Christina Patterson: Modern motherhood is all a bit of a mess

While politicians conjure up cosy images of 'hard-working families', the reality is more diverse

"I don't give a thought," shrieks Ulrika Jonsson on the cover of this week's Hello!, "to the fact that I will have four children by four fathers." Well, what a tart! You know what, Miss Swedish Sex Bomb, it isn't all about you. Nor is it about you, Miss Aniston, or you, Miss Davis or you, Miss Jolie. Yes, the global girl next door, hitherto best known for a much-mimicked haircut and a love life to cheer all disaster-prone singletons is, like Sex and the City's only bashful brunette, thinking of having a baby. A baby, that is, with no father in sight.

And in America, as Angelina, Calista and Mia have discovered, you can have a little bundle of joy without even giving birth. In the culture of can-do, you don't fill out a million forms, wait five years and then get a hulking teenage delinquent. No, you can pretty much wave a wand (or a bit of plastic) and there it is: a chubby cherub to complement your iPhone or your Smythson handbag.

If you do insist on all that snuff-movie-type blood and gore, however, and all that atavistic stuff about perpetuation of genes, Granny's smile, blah, blah, blah, then help is at hand. Knock Yourself Up, a "Tell-All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom" by the American journalist Louise Sloan, has hit the bookshops in the US – and it's coming this way.

Sporting a shocking-pink jacket, it's accessorised with a snappy slogan, "No Man! No Problem!", and a supportive quote from Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon. Unlike Kristin Davis, Nixon managed to produce two children through the old-fashioned method – the one, indeed, which was the series' raison d'être – but has now seen the light and is a happy lesbian.

Well, obviously, I don't know if she's actually happy (strangely, you can't always rely on the celebrity-cellulite-exposing sisterhood of the colour comics), but her words don't sound like those of a human being consumed by bile. Which is more than can be said for most of those who have responded to Sloan's manual to man-free motherhood. "When he is in jail," said one contributor to Salon.com, of Sloan's 15-month son, "the mother should ALSO go to jail, having made the choice to DELIBERATELY handicap him early in life." "I'd feel fine," said another, "if she was enthusiastic and prepared to adopt a dog or a rabbit, but this is another human being."

Sloan's approach to motherhood, said a spokesperson for Fathers and Families, predictably, is "bad news for American children". More thought-provoking, perhaps, was the following contribution: "Those of us in the first documented generation of donor babies ... are coming of age, and we have something to say... I'm here to tell you that emotionally, many of us are not keeping up. We didn't ask to be born into this situation, with its limitations and confusion. It's hypocritical of parents and medical professionals to assume that biological roots won't matter..."

Dogs and rabbits, of course, are not known for their literary endeavours, and so we are not yet subject to Dog Called It-type tales of perplexed puppyhood or Alsatian angst. Nor have we, until the recent epidemic of misery memoirs, been subject to accounts of childhood suffering on a mass scale. In the natural order of things, babies were simply the by-product of sex. A by-product which, as the Irish writer John McGahern pointed out in his wonderful Memoir, was largely resented as "the unpleasant and unavoidable results of desire". The pursuit of happiness is the luxury of those who are fed.

But in the age of contraception – an age in which, for the first time, the perpetuation of the human species is largely a matter of choice – we seem to be making as much of a mess of things as ever. While our politicians continue to conjure up cosy images of "hard-working families" – Dad playing cricket with the kids, after a hard day at the hedge fund, Mum testing their Mandarin after a morning's multi-tasking – the reality is a little more diverse.

We still have the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe, a phenomenon not helped by pockets of deprivation and low aspiration, in which the seeking of a council flat and some company remains a perfectly reasonable option. We have a generation of men who wanted to be young for ever and put off having children until they'd "traded up". And we have a generation of women still seeking Mr Good Enough as the time bomb of their fertility ticks by.

I am part of that generation. Some of my friends have found Mr Wonderful. Some have found Mr Fleetingly OK and Just in the Nick of Time. One or two found Mr Total Disaster But At Least They Got the Sperm. Most have been lucky to get one child. A child which will have a part-time father, no siblings and grandparents who, if they're still alive, might not remember their name.

Selfish? You bet. It's a quality, as Richard Dawkins has reminded us, hard-wired into our genes. Pretty much anyone can have a child. The challenge, of course, is to bring one up to become a functioning, contributing – and, let's be ambitious, kind – member of the human species. A challenge for which being truly wanted is as good a start as any.

c.patterson@independent.co.uk