This work aims to investigate the experience of single parenting. Considering that single-parent families grow in number, undergo transformations and raise new questions, a qualitative research was carried out in which five women and three men from the middle class of the urban population of Rio de Janeiro, aged between 35 and 58 years, participated. These families have been single-parents since the beginning, seven of them by way of adoption. Data were obtained through semi-structured interviews. The results were analyzed according to content analysis. It was observed that solitary parenting occurs due to a variety of motivations, in parallel with the absence of a partner with whom to share the desire to be a parent. It was found that the main challenges are overloading and uncertainty in exercising parental functions and roles, the solitary exercise of authority in dealing with children s issues and coping with prejudice. The data suggest that the construction of the bond with the children happens through a temporal trajectory, being shaped by the transmissions of the past and also by the parental ideals in the construction of a future. It was verified that the experience of single parenting is associated with significant transformations in the life of the subject. It was concluded that in this group, the greatest imperative is the desire to have childr(en), and single parenting is the way to achieve it. These families find new ways of performing parental functions, building social support networks, pointing to new modes of subjectivation in contemporary family relationships and new ways of thinking single-parent families.