Single Parents Dating Challenges
What is it like to date as a single parent? Yahoo! Personals conducted a survey through Harris Interactive. What are the top issues for single parents?
1. Introducing their children to their dates is the toughest challenge single parents face as they get back into dating
2. The challenges of finding dates who like their children would like and finding dates who like children. Specifically:
- 16 percent of survey respondents identified introductions as the greatest challenge
- 16 percent of survey respondents identified introductions as the greatest challenge
- 14 percent said finding a suitor their kids would like was the toughest
- 12 percent said the most difficult thing about dating was choosing suitors who liked children
- 9 percent identified coordinating schedules as the toughest problem
- 7 percent said it was revealing that they had children
- 12 percent said it was another problem, not listed among the choices
- Asked when they introduced their dates to their children, most survey respondents (28 percent) said it would be when they and their date started to “envision a future together.” Another 19 percent said it would be when they first started dating. This was followed by “when they stopped seeing other people” (9 percent), “when they committed” (8 percent), and when they were ready for “him or her to sleep over” (2 percent).
Single parents experience anticipation and anxiety leading up to that first meeting and a lot of questions such as, “Will they accept each other?” and “Will they like each other?,” says Caroline Presno, commenting on the survey findings. “Single parents should allow things to happen naturally and not try to force a connection between their date and their children. Making the first meeting a brief one is a way to take some of the pressure off.” Presno, Ed.D., is a psychotherapist and author of Profiling Your Date
Harris Interactive conducted the Yahoo! Personals singles survey by telephone during August 2007 among 1,005 U.S. adults, age 18+.
