"A few weeks ago I was rummaging through The Observer 's archive for 1983 in search of a piece about Saul Bellow, when I noticed an article by a woman called Linda Taylor, who was justifying her decision, at 34, to have a baby on her own. No, I was surprised not so much by Taylor's frank piece as by the letters it occasioned in the following week's paper.

My particular favourite was written by the anonymous 'PJ' from Virginia Water in Surrey, who spluttered: 'It is better to see if you can handle a permanent relationship with another adult before the irrevocable step of trying it out on a child.'

I'm glad that the world is growing more comfortable with the idea that families come in many different forms, and that there are hundreds of thousands of children in this country being lovingly and conscientiously brought up by single parents, or by people who are not their biological parents. I suspect the man who claimed he would rather have had a bad father than no father had never actually spoken to anyone who did live with a bad father. Above all, I'm glad my son is growing up in a society where no one will call him a bastard - at least, not until he's had the chance to deserve it through his own actions".

'Real', by Stephanie Merritt, is published by Faber on 9 June.