This is a basic human need and despite the difficulties should be allowed and the community should come to their aid.

So long as these mothers who decide to go it alone raise their children with love and warmth in a nurturing environment - it's no-one's business - and NO-ONE has the right to judge them.

fathers are not important? Men are meaningless? Women raise boys. Fathers raise men. Women without positive father figures pic crapy men. fathers are still not important? What these women decided to do is not my business (and I feel for them) but when I have to live with their bad decisions it is my business.

The divorce rate continues to climb. Single women have babies. What about single men who want a family? There are so many older singles so what do we do instead encourage this nonesense. Sounds like the Attwood book I read years ago or Brave New World.

I would suggest that families invite as much as possible singles at their Shabbath Tish,so they have the possibility to know other singles.This would help to avoid these kind of situations.There are many elderly orthodoxe singles who have no place where they can encounter a eventual lifepartner.

mother is MORE important to a child than father ..

No one has thought of or mentioned the idea of reversing Rabbeinu Gershom's decree of a thousand years back that forbade Jews to marry more then one wife. I have always advocated the reversal of this decree, a decree by one Rav in history, but no one listens to me. A one to one marriage has always been a western concept, a goyish concept, its not found in the middle east. Polygamy was good enough for our ancestors whom we call the greatest Tzaddikim. But somehow not good for us. Baloney! We Jews just lack a leader or central authority, so each group make up their own halachot not to mention all the nasty chumrot. Ehhh were still locked in a galut mindset that we cant seem to free ourselves from.

My mother raised us on her own, providing everything for us and it was very difficult for her and us. My brother has suffered in that he doesn't know how to be a father to his kids. I struggled in how I related to men. Many other struggles, stigmas, and troubles.

its a little predictable: these two websites do the same article over and over again: - "orthodox" who are homosexuals - "orthodox" who are female rabbis - "orthodox" who sleep around "halachicly" (pelegesh thing) - "ultra-orthodox" who follow a secular culture - "orthodox" who do X, Y or Z do you think that ynet and jpost has got a thing against religious jews???

a child out of wedlock by a Roman Catholic swine. Seven years she waited for him to marry her, but he considered her to be defiled for having his child. Finally, someone did marry JoAnn but she was so burned emotionally she never had another child. My cousin Ruth of Granville, Massachusetts, was a single mother of two young children because her husband divorced her to marry another woman when the children were small. It took twenty years for her to find a man to marry her. She lived in her mother and father's home until she married and her new husband moved in there, too, after Ruth's father's death and her mother remarried. A widow has an easier time of it finding another husband who is suitable which means he loves the Lord. Most of the young women who are single mothers by choice or by divorce or rape or seduction and abandonment have little hope of marrying and settle for living in sin which is not holy. Holy means set apart, separate for the Lord. It is shocking how badly single mothers are treated. Knowledge of that will help females keep their pants on before marriage.

I agree 100%. This would also resolve almost all of the lonely Jewish single women waiting to get married and have children. The Rabbis have no guts to do the right thing. It's the Rabbis who are living in a galut mentality. I dare Ynet to get some man to do a story on "whether these single women would prefer to go childless, be single mothers, or be a 2nd wife to a man that will love her and care for her."

It is a mitzvah to adopt an orphan and you can keep your virginity and self-respect intact. If not of Jewish birth parents, the child can have a conversion. To sleep with a stranger in order to conceive not only will haunt a woman for the rest of her life, but what will she say to the child when asked, "Who is my father?" Will she tell the truth and give the child a lifelong complex? Or will she lie and risk that the child find out the truth later? Also, a future husband would have less problem with an adopted child than with the idea that his wife slept with a stranger.

One woman is good,two women is trouble.

Can single mothers adopt children?

A real religious mother would make sure to have her chest covered and her hair covered too !!!

I have no issues with a religious woman being a single mother insofar as she has the wherewithal to raise her child(ren) right. I do have an issue with the act of deception and licentiousness described at the beginning of the article. In the era of artificial insemination its far from laudable to conduct oneself that way. Go to a respectable clinic, have the donor screened for defects, and do it that way.

The notion that "there is no halachic authority who permits a single woman to conceive" is absurd in the extreme. Where is there a prohibition against it? The Torah does not prohibit it. No Sanhedrin ever did so either. And with the use of a fertility clinic there is no broader question of pritzut or sexual immodesty cropping up either. You don't have to ask for permission to march to the beat of a different drummer.

if there are two parents there is more likelihood that one of thenm is not disfunctional . That person whether father or mother or grandmother will sacrifice their happiness and get the job (of parenting) done.

ugh, how horrible, this article makes it seem as if the very pinnacle of success a woman can achieve in life, is having a child. Revolting.

I found religious girls to be very picky and very nasty to men whose incomes don't meet their expectations. I gave up on them after ten years of fruitless dating and nastiness. (The last religious girlfriend I had dumped me for a wealthy lawyer -- she didn't bother to tell me until after they got engaged and expected me to attend the wedding and buy her a present.) Needless to say, I am no longer religious.

...all very valid points in this article...this could be a 5+ page on the root causes of this type of breakdown in the family unit; some people are overly devoted to all other activities yet their soul mate just has not arrived...perhaps we can blame the development of the new world order.

by his/her mother . Those women , mature , know what they are doing , they are not young girls . They know that it's a great burden to raise a child , she has two roles , to earn their life and to be a mother at the same time . Not an easy task , and "Kol Hakavod" to those who do it .

I agree that you shouldn't judge a person until you are in their shoes. I also know that it is very difficult to go through life never having a father.

Better to have a child on your own to be trapped in a marriage just to have one. And Judaism has a much kinder attitude to "out of wedlock" children than Christianity. Unless we are talking about "snowflake" babies. Those they are okay with.

whatever we might feel about the context-the article is wonderfuly written and well researched. Good job.

Who are you, the Virgin Mary? We are NOT supposed to be virgins at 40 years old - sex is a good and wondeful thing - there's nothing wrong with a woman having a child after a one night stand providing she doesn't force the father in anyway to pay maintenance and can love and protect and provide for her child. So deary, take off your halo, it's very last season.