Why should you not date a single mother?
It’s up to the individual to decide. For me, I want a simple and quiet life. I do not want to deal with all the dramas regarding the children, their father, their father’s family, etc. A single mother is not a good match for me.
This question often puzzles people who want to date a single mother. If you are also trying to decide whether you should date a single mother or not, then you have come to the right place. Today’s article is about why you should not date a single mother.
I certainly would not date a single mother. Here are the reasons:
- You will never be her main priority, but she will expect you to be yours. How is this fair and balanced in the relationship?
- You can only go on dates sometimes, as she needs to plan. You can’t just be spontaneous and decide to go somewhere for the weekend or the week if going on holiday, as she will make arrangements with her children. There is a high chance she will cancel. She may even bring the child with her. How can you build intimacy in a romantic environment when a child is with you on a date?
- You will need to commit to financially supporting the child. Whether you like it or not, you are going to have to support the child. Even if she says things like “I do not need someone to support the child,” take that with a pinch of salt, as she will not be impressed if you flat out refuse to pay for anything.
- A lot of women have children out of wedlock, so you will need to question yourself by asking what made someone go inside her to conceive a child when she is now a single mother. You will need to ask yourself what made her attracted to her baby daddy. I would really raise the red flag if she had children with multiple men. Widowed women are exempt from this. I tend to see that women hook up with complete losers, thinking they will commit to them, then play the victim when he leaves her. It then goes into my next point.
- Was you really her first choice? Think about this for a second. Would she have dated you if she was a childless woman? A lot of single mothers are desperate not to have the stigma associated with being a single mother, so they will look to lock down a man as quickly as possible (this is when the “nice guy” then gets brought up in terms of what she now wants as the type or men she really wanted or had been used too no longer wants her)
- Some single mothers are self-entitled and expect Mr. Perfect to come along and take care of her and the kids.
- A lot of single mothers (especially in their 20s) talk about being mature but, again, usually pick immature men in the first place. Hence, you see, single mothers will have multiple children with multiple baby daddies.
- The baby daddy might still be in the picture. If you aren’t pulling your weight in the relationship, don’t be surprised if she goes behind your back to her baby daddy. There are countless stories online regarding this.
- If you, for whatever reason, decide to go into a relationship with a single mother and, for whatever reason, it does not work out, your relationship with the kid will be over. It can hurt, especially if you and the child have built such a good relationship.
- You will be going into a ready-made family. I do not want this at all. I want to build my kingdom with childress women and experience the joys of having kids together. I am not experiencing this with a woman who already has three children. Single mothers, especially in their late 30s or going into their 40s, may not want any more kids. That would cause problems if you want kids of your own.
Why should you not date a single mother?
I could go on. I do not want to date single mothers at all. They do not bring much benefit to a relationship at all. I would definitely look for childless women. Also, I see women here and elsewhere ridiculing men for not wanting to date single mothers. That alone shows how entitled some are. Men have preferences, too. Plenty of women do not date men who are under 6 feet, so there is absolutely no need for them to have a go at men calling them “immature” if they choose not to date single mothers.
What are some creepy facts about the Victorian Era?
Is dating single mothers really a bad idea in general?
I would be careful when generalizing anything about people based on their circumstances. I have dated women without children, which never made me a priority, and I was always chasing them around for attention. I’ve dated single moms who were serious about an equal relationship, had a good support system, and always managed to make some time for me if I was willing to be flexible with timing or driving. I have found that how successful the relationship is has a lot to do with how serious both parties are about making it work.
Some single moms have good boundaries with their kids and believe that modelling a good relationship is a benefit to their children (I agree!). I don’t subscribe to the idea of “you’ll never be first in her life.” A good single mom will be able to balance her personal needs and the needs of her kids. It WILL take extra work on your part due to schedules and whatnot, but if you don’t mind the work, it can be rewarding.
It all depends on what she wants out of a relationship and what you want as well. Is she happy raising kids alone and wants an adult to spend time with when they aren’t around? Are you OK with having free time to do your own thing with some routine date nights mixed in? Does she want a relationship to progress and turn into cohabitation or family activities? Are you willing to be responsible for modelling good, loving behaviour for her kids and allowing them into your life and heart, too?
Why Should you not date a single mother?
As with ALL dating (single mom or not), keep an eye out for the red flags that say you won’t be a priority in her life. People get sucked into all kinds of things kids, work, booze, drugs, cheating, family, friends, hobbies, whatever. Does it really matter if she ditches you for kids or ditches you to work 80 hours a week? The result is the same. Here are some things I have identified that mean it is probably not a good fit.
“My kids are my world.” OK… this person has no life of her own and is codependent on her kids for happiness. Maybe she is guilty because the relationship with her dad failed, or maybe she is a people-pleaser without her own goals and desires. Either way, you’re going to be in last place forever.
Some day, her kid will be playing seven sports, she goes to every practice (not just the games), and she’ll be sitting around by herself every night until 8:00. Then she’ll show up exhausted and complaining about how busy her life is.
