Opinion: Bill O'Reilly's Nuclear Family Fantasy

(Aug. 19) -- It was nothing short of archaic when Bill O'Reilly attacked Jennifer Aniston on "The O'Reilly Factor" last week for putting out the message that "women no longer need a man to have a baby." (Aniston was promoting her new film "The Switch" about a single mother by choice). O'Reilly went on to say that raising a family without a man is "destroying society." Could Mr. O'Reilly really be saying that the approximately 10 million single moms in the U.S. are destroying society by daring to raise a child without an involved father in the picture?

I spent the past three years interviewing single women around the U.S. for my documentary and book, "Seeking Happily Ever After." My mission was to find out why there are more single 30-somethings than ever (so much so that single women now outnumber married women in the U.S., according to the last census) and if and how women are redefining "happily ever after."

What most of the women told me is that they'd love to find a great guy to marry and have a baby. But these women have no interest in making a lifetime commitment to a man they know is not right for them just so they can appease loudmouths like Bill O'Reilly who insist they are destroying society.

These single women are smart enough to realize that it is better to be alone than to feel like you've sold yourself short by marrying to prove you are "normal." And if these educated, brave and self-aware women are ready to tackle the challenges of parenting, who are we to get in their way?

Yes, it's wonderful for kids to be raised by two loving, invested partners. But it's also good for society when smart, financially independent women realize they can make healthy choices for themselves -- including becoming a parent -- even when those choices go against the grain.

As a mother myself, I believe that the single best lesson we can teach our children is how to figure out what's right for them in spite of the opinions of others. Who better to teach that lesson than a single mom by choice?

There is also certainly no reason to assume that children born to married parents will experience more family stability. After all, more than one-third of marriages end in divorce in the United States. Children of broken marriages often suffer the emotional heartache of watching their parents separate, no matter how amicable the parting may be.

The lead character I follow in my documentary is a 34-year-old woman whose parents divorced when she was 10. This woman made it quite plain that she had an extremely hard time dropping her guard in relationships due to the messy ending of her parents' marriage. Given how many times single men and women echoed this sentiment to me over the past three years, it seems there may often be more stability for those born to a single mother by choice.

Either way, there's no way to stop this tide. The birthrate for unmarried college-educated women has climbed 145 percent since 1980, according to Lucie Schmidt, an economist at Williams College.

It is easy for political pundits and newsmakers to sit back and judge this growing trend and speculate how the children will turn out. It makes more sense to me to ask someone who has been through the experience.

Jane Mattes, founder of the national organization Single Mothers by Choice, said that being a single mom "was scary at first. But as time went by, I learned to trust that, as the Beatles' song says, 'We can work it out'. And we did. My son is now 21, doing wonderfully in college, and I feel truly lucky to have had the opportunity to raise him."

This hardly feels like the destruction of society to me.

Michelle Cove is director and author of Seeking Happily Ever After. Learn more at www.seekinghappilyeverafter.com.