Dating ... With Children

    When Andrea Kim got divorced, she didn’t have high hopes for her social life.  “I just figured nobody’s going to want somebody with two kids,” says Kim, 36, of Chicago. But her first major post-divorce relationship lasted three years, and not long after it ended, Kim met Dallas Yanez at an animal-rescue fundraiser.

Yanez was good-looking, fun to talk to and as serious about helping unwanted animals as Kim, who had adopted four cats and one dog. And when Kim proudly mentioned her two smart and sarcastic daughters, ages 8 and 14, the new guy didn’t flinch. “You’re supposed to be interested in the person you meet,” says Yanez, 37, of Evanston. “She’s attractive to me, we had a great conversation, and I figured whatever lifestyle she had — her job, where she lives — should not really matter.”

Kim, who has been dating Yanez for four months, is part of a wave of single parents who are quietly rewriting the rules of dating with children. While single parents once battled the stigma of “broken” homes and “failed” marriages, and their children were cast in the unenviable role of “baggage” that no worthy suitor would want to undertake, attitudes have changed profoundly in the last two decades, parents and experts say. Part of the story is the numbers.

There are 12 million single parents living with children younger than 18 in the U.S., according to 2007 Census Bureau figures, a whopping 200 percent increase over 1970, when there were 4 million.  “As divorce became more prevalent, it was harder to stigmatize,” says Leah Klungness, a Long Island psychologist and co-founder of singlemommyhood.com. “People would say, ‘Hey! You’re talking about my sister!’ or ‘Hey! You’re talking about my cousin!’”

Single parents are turning to online dating services, with Match.com reporting that fully 47 percent of its U.S. members have kids. They are wearing T-shirts proclaiming “Single Moms Rock the Playdates”; rallying around emerging blogs such as Ms. Single Mama (tagline: “Prince Charming can kiss my (butt). Unless he manages to sweep me off my feet”); and finding friends through social networking sites such as iheartsingleparents.com.

“Single parents are coming out of the woodwork and are no longer ashamed of their status,” says Morgan Siler, 29, co-founder of iheartsingleparents.com, which went online a year ago and gets 200,000 page views a month. In some social circles, change has reached the point that having children is no longer viewed as merely acceptable in a dating situation; it’s actually a plus.

“I always said, ‘I’d prefer to date someone with kids, because they understand my situation a little bit better and they’re probably in the same situation,’” says Jeremy Solomon, 42, of Evanston, the father of a 10-year-old. “It’s one less thing to explain.”

Still, dating with children is different, parents and observers say: The stakes are higher, time is often scarce, logistics can be a nightmare, and with the baby-sitter getting $13 an hour, no one wants to waste their time. On a recent Saturday night, members of the Evanston (Ill.) Single Parent Meetup Group — one dad and seven moms, plus a 10-year-old whose mother couldn’t find a baby-sitter — gathered around a table at an upscale Italian restaurant with stucco walls, iron chandeliers and ornamental palms. Some members were brimming with confidence and reassurance, but one woman, a newcomer, alternated between animated conversation and teary-eyed silence.

When the subject of dating was introduced, parents were quick to say it’s different this time around: “You’re more mature. You’re not as carefree. You’re pickier, obviously,” says Raquel Olea, 36, who has a 7-year-old son. Logistics are a major topic for single parents who date. Some note that incompatible custody arrangements — for instance, different alternating weekends with the kids — can make dating a scheduling headache, regardless of the mutual attraction.

Ken Silverman, 50, who has homes in Chicago and New Lenox, Ill., was spending every other weekend with his sons, now 22 and 17, when he met Leslie Sterman, who became his second wife. Sterman (now Leslie Silverman, 49), a senior vice president of human resources with no kids of her own, intrigued him: “It was almost like we were meant for each other,” he says. But for the first six months of their relationship, he could only see her every other weekend. And even then, he recalls, “we would only date on Friday night or Saturday, because Sunday I still had to come home and take my kids to Sunday school.” Still, Silverman has no complaints about courtship with time constraints. “It was kind of nice. You talk on the phone, you know?” he says. “Things progressed at a nice pace.” After a 2 1/2-year courtship, the couple married in September 2006.

Kim, a professional pet-sitter whose ex-husband lives in Korea, has experienced the ways that circumstances can conspire against a single parent who is trying to schedule a night out. “Even if you do have something scheduled, the other person has to be flexible, because sometimes you have to cancel,” she says. “You just can’t get around it. You’ll have a sick kid, or something will come up where you’ll have to pick somebody up or drop somebody off, (you’ll get stuck in) traffic, whatever. There’s always something that comes up to spoil everything.”

And yet, single parents say, there are pluses to dating with children, among them that it does tend to weed out the jerks and prima donnas pretty quickly. As Solomon puts it, “To some extent, I’ve only got room for one princess in my life.” That would be his 10-year-old daughter, Zoe. Kim’s boyfriend, Yanez, a sales rep, doesn’t have kids, but he says his experience growing up as the son of a divorced single mom who was always there for him informed his thinking on the issue. “My mom had kids, and it didn’t matter, so why should I use that as a guideline?” he says.

Yanez has taken an active approach to interacting with Kim’s daughters that includes a foam dart set. “I figured it would be an absolutely cool toy to interact with them: ‘Let’s play dart games,’ ” he says. “So we got this Nerf game, and we started shooting each other, and it turned out to be really fun.” Now the three play all the time, setting up a big “war zone” in the apartment, Kim says approvingly. “He has a lot of fun with them. He’s very playful. So it’s actually a very, very good match.” 

By Nara Schoenberg Chicago Tribune (MCT) 
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