Lisa Bell spent years looking for Mr. Right. At 36, she stopped pining, and
soon found the love of her life:

Her daughter, Emily.

Today, the girl is 3, with big brown eyes and a head of curls.

"I finally accepted that Mr. Right - or even Mr. So-So - wasn't coming,"
said Bell, 41, of Delray Beach. "I always knew I wanted to be a mother, so
it was, 'OK, I'm going to do this.' "

Bell belongs to the South Florida chapter of a club called Single Mothers by
Choice. The group's members are women who have decided to have children
without a partner. They often go to great lengths - choosing donor sperm and
going through expensive and painful fertility treatments, or hacking through
the paperwork jungle of the adoption process - to do so.

The number of single mothers has been on the rise for decades in the United
States because of loosening social norms, rising divorce rates, increasing
numbers of women living with their children's fathers but not marrying them,
and other factors.

But these single-by-choice women consider themselves a breed apart. They are
older, mostly in their late 30s and 40s, and usually college-educated,
compared with the average single mom, who is in her 20s and more likely to
be poor. Some are high-powered career women who can afford full-time
nannies. Others have family support.

About a dozen of the group's 40 members agreed to be interviewed. All said
they would have preferred to be married, but never found the soul mate they
were looking for. Several, like Bell, faced fertility problems that
presented a now-or-never choice.

"It forced me to make a decision," said Lori Sochin, a Miami attorney who
was diagnosed at 38 with severe fibroids, which are non-cancerous tumors
that needed to be removed, either by a simple surgery that would leave her
barren or a complex one that would give her a chance at motherhood if she
acted quickly.

"The thing I gave the most thought was: Was it fair to bring another child
into the world without another parent?" said Sochin, who decided to have the
more complex surgery. In the end, she still was not able to give birth, but
the ordeal convinced her to adopt on her own, and she is now the mother of a
2-year-old girl.

Members of the club, who live in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade
counties, organize monthly meetings, play dates, Mommy NightOuts and an
annual cruise. At a recent meeting, one mother's home became a playground
for about 10 visiting children and moms. At first, the gathering looked like
any play group. But within an hour, chit-chat turned to serious conversation
among the mothers, some of whom spelled out words they did not want their
sons and daughters to understand.

One woman spoke about the challenges of dating and - if her current
relationship ever approached the "M-word" (marriage) - whether the man would
want to "A-D-O-P-T" her child.

Anne Chernin, of Delray Beach, who adopted her daughter from Kazakhstan in
Central Asia, said she has explained adoption and where babies come from to
her 6-year-old, but that the girl prefers her own version of events.

"I said, 'You were born in somebody's stomach,' and she said, 'No!' "
Chernin said with a chuckle. "I think she has this vision of a field of
babies in Kazakhstan."

But the most sensitive topic: addressing the gut-wrenching question, "Why
don't I have a daddy?"

Susan Bourne - a Boca Raton mother who has 3-year-old twins, a boy and a
girl, through in-vitro fertilization - said the group has helped her prepare
for such conversations. The issue came up when her daughter pretended to
answer a toy telephone.

"I said, 'Who is it?' And she said, 'It's Daddy!' You feel like a knife went
through your heart," Bourne said. "I said, 'No, we don't have a daddy. Some
families are just have mommies, and some families have mommies and daddies,
and some families just have daddies.' "

Sharing such experiences - as well as sympathy, support and advice - is the
main reason the group exists.

"What I didn't realize was how many women were doing this," said Chernin,
44.

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