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Dating as a Single Parent
So, I have a plethora of things I want to run by you guys since many of my childless friends have no clue, and since I, clearly, have no clue.
But we'll start with this one: do you think it's much harder for someone to find people willing to date him or her if he or she has kids? That was all weird with the gender-fair stuff, but this is my experience: it's hard to find people willing to date single mothers. Maybe it's true for single fathers, too. Why is this, do you think? Is it social? It seems pretty easily accepted by most of my single mother friends that this is a Truth, but a few of my friends recently have expressed skeptism. What do you think?
But we'll start with this one: do you think it's much harder for someone to find people willing to date him or her if he or she has kids? That was all weird with the gender-fair stuff, but this is my experience: it's hard to find people willing to date single mothers. Maybe it's true for single fathers, too. Why is this, do you think? Is it social? It seems pretty easily accepted by most of my single mother friends that this is a Truth, but a few of my friends recently have expressed skeptism. What do you think?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Violet on -
Okay I finally have time to respond again. Dating as a single parent can be very hard, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible. I have been dating my boyfriend for about 9 months now and things have gotten pretty serious in the last couple months. We met through a Meetup rock climbing event in my area, that I was able to get away to for the weekend. We chatted a little and I let him know right away that I had kids and he asked some questions about them. I did that because I didn't want to waste my time getting to know someone if they weren't okay with the kid thing. That may seem harsh, but too often as a young single mom you get people who are interested in you and not your kids and for me if you aren't interested in having a relationship with my kids, then it more than likely isn't going to work. When he found out I had kids he started talking about his best friends two kids and his brothers step kids. When we did start dating, he was honest with me that he had never dated a single mom before and his reasons for being hesitant about it was because his mom had remarried after his dad died when he was a teenager and he had really resented his stepfather. Although he reconciled with him later in life, at the time he hated his mom for remarrying and told her she had to choose between him and her husband and she chose her husband and he left home and joined the military. It helped that his younger brother was in a relationship with a women who had two kids and his best friend is a single dad with two kids. He also loves kids and has been volunteering for over two years at a Reading to Kids program in LA once a month. These were all good signs to me that he would be able to handle me and my kids and so far I have been right. Had all of these things not been the case, I don't think it would have worked.
I was kind of a step mom for the four years that my ex and I were together and he was a step dad, my daughter calls him dad as she has never known her real dad. I didn't find it hard to care for and love my step son. Granted it was hard trying to parent another mother's kid and not wanting to over step my bounds. At first I didn't want to discipline him because he wasn't mine, but that just causes problems, so I learned to just treated him like I did mine and he had to follow the same rules as mine when he was at our house.
Although it was important to me that the person I was dating liked kids and was okay with the fact that I was a single parent, it was also important for me to get to know him without my kids first to see if it was going to work between us before I introduced him to my kids. After we had been dating for about two months, I invited him to come over and meet the kids one weekend. I could tell he was a little hesitant, but he took the plunge and they hit it off so well he ended up spending the whole weekend with us.
We have had to go over the whole parenting another man's children and while he says he's not trying to replace their dad, he in many ways is playing that role and seems to be okay with it, so far. While we don't necessarily agree on all things parenting, he respects my decisions and how I do things and tries to back me up whenever necessary.
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Permalink Reply by kommishoner on -
It sure can be.
This discussion is really useful to me right now, not because I'm a single parent or trying to date, but because it's interesting to see different perspectives on how to bring new people into your kids' lives. It's pertinent to me right now because my brother is going through a really rough divorce, and my ex-SIL started dating someone a month or two ago and has demanded that my nephews treat the new boyfriend like a parent and the new boyfriend's kids like siblings (i.e. has said things like "you're going to have new brothers and sisters"). My nephews are really struggling with it, understandably.
Terrible Mother said:Also, I think part of the problem is that we expect families to "blend" and "be blended" easily. It's incredibly difficult.
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