Should Catholics Date Someone With Kids?

In your search for marriage, are you closing yourself off to the plan God has for you?

In this year of St. Joseph, we should ponder the call that Joseph received to take Mary, during her pregnancy, into his heart, and into his home. Under the best of circumstances, raising children requires almost a heroic form of sacrifice, especially in today’s world. Raising children that are not your own, however, takes more than just sacrifice. It takes a whole different level of selflessness.

St. Joseph is the perfect model of this selflessness. He followed the direction of God, setting aside all of his own anxiety, to undertake this journey to raise the Christ child with Mary, his spouse.

Many people today are quick to disqualify someone from the dating pool if they already have children. 

Truly, a dating relationship of this type would present many challenges, but also the opportunity for many joys. If children are a blessing from God, as Catholics so often say, why would men and women eligible for marriage be shunted aside because they have received from God the gift of a child?

Our faith is unapologetically pro-life and every child should be welcomed as a gift. This gift doesn’t always come under the best of circumstances, however, but that never makes the child less deserving of a family with a married mother and father.

This is the “St. Joseph level” of selflessness that we should all be striving to achieve. 

I don’t pretend to suggest that anything about this situation would be easy, but then, when did Christ promise us an easy path? Christ calls us to do the hard things. St. Joseph himself raised a child who was not his biological son. He did so because he identified this as his personal call from God. Have you actually considered this issue in your prayer to find a spouse, or do you just dismiss these possible matches because the idea of children makes you uncomfortable or would be too difficult?

Finding a spouse is part of God’s plan for your life. Like anything else we need to be careful not to put too many limitations on what that plan looks like in reality. If you are reviewing profiles and thinking, “I would never marry someone who has an annulment, lives in another state, has children or doesn’t have a college degree…” perhaps you are at odds with the plan that God has for you. If any of these might describe you, spending some time in prayer to seek God’s will would be beneficial and help you to open up to the perfect plan that God has in mind for you.

Consider what God's plan is before you try to write your own.

Could it be possible that God is asking you to stretch and trust in Him, the way he asked the same of St. Joseph? 

A relationship that blossoms into marriage is one that begins as friends. And after children are grown and gone, the friendship, God willing, remains. Don’t be too quick to dismiss the opportunity to meet someone just because they have a child. Take a step out in faith. Work on your friendship and then, just maybe, God will call you to be another St. Joseph in the life of a family created under the watchful eye of God.