’t like it. Only last month we read about Andy Bathie, a 37-year-old fire-fighter, who donated sperm to a lesbian couple five years ago and is now being made to pay child support because the couple separated.

But Louise Sloan’s book has irritated people, even here. Her own story – single lesbian conceives child via anonymous sperm donor – is sufficiently unconventional to make the social conservatives wrinkle their noses. And even some liberals are unsettled by the contents of Sloan’s book. A jaunty part-memoir, Knock Yourself Up – “a tell-all guide to becoming a single mom” – is provocatively subtitled, No Man? No Problem!Alongside her own experiences, she has interlaced the stories of more than 50 single mothers – most straight, all “the new breed of single moms”.

The tone is flip and matter of fact and occasionally gynaecological. We find out that some women masturbate while inseminating themselves with turkey basters because they are more likely to conceive. Others light candles and play soft music. Nicole loves it “when my inseminations are on a Saturday. I read the paper, and then go out for breakfast. Last time I scheduled a pedicure for afterwards. Married couples have fun making a baby – why shouldn’t I?”

Carol found prince charming in a sperm bank: “He’s stellar in the sciences, whereas I’m a more liberal arts person. We’ve got a complete overlap of hobbies. He’s tall and slim – with dimples! And even, straight teeth without braces! He’s a great addition to the family tree.” When Jenny first saw a picture of her sperm donor on the web she thought: “Oh my God, I would totally have sex with that guy.”

Eva tells Sloan: “There’s a reason I’m single – relationships involve a lot of compromise and I want to keep my voice,” but never suspects that she comes across as an unbearable control freak. Kimberley complains that: “I am a magnet for alcoholic crazy lunatics,” but doesn’t ask herself why. Sloan writes that women are beginning to see their lives in a different order: children, then, if you’re lucky, a partner. But “for most single mothers by choice whose libidos remain intact,” writes Sloan, “looking for love or sex becomes logistically or emotionally complicated. The solution? A vibrator.”

Sloan is a graduate of Brown University (comparative literature), then glossy magazines such as Glamour and Golf for Women, no Andrea Dworkin is she. Her career high before the publication of Knock Yourself Up was the award for a piece she wrote for a woman’s magazine on coming out as a lesbian at work. It’s what I’d call “celebratory” journalism, factual and yet gloopily soulful and upbeat, atmospherically much like an organic food shop – at least half the women she interviews are either “energetic and attractive”, or “strikingly attractive”, their children are frequently “adorable”.