swampwiz said:
(This pertains to men who have never had children.)
It is simply a lack of balance. The woman has the ultimate attachment and responsibility for a child that will be an integral part of her life for quite some time. The man does not. In a normal marriage, the child would be the man's, and hence an integral part of his life.
Now, Wyldfire's situation is not typical for a single mom. The typical situation is usually one in which the woman chose, generally at an early age, an unsuitable man - i.e., a bum, loser, etc. - and probably got knocked up by him as well. Life is a stern teacher, and a lot of times, the women learns not to go for losers anymore, so she becomes attracted to the man who is of high class and did not knock up such a lower class woman as her. She realizes that to attract such a decent man, that she must change her attitude - hence she is a "better" woman for her experience.
But this is classic alpha-beta behavior. The woman gets knocked up by the alpha, and wants the beta to help raise the product of that knocking up. I think that any man who has not fathered a child and gets seriously involved with a single mother to be that beta male.
For me, no thanks. I will wait to meet the higher class woman who considers me to be the alpha male.
This is very true and is something I was thinking about as I've had the chance to date single mothers in the past, but even then I knew that her child was the primary focus.
It was unappealing on a basic level because I knew that she still had the other man in her life. So that destroys exclusivity to a good extent. At least when she is without child you will always suspect on some level that she could be with some other man, but when she is a single mom you KNOW that the other man is still in the picture in some way or form and that affects the trust that you have for her, and as anyone who has been in a relationship knows, TRUST is the key ingredient of a relationship.
Without it, it really is a waste of time because other than a cheap f*ck there isn't a point in being with her.
swampwiz is right about another man taking care of a seed that isn't his, I know of a real-life case where a man has taken care of another woman and taken her kids in to raise as "his own", but in the end the mark he made on their lives will be his and his alone. He never had kids of his own so his own "legacy" will only live on through another man's seed.
In the scheme of things, every man can't truly be an alpha and because of that, those generous, good natured men end up doing what they would have no choice in anyway, and that's take care of business while the other men "get to have their cake and eat it too."
By the way, I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere on this thread yet, but for those of you who are Christians and know the story of Jesus' birth. You would remember that Joseph
didn't want anything to do with Mary when he found out she was pregnant and he considered leaving her but was divinely told that he should stay with her, for the very thing I talked about in the former two paragraphs ~ his guidance and knowledge.