I'm struggling a bit with this issue. I always thought that marriages or people with kids have a high responsibility to hold it all together. Obviously, I have a condescending point of view in my first comment, because it has not happened to me. Realistically, we see broken families/marriages on a daily basis, which must mean it can't be as easy as we make it out to be. If having a broken family is just what happens as an unfortunate, unforseen, part of life to some people, and not just as a result of lack of responsibility, then I should be able to deal with this right? I should be able to date a man with kids?
I think there is another aspect to the issue. I have always prided myself on putting first what would set me up in the best way for the long run. As younger person, I never settled down with someone. There were men, but I didn't settle for short-lived happiness from day to day in my unstable, young, naive era. I kept my long term goals ahead of what was happening in front of me. It was in fact painful at times, to see how others seemed to put their lives together in cute little pieces, with a devoted relationship, followed by plans of a distant proposal, followed by an actual engagement. People my age were having kids. I always put my career first, and I always kept an awareness of finding myself, a person that would evolve less with age, and that would hopefully later fit with the one I'd want to end up with forever. Now that I have a career, after many years of schooling, and observing others in "happy" relationships, I have recently met a man who has kids. He is less than ten years older. He has two children. I am having a hard to getting around the idea that he has two of them. He was never married. I think, my negative feelings about this come from my ideals, and how I plan for things and how I choose to live. I think that's part of my problem.