“I can only go out when my ex takes the kids.” This woman lacks a support system and isn’t willing or able to find a sitter. Your relationship is now dependent upon her (probably unreliable) ex. If they have a 50/50 split and the guy is reliable, this might be fine. If he shows up once a month (sometimes), then run.
Why Should you not date a single mother?
Rescheduling/cancelling multiple or consecutive dates/calls/whatever due to kid issues. Cancelling once in a while is normal when you are a parent. If there is a pattern, then she either has unreliable support or you (or finding a relationship in general) aren’t important enough to make a proper effort.
Friends, If you are trying to schedule a date and she always has something going on and doesn’t offer alternatives, you aren’t a priority. And if she wants to date, it is HER job to be somewhat reliable. If you are constantly expected to be flexible and put up with last-minute changes, she feels entitled, and you’ll end up feeling used.
She often complains about her kids’ behaviour. Does she call late at night and complain that she wanted to talk to you earlier, but little Jimmy wouldn’t go to bed? RUN, RUN, RUN. This woman is allowing a child to make decisions that she should be making as a parent. Not only will you come last, but she will, too.
Expect LOTS of excuses and an unhealthy dose of passive-aggressive behaviour because she’s unwilling to be in control of her life. You’ll have a toddler making all your decisions for you, and when you say something, that anger is going to pour out on you, and you will be an uncaring villain who hates children, even if you actually really like little Jimmy when he isn’t throwing tantrums.
Why Should you not date a single mother?
She has poor boundaries with her ex. Is Dad a complete and total jerk, picking fights, calling all hours of the night, showing up unwanted, creating problems, and still chasing her, and she smiles and takes it and gives the excuse that she has to for her kids?
YES, you have to do your best to try and get along as co-parents, but that doesn’t mean not having boundaries. You can be an adult, take the high road, avoid conflict, but still be assertive. What kind of example does this set for a kid to watch their parent be abused/treated like a doormat? He’ll either grow up to be an abuser like Dad or a doormat like Mom.
She talks poorly about her kids in an unbalanced way. You have to really listen to what she says. Parenting is HARD and frustrating work sometimes. It is normal for her to want to vent about a tough or draining day being a mom. Listen to how she does it.
Why Should you not date a single mother?
Is it in a loving way, the way you would talk about having a job you love but take a lot out of your time? Or does it sound like being a mom is a burden she would rather be without? If she lacks care and empathy towards her kid, how do you think you’ll be treated when you aren’t convenient and fun anymore?
She wants you to meet her kids right away. This woman is just desperate for a relationship and wants someone around. She might be a great girl, but she is really lonely and isn’t taking the time to get to know you. It might work, it might not, but it will all come down to luck.
She has older kids who are REALLY concerned about her. It is one I have seen a couple of times. If her teen/adult children are always checking on her, then you need to do some digging or walk away. She probably has a history of addiction or getting herself into bad or dangerous situations, and her kids are trying to keep her safe. If the older kids act like concerned parents, there is a problem hiding. You can be certain of it.
Is it okay to not date single moms?
You have the right to date whomever you like, especially when you know yourself well enough that it wouldn’t be a good idea to get involved with someone else’s kids. It takes a really unique (special, even) type of person to sign up for that responsibility and potential drama with an ex. If you can’t handle that, it’s best not to lead the single mom or her kids into thinking that you could.
When you get to my age (early 40s), it’s next to impossible to find a woman of +/- 10 years who has yet to get at least a kid or, in extreme cases, grandchildren. I know personally of women in their early 20s who have children.
My policy is NEVER to date a woman with a child, even if I had feelings for her; the cons outweigh the pros by a country mile, and frankly, I’d rather enjoy my life as a bachelor than date a single mother – I am not usually the one that handles cleaning up the mess that she got herself into with a guy she KNEW was wrong for her. She KNEW she wasn’t going to stick around.
I became a single mom, and good men got scarce. Do I really have to lower my standards to land a good man?
As a child of a broken home, I don’t want to rub salt in an obviously raw wound. What I can do is tell you a couple of stories that might help solve the riddle of where all the “good” men have hidden.
I was in my late twenties when I met “Lena”. I had returned home after six years in the Navy and was working nights as a bartender while I attended college. And I had known her since shortly after I got back, but she had been married, and I had been in a couple of relationships that fizzled.
One summer night, as I finished an early shift at the bar, she walked in and, without shedding a tear or batting an eye, announced that she was recently divorced and wanted nothing more in this world than to be my girl. It’s a huge red flag, I know—and one of dozens that I would ignore over the next two years—but also incredibly flattering.
We couldn’t have been more different. I was a well-travelled, well-read, somewhat introverted first child of an Irish Catholic father and a Southern Baptist mother. She had never left the valley where she was born and was the daughter of Mexican immigrants, though she was often mistaken for a Pacific Islander. As long as I didn’t think too hard about it, our relationship worked—it was exciting, even. I broke my own rule against dating women I met at work, and within six months we had moved in together.
