Maybe you should stop dating men of questionable character. You yourself admitted they are of questionable character.
What happens someday when one of these boyfriends becomes your husband? How are going to be able to share a household without him being home alone with your kid at some point?
Duh. But if I dated a guy who seemed great it would still take quite a while before I was sure enough to trust him.
I wouldn’t marry or live with someone I didn’t completely trust with my child. That really can’t be inferred from what I’ve been saying?
Like I needed another reason to not date single moms.
Where are these stores where you can find an employee without leaving the kid unattended?
I DO think it’s unreasonable. You’re acting out of prejudice.
Personally, I love kids and they generally love me. I have often met a double standard. Many people feel that since I’m a man and like to be around kids, I must be a pedophile.
God forbid someone act out of prejudice to ensure their child isn’t molested.
Except it ensures no such thing. It only ensures that if the kids are molested, it will be by a woman.
Well now you have one anyway 
Thinking you MUST be a pedophile for that reason would be incredibly unreasonable and offensive. Thinking they want to get to know you better before they trust you alone with their child isn’t. I don’t think anyone I’ve dated is a pedophile, and most have really liked kids. Obviously I wouldn’t be dating them if I thought they were pedophiles. But it’s still something you really want to be pretty damn sure about, and that takes time.
And you’ve admitted that if you don’t have that time, you’ll just get a woman.
True. But not “just get a woman”…just get a person with several qualities I think would improve the odds of being a good babysitter. Maybe a 14-year-old boy dropout in goth makeup would actually be the best babysitter, but if I don’t have time, nope, not gonna chance it.
Way to modify a statement you made previously.
Look at that strawman!
I’m not modifying anything. I never said I’d take just any woman (if the only choices were some woman heroin addict or some man who seemed upstanding, I’d choose the man, I just can’t see ever being in that position). And I’m saying it is possible that someone I wouldn’t THINK would be a good babysitter, actually would be a great babysitter. And a sweet grandmother might beat my kid once I leave. No one is claiming it’s foolproof. Risk reduction, not elimination.
Just how bad does the woman have to be before you chose a man instead?
Just how does favoring women over men reduce risk?
I think what LadyFoxfyre and Blackberry are getting at is that its in the interest of the safety of a child to take certain precautions. That means if a single mom is dating, she’s going to exert a signifiant amount of caution in regards to how she introduces her significant other to her children. This doesn’t mean she’s showing prejudice; it means she’s a responsible mom for putting the safety of her kids first.
People are trying to imply that if you show caution about leaving your kid alone with a boyfriend then they must think all guys are pedophiles and/or date disgusting creepy people. This is so incredibly off base. People are forgetting one of the most common vectors of child sexual abuse is a boyfriend/girlfriend/stepparent.
I’ve dated single moms, and haven’t gotten offended at them showing caution about having me around their child. This is because the safety of their child trumps their relationship with me. In fact I’d be a little :dubious: if I dated a woman who was a little too eager to indroduce/leave me alone with her children. Rather than see it as a sign of trust, I’d wonder just how protective she would be with her kids in other situations.
Women as a whole have to put up with a whole lot of bullshit that many men don’t bat an eyelash over in their own eyes. Women and children are much more likely to be victims of violence and sexual assault which necessitates increased vigilance.
If that’s all Blackberry was saying, I’d be right behind her. It isn’t. She’s said repeatedly that women are more trustworthy than men, and that she chooses women over men when selecting a sitter.
I don’t know, I don’t have an exact formula. I’m glad I never had to face that decision. But see, I was thinking of a situation where, say, I needed a babysitter and placed an ad on craigslist. You’ll get a lot of responses doing that, so you can be choosey. But okay, if I was rushing off to the ER and absolutely had to pick between two of my neighbors I vaguely knew, the woman would probably get a couple points for being a woman, yes, but the man could easily outweigh that with other factors.
Um…what? Do you think women are just as likely as men to molest children?
Except thats not true:
Men as a group do commit more crime than women but they’re also as a group significently more likely to be victims of violent crime than women (except rape).
If I recall correctly men are more likely to molest children than women but that in many cases that abuse is facilitated by women…the stereotypical image of the creepy loner predator is something of a misnomer.
Though the above link seems to suggest that “female parents acting alone” are most likely to be perpetrators of child abuse.
Yep. Got kids? Sorry. You’re no longer in my dating pool. I’m not saying I’m a catch or anything. Sweeping generalization alert: It’s been my experience that single moms are usually single for a reason that generally involved a bad decision. I know I’m going to raise some hackles with that statement so let me be clear, this is based solely on my experience with maybe 4 single moms that I had at least one date with. Women I met “blind.” I just don’t want to invest the energy anymore. At my age it’s harder to find women my age who don’t have children but that’s what experience tells me I need to do.
Please don’t come along now and post your husband/BF was a fireman and died in a fire saving children from a burning preschool. I know there are great, single moms out there and I’d be lucky to meet one. For whatever reason, I just can’t find them.
I’ve thought about this post today as I’ve been out and it really does bother me that I’m the single creepy suspicious guy in the eyes of many women. But like others have said, what can you do about it? It’s our society. It’s like Pooh, it just is.
Eh. Certainly not all single moms are great. It’s not something I’m at all sensitive about, possibly because I’ve never actually faced men not wanting to date me for that reason. But if they don’t want to, that’s fine and I understand. But most of us do have baggage. So do most single fathers to some degree, so while I wouldn’t rule it out at all, I prefer a man to not have kids.
I still think most men who claim they wouldn’t, would date an actual (not hypothetical) single mom in the right circumstances. If not though, still cool with me.
Yes, it’s caused by the media, but not by way of censorship or “permissiveness.”
It’s because we don’t differentiate between “news” and entertainment. News stories less and less are about providing information, and more and more serve as narratives–stories–with perilous situations and “bad guys.” We love scary movies, and we love to have easily identified “bad guys,” who always get their just punishment in the end. The news media know this, so when we turn on the news, they give us drama–with “good guys,” “bad guys,” an Aristotelian narrative arc, and a moral. We don’t really care about what’s actually happening in the world beyond ourselves. Rather, we just want a satisfying movie.
Nevertheless, because these movies we consume are packaged as news, we maintain the conceit that they somehow must reflect something that is happening in our personal experience. It doesn’t matter that the stories are statistically of low occurrence, and that they happen in places very far away. So parents see a child molester behind every corner, sitting on every park bench.
I kind of doubt that things like child molestation, etc., are more prevalent than before. We’re just “consuming” a larger number of them as entertainment, with the easy availability that comes with cable news (and other forms of delivery). Just like we’re consuming much more sugar now that high fructose corn syrup is so cheap, and thereby getting fatter.