Awe, isn't that cute...

At lunch today I witnessed something that really interests me. I sat across the way from a middle aged guy with two kids, one not more than six months old, with him. When he went to leave, the waitress told him that she wouldn't charge him for his oldest child's meal. It was interesting to me to see all this take place. The single man with kids is the true enigma of the modern age. I would really question anyone who would look at a man like that and wonder about the situation that he was in, how he got to that point, and not feel sorry for him. Now I am assuming, and most likely wrongly, that the man that I saw was single, but for the sake of curiosity I let myself run with it. We say we're moving past the old stereotypes, but I think if we're truly honest with ourselves we would acknowledge that we aren't. For instance, if it had been a single women, with those two kids what would your true reaction be? Especially when the baby started crying? Would you truly be sympathetic or would your guy reaction be something more like, "if she had only..." As I sat there and watched it all pan out I really started wonder about my reactions. I wondered about how society still reacts to the old faux paux (please don't correct my French...unless you're French, then by all means please correct me) we support it on t.v., but in the end we deplore the outcome.

If you really think about it we react completely different to a single man with a child then we would to a single women with a child. Now of course I see it differently, and you'd expect for me to see it differently. I'm still single and still hold on to the lone wolf, alfa male mentality that I've grown accustom to, and even though I say I want kids it's normally expressed as "some day" and certainly not right now. The thing is that that is still a very common perception of a guy, and so to see one of us single and with kids you start to assume the worst. It's out of the norm, women are immediately attached to a man with kids. That's something I completely don't understand. I'm sure it's thoughts of family, and the idea that it's less painful to just marry a man with kids, and possibly a bit of sympathy for the man. Mean while every other single guy is keeping his distance, afraid that it might be some disease that we could catch. We see the single father and are afraid. We feel sorry for the guy. It's kind of like seeing an old dog, you feel sorry because he can't do the things he wants to do anymore.

Is it the same for single women? I've always assumed that it was. Actually I believe that it's worse for single women. Guys certainly are biased against them, historically anyway and even now. I don't really have a direction for this post. It was simply a series of thought I had at lunch and will subsequently be forgotten tomorrow. I just think it strange that in this thoroughly modern world that we profess to be living in that this basic definition between the sexes still stands so strongly. Just curious...
A.T.H.