Robyn Gets Real About Solo Motherhood: Inside Her Hardcore IVF Journey in Her 40s

Robyn just laid out how she became a mom on her own terms — and why it took longer than she expected. It is personal, complicated, and very her.

What she said and why now

In a new profile with The Guardian that ran Friday, March 27, the Swedish pop icon (real name Robin Miriam Carlsson), 46, talks through the long road to having a child without a partner. She always figured it would happen earlier, but says the version of motherhood people default to — a conventional straight relationship — did not line up with what her real life would require to make that work.

Why she chose to do it solo

After a breakup in 2020, Robyn decided to try IVF. She had banked eggs at 34, which turned out to be a key lifeline. She explains that without kids, she could tolerate a so-so relationship in ways she was not willing to once a child was in the picture. With a kid involved, every choice the other person makes matters, and in the relationships she had, that felt like a gamble she did not want to take. Waiting — even with the clock ticking — felt less scary than forcing it.

The IVF gauntlet

She started treatment in her early 40s and did multiple rounds. She was clear-eyed about the odds: older, no guarantee it would take. The process was, in her words, a brutal ride — physically and mentally — and yes, existential. It forced her to ask who she is with a child versus without one, and to grieve the version of her life where she had a baby inside a stable relationship. That was hard to let go of, and it felt like a kind of failure.

'I do not think any human being can say, I have a right to have a child. But if you want it, you cannot really question your desire to be a parent. You can question how you do it and who you do it with, but you cannot question the actual need. It is like asking, Why are we here?'

She also checks her privilege: IVF is expensive and not available to everyone. Calling it 'pretty hardcore' is her way of admitting both truths — the process is grueling, and the access itself is a luxury.

The payoff, and the reality

Robyn welcomed her son, Tyko, in July 2023 and is raising him on her own. She does not sugarcoat the day-to-day. Being a single parent is exhausting. She grew up with divorced parents and remembers her mother being overworked and stretched thin. She is careful not to drag her mom — she makes a point of saying her mother is great — but that lack of time and energy left a mark, and she is determined not to replay those beats with her own kid.

• Eggs frozen at 34
• Breakup in 2020; chose IVF soon after
• Started treatment in her early 40s; did several rounds
• Called the journey a roller coaster and 'pretty hardcore'
• Son, Tyko, born July 2023
• Now 46, navigating single motherhood by choice