Solo mothers by choice are a growing, global community: one that has been studied longitudinally for more than four decades, that has built community networks across continents, and that has done so largely without a dedicated international space of its own.
The parenting advice most readily available was not written for solo-parent families. The medical systems most solo mothers navigate were not designed with them in mind. The research that speaks most directly to their experience (on their children's wellbeing, on mother-child relationships in solo-mother families, on the psychological outcomes for children raised by mother-led families) exists, and it is overwhelmingly positive. But there's a lag between research being published and the findings reaching the health professionals that solo mother families consult and the wider society.
The SMBC Summit was built to close that gap.
It is an international, online event because solo mothers by choice are everywhere. This is a summit for the whole community, watch on your own schedule, wherever you are.
"Raising thriving families based on intention, not convention."
Day 4 of the SMBC Summit falls on 17 November, International Solo Mothers By Choice Day and International Solo Parents By Choice Day. November 17 marks a specific legislative moment: the day the Statutes Amendment (Surrogacy Eligibility) Bill was introduced into the Legislative Council of South Australia in 2016, under the guiding principle that people seeking to undergo assisted reproductive treatment must not be discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation, marital status, or religion.
That bill passed. That principle (that access to assisted reproduction is not conditional on who you are or whether you have a partner) is the legal foundation on which solo-mother families in South Australia, and in other jurisdictions, were built. Day 4 of the SMBC Summit marks it, a celebration, open to all registered attendees, no additional fee.
The research on solo-mother families is consistent and has been for decades. Children raised by solo mothers by choice show high levels of wellbeing. Mother-child relationships are high quality and strong.
"If a community values its children, it must cherish its mothers."
— John Bowlby
The challenges this community faces come primarily from the outside (from systems, institutions, and cultural assumptions that were not built with them in mind), not from within the family itself. General parenting advice and support is designed with the heterosexual two-parent nuclear family in mind.
And yet there has been no dedicated international summit for this community. No event that brings together the researchers running longitudinal studies on solo-mother families, the clinicians who understand what it means to advocate for yourself as a solo patient, the advocates mapping the cultural forces that shape how these families are seen, and the practitioners who support them, not in the same place, at the same time, for the same audience.
The SMBC Summit was built because that gap is not acceptable.
Solo mothers by choice deserve access to the research, the clinical expertise, and the community that speaks directly to their experience. The professionals who support them deserve CPD-relevant content that takes this family form seriously as a subject in its own right.
This is that event.