My mother raised four children mostly on her own (she home-schooled all of us until middle school age). Being the youngest with three older brothers was hard for me growing up. Since I am the only daughter my mother tried very hard to instill certain wisdom that she received throughout her life.

One of those was the idea that I didn't need a man - I didn't need to get married, that I should never give up my independence for someone else. This advice was driven into me. In the last six or eight months my mother called me up and told me that she'd always envied my independence.

"Even as a child," she said, "you had this ability not to need anyone. If one of your friends said they didn't want to be friends anymore you would say, 'OK' and not be friends. You were five or six and I couldn't even do that in my thirties."

I don't know if it's because of the ideals that I was brought up with, but I've found myself fantasizing about the future. I have had three fantasies in my mind for the last couple of years.

In the first I’m living alone with my dog. I can see myself living in a small bungalow house with yellow living room walls, hardwood floors, a kitchen decked out in colorful kitschy decorations and a nice size backyard. I am happy and I write. I can even see myself baking cookies and inviting my friends over, or having a dinner party that I've made from scratch. It is a fantasy, so the fact that I actually can't cook doesn't seem to matter.

My second fantasy is of me being married. I'm in the same house with a faceless husband. Again, there are dinner parties, but he cooks. We wake up together and drink our coffee with our breakfast while reading the paper. We are happy, together and my dog sleeps under the table.

The last fantasy, the most frequent and a little bit disturbing, is of me being a mother. There is a child on my hip dressed in cute hip-hop, Brooklyn-style urban baby gear, but no husband. No father of my child to be seen. And I don't know if that's what has just happened to my generation or my own creation or if that's just what was forced into me by my mother.

It also might have to do with just being selfish. When I have a child I want to name him (the baby is never a girl in my fantasy), teach him what I think is appropriate, basically just not having to share my child. This is what I find strange: I don't want to be a single mother. Four of my cousins are single mothers and it has never looked appealing to me. Yet here I am with this idea of motherhood and being alone with my child or children and loving it. Once again I don’t need a man. I know that I am only 22 years old and not fully out of college, but I'm not sure if this is a generation-wide idea or just one of mine.

A good friend of mine has a similar fantasy. But the rest of the women I know right now don't. I've never looked down on the dream of being married and having kids running around. I don't think I've even looked down on women that really just want to be a mother and a wife as their career. But I do secretly love the idea of being a healthy woman that is a single mother by choice. No messy divorce. No sperm bank. No baby daddy drama - just the fantasy of having my own child and being strong enough to handle it alone.