Did I mention that she had three children—six years, two years, and an infant?
I was not fatherly material at that age. On top of school and work, I regularly stayed out until the bars closed (we both did, when it was her exes’ week or when she had a babysitter), I smoked, and I spent much of my free time with my other childless friends. In spite of all that, I did what “good” men are supposed to do and accepted that her children were now one of my responsibilities, no matter how unsuited I was for the job at the time.
As you can probably guess, the relationship ended in a spectacular trainwreck, but not before I had grown very close to her two younger children. Their father’s culture didn’t value girl children, and the baby boy was too much work for the grandparents on whom he regularly dumped the kids. While her ex did fight for custody of the oldest (his namesake), he regularly refused to take the little ones, and they were left with us for weeks at a stretch.
While I can take a certain pride in willingly raising another man’s children, I’m ashamed that I let the social pressure to “step up” put me in a position to add to the turmoil and heartbreak of those kids’ lives when my relationship with their mother imploded. Had I been stronger and more clear-headed, I would have said, “I’ve got no business playing Dad.” Instead, I let the notion of being a “good man” lead me into an absurd situation where those kids—who had no say and no responsibility—were the only ones to emerge permanently scarred.
Which leads to my second story. I’ll try to be brief.
In early 1988, my mother decided she had had enough of being dragged across the country in search of work, only to have my father decide that the available jobs were “beneath” him. When he suggested an eleventh such journey, she gave him an ultimatum: her or the open road. He chose the road, but not before an acrimonious divorce that left the five of us children struggling to breathe.
I was thirteen, and the youngest was three. My mother had started working nights at a nursing home to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. Soon enough, one of her coworkers noticed that the thirty-something divorcee still had some tread left on her. Being a “good guy”, he accepted that his dream girl came as a package deal, and within six months, the seven of us were sharing a four-bedroom house. Sense a pattern?
Remember when I wrote that I wasn’t father material in my late twenties?
He was even less so. He was a couple of years younger than my mom, and though they were well-matched in height, at 5′3″, my barely-teenaged self had two inches on him. All five of us grew to six feet or so while he stayed 5′1″ in boots. He was tenacious and a hard worker, though not by any stretch an intellectual. All of the children he was raising were bright and quick-witted. It doesn’t take a Nostradamus to see where this was headed.
Our relationship, even in the happier interludes, was never so much about affection as it was about dominance. “Keith” made it clear that no matter how tall we grew or how many books we read, he was the one whose name was on the paychecks that bought our clothes. Everything, and I mean everything—birthdays, Christmas, chores, grades, privileges, punishments—was commodified and used as a means of control where in a more normal family, love and respect would do.
Like my own relationship fifteen years later, my mother’s second marriage flamed out. She decided, after ten years, and upon hearing her mother-in-law demand respect for her son because “He pays for those kids,” that maybe it wasn’t a healthy situation for her brood. They separated in another acrimonious divorce, but not before our stepfather had taught us, not a single thing worth knowing about being an adult.
My siblings and I were launched into the world on graduation from high school with only the vaguest understanding of how it worked. Having no success in informing us, we instead learned through years of painful mistakes, the most obvious of which I wrote out above (don’t worry, I got better and now have two beautiful little boys of my own).
So when you ask, “Where have all the good men gone?”
I would answer, “Nowhere.” They’re right where you left them. It is not a selfish act to acknowledge that fatherhood, part-time or full-time, is beyond one’s abilities. Likewise, there’s nothing noble about taking on a responsibility, knowing all the while that you are not up to the task. That goes double for raising children that you resent for needing their mother’s attention.
So much bitterness, failure, and heartbreak could have been avoided if I, or my stepfather before me had been an honest man instead of a “good” man. As another Quoran wrote above, love your children, do right by them, and the rest will fall into place.
The ramblings of this middle-aged father can shed some light on the whereabouts of a few good men and let you know that lowering your expectations is the worst way to attract one. Keep your head and your standards high, and don’t settle for Mr. Right Now.
Should I avoid a relationship with a single mother?
You should avoid single mothers in general. There is a myth that single mothers are single due to the original father being trash. It is false. Most single mothers are single due to infidelity and poor impulse control. Most single mothers are divorced, with the father still part of their lives on some level. Women file 70% of divorces.
Most of the reasons women file for divorce are due to flakey, dishonourable reasons such as “incompatibility”, “wasn’t supportive of career”, or “lack of communication”. And the legal system is unfairly biased towards the mother when it comes to custody. When men file for divorce, most of the time, it is for infidelity, the wife causing financial problems, the wife being bitchy and withholding sex. Abusive husbands, drug users, etc., are few and far between.
Knowing this, is it wise to marry a woman who has a history of divorce? Is it wise to marry a woman and financially support another man’s children? No, this is very stupid. If you want children, have your own. Don’t save women from their poor behaviour.
Why Should you not date a single mother?