(FORTUNE Magazine) – Remember Murphy Brown? She is the TV sitcom character castigated nearly two years ago by then Vice President Dan Quayle for giving a good name to out-of- wedlock birth. She is affluent, glamorous -- and atypical. No one keeps ; statistics on the number of high-income women with illegitimate children, but the numbers are clearly small. Census data from 1992 show that single mothers earning more than $75,000 headed just 90,000 U.S. households, 1.1% of the total. Most were divorced rather than unwed. Single Mothers by Choice, an organization of women in the U.S. and Canada who have borne children without husbands -- or are trying to do so -- has some 2,000 members.

The average income of SMC members is $40,000; most don't begin motherhood until their 30s. What separates them from divorced women with similar profiles is that their children have no fathers who share custody -- or who at least remember birthdays. About half the SMC women become pregnant by lovers or obliging friends; about one-third conceive through donor insemination; the rest adopt. Very few deliberately reject the partnership of men. ''We are not male bashers,'' says Sherry Agard, 42, a Colorado computer scientist who is trying to adopt a baby after failing to become pregnant through donor insemination. ''Most of us would have preferred traditional families, but things didn't work out.'' SMC women acknowledge the importance of male role models; many turn to their own fathers or brothers for help. Says Jane Mattes, 50, a New York psychotherapist who founded the organization 12 years ago: ''A boy has to know what it's like to be a man. A girl has to know a man can love her.'' Although single parenthood is difficult under the best of circumstances, an SMC woman faces added stress. She worries about what will happen to her offspring if she dies, and about what it's like for a child to grow up with plenty of love and stability but no knowledge of his father. ''I know I made the right decision for me,'' says Rita Mellett, 45, a California social worker who had a son by donor insemination three years ago. ''I hope I did the right thing for him.''