Yeap. Just like lesbians have to defect to “gay parenting.”
It’s okay for a drug addicted pedophilic couple working as pimps and living on welfare to have children, but heaven forbid a lesbian, gay couple or single woman who wants child and can support and love it wants to go that route!
Better to be a single parent than to settle for a wife-beater, child abuser, or other toxic spouse.
Some people, for whatever reason, have a very bad habit of only entering relationships with toxic people. That doesn’t mean they’d make bad parents. So, if that’s the case, better they be single parents if they have the financial means/support system/whatever than feeling compelled to hook up with a toxic loser.
Which may or may not be the case with the woman in the OP. I don’t personally know her, after all, I’m just saying it’s a possibility.
Yes. And in addition, there are plenty of circumstances that may make it difficult to find a partner but have no impact on one’s ability to be a good mother – not being conventionally pretty, for example, or not being conventionally feminine, or not particularly enjoying sex, or living in a place where most people don’t share your core values.
Closer to “don’t deliberately have children out of wedlock”.
By himself? I haven’t seen a lot of men who chose to be single custodial parents in their 40s.
Regards,
Shodan
Wrong. There is a vast shortage of babies waiting for adoption, mostly due to abortion and the acceptance of single motherhood. The anti-abortion crew who talk about adoption like it’s some kind of magical la-la land where nothing every goes wrong never address the issue of why people aren’t taking older children who desperately need homes out of foster care.
My brother and his wife had their last children when she was 43 and he was 63! They are doing fine, and Sam is a absolute delight.
So maybe the woman mentioned in the OP should adopt an older child out of foster care.
Regards,
Shodan
You’re worried about her stamina and capability of raising an infant, but think she’s able to tackle an older child in foster care, who is, statistically and almost by definition, special needs? Talk about setting someone up to fail!
Or maybe it’s not for any of us to judge how another person’s family comes about. Surely you’ve all witnessed families created in ideal circumstances crash and burn. And surely you’ve seen marriages you thought “made in heaven” fail miserably. And other families thrive under the most trying circumstances.
Good families aren’t made with marriage certificates and only two parents. Tons of babies that came about ‘by accident’, even the result of rape, turn into awesome people too! As do the offspring of single mothers, people who lost a parent, raised by grandparents etc.
The entire idea that there’s only certain ways to make a proper family displays enormous hubris. Nobody cares about your closed minded views of why this isn’t ideal. Life isn’t ideal! Deal with it.
So you are opposed to single parents who adopt special needs children?
Regards,
Shodan
Would you be so upset if she got pregnant by a husband who died before she gave birth?
Not if that is what she chose to do. Indeed, I’d sing her praises.
My sister’s partner had two children via artificial insemination. My sister legally adopted them. There was a single mother living on their block who had two daughters the same age as my two nieces. The four girls grew thick as thieves.
When the single mother found out she had terminal cancer, my sister and her wife took the family into their house. They took care of the single mother during her final illness, and she made arranges for her daughter to be legally adopted by the “unfit” lesbian couple. Today they are legally my nieces, and anyone who says that is child abuse is going to get an earful from me.
Of course, by some bigoted standards, these children should have gone into the foster care system, along with my sister’s other two daughters.
Or perhaps a basic understanding of the statistical effects of single parenthood on children.
Life isn’t ideal; therefore go ahead and do something stupid.
Got it.
Regards,
Shodan
There are a lot of variables involved - marriage, dual income, dual time sharing, etc. No one really knows how much each variable contributes, but the fact is that children of 2 active parents fair much better. For this reason alone I opine that single parenting by choice is a bad idea.
No, I’m opposed to you, the OP, or anyone else thinking they have a useful opinion about how someone else becomes a parent (in a way that’s breaking no laws and hurting no one.) Especially when that opinion seems to lead you to making terrible suggestions.
The OP seems to think he gets a vote because Wannabe Mom has been confiding in him for years about her desire to have a kid. In great detail. Now she’s suggested he pose as her partner to get cheap AI. And he’s said that, because of her lack of other support, he & his wife would be on tap to help care for the baby. I’m surprised she hasn’t suggested he do the inseminating.
The woman has a right to do as she wishes. So why not just get inseminated & announce the happy news? Nope, she wants to get some help lined up first. (That “hoping to get pregnant so I can end the relationship” thing was pretty tacky. And who supposed she’d let the Surprise Dad off? Dump him when the test shows up positive, look him up when 8.5 months pregnant. Sounds like an MRA fantasy.)
At the age of 42, Mother Nature may just say no.
I can hear the hurt in your post.
But if my maternal instinct were to suddenly kick in, I’d be doing exactly what the woman in the OP is doing. And your pleading wouldn’t mean all that much to me, sorry.
There are few families that hit all the “ideal” categories. I had both parents in my life–and they were and still are great. But we, their children, missed out on other “ideals”. For instance, we grew up miles away from extended family. I never got to experience being spoiled by aunts, uncles, or grandparents because they just weren’t regular features of my life. I know I missed out on a wonderful experience. And yet, I don’t feel an urge to think bad things about parents who raise their children far away from extended family. For every loving grandmother or grandfather, there is a crappy one. I feel lucky that I never had to learn which kind mine were. (Nor be dragged down by ne’er-do-well cousins).
The OP seems to think the woman is a bad person for not being able to make things work in her relationships. I wondering why it can’t just be that this woman has gone through a lot of duds–guys she knows would be horrible fathers. If this is the case, it would be more irresponsible for her to have a kid with one of these guys than it would be to be a single mother.
It’s like this woman can’t win on anything. If she stays single and childless, she gets judged. If she marries a dud and has a kid and he fucks the kid up, she gets judged. If she divorces him, she gets judged. If she decides to do the single mother thing, she gets judged. Out of all these decisions, only the last gets her exactly what she wants, damn whatever else thinks. Such moxy should be praised.
I wish her and her kid only the best.
What is the statistical effect on a child of, say, a household income under $100k? What is the statistical effect of both parents having advanced degrees (hint: it’s huge). What is the statistical effect of the race of your partner? These factors are all huge.
Is it stupid for a working class African-American family to have a child?
Or is it just the things that just happen to line up with your personal sexual morals that matter?
No, not a shitty parent. A shitty kid, as in “high risk of birth defect”. And I think the number is several shy of 42.
Old age is a slacker when it comes to killing. Lots better, more efficient stuff out there.
That’s great. But you may have beat some long odds. From what I understand, the risks for bad shit goes up pretty steep past 40.
The risks actually start going up around 35 but most late pregnancies still result in a normal, healthy baby. So, yes, the risks go up but the most likely outcome is still a normal baby.
Absolutely! Also, there are genetic tests available to rule out the biggest risk, which is Down Syndrome.
Plenty of women aged 42 give birth to normal babies. Saying that one should not even consider getting pregnant at that age because the risks are higher is like saying you should take a job that is a three-block walk away instead of one that is 30 mile highway drive away, because your risks of dying in a car crash go up if you take the latter job. Sure, they do - but that’s such a small piece of the overall picture that it would be absurd to make your decision on that basis alone.