That is, there is a quality of person beyond which you cannot settle – not just that you would not like to settle, but they’re highly unlikely either to stay in the relationship, or to be a suitable parent in the first place.
We should start by remembering fundamentals of good parenting:
- Able to deal with the kids making trouble, particularly, not lashing out with abuse in response
- Dependable child care
- Dependable income / financially responsible
- Understanding that the children have to be driven academically, pushed outside to develop physically, and you can’t let them gorge themselves on junk food and other vices
- Some understanding of child development progression and needs, which you then are able to meet/assist with
Personal behaviors that interfere with the above fundamentals, especially proper supervision and discipline of children, are:
- Criminal behavior
- Drug abuse/other addictions
- General high levels of emotional instability, rage, or depression
- In general not caring about the children at all/feeling bitter about life choices
Dependable child care and income boils down to a person who has discipline and is willing to make tradeoffs in other areas of their lives to support both the romantic relationship, and the parenting partnership. The child care is easier; the income can be hard to come up with if you are starting from a background of little, and you aren’t that intelligent, or you have health issues.
The compromise/settle/compensation here would be the particular skill in parenting – but the less capable parent still has to be capable of the basics. Moreover, two parents who disagree about how the kids should turn out, constantly will be fighting each other.
We also should consider the things that keep couples together romantically (the requirement for conceiving):
- Common values / compatible life goals
- Meeting each other’s physical needs (not just sex, but touch etc.)
- Supporting each other’s decisions and helping each other through rough spots
- Some amount of common interests and reasons to spend time together
The impact of childrearing on the ability to achieve life goals effectively forces you to have some compatibility with your spouse in these areas. Of course, having kids is going to be far more difficult if you aren’t able to build intimacy and deliver in the bedroom; but even more critically, your partner cannot be getting VD because they will be passing it along to you – so there is no good alternative to fidelity for 5-10 years/the child conception process. The process of a woman being pregnant is a rough spot in a relationship, and dealing with/adjusting to your spouse’s struggles is critical to keeping them productive.
Reviewing these items, you work up a profile that looks like:
- A person who clearly has demonstrated the ability of emotional restraint
- A person who either holds a relatively stable job or works in a relatively well-paying profession, or who has been a caregiver – something that demonstrates the ability to provide child care, income, or both
- A person who shows up on time, takes care of their friends and family, and displays the other markers of caring enough about others that you could expect they would care about children
- A person who lives the lifestyle that they are trying to raise their children into – that is, they try to be at least decent at their job and with money, and they take care of their own health
- Either a clean record, or 5+ years of staying clean and out of trouble, AND no new VD for the partner
- Clearly wanting kids, and also wanting a spouse with which to raise them
- Being willing to do what is needed in grooming, diet/exercise, demeanor, and physically, to satisfy the spouse
- Either virginity, or demonstrated fidelity to partners
- Someone who cares about you and makes time for you
- Someone who has some amount of common activities and interests
and therefore you understand there only are a few things that constitute any meaningful areas in which you could be disappointed/settle:
- Wealth beyond the requirements of a functioning household
- Where you live, the specifics of housing, jobs, etc.
- Values that aren’t core to the partnership, or to the parenting philosophy
- Not having many common interests
- Personality differences, differences in sense of humor, different aesthetic judgements
- Looks, sexual frequency above and beyond every week or two, and detailed sexual compatibility
The challenge to the above would be, for example: can’t government provide a universal basic income, which would relieve the requirement that a person holds a stable job? This is the strongest assertion against the above, and the answer is: sort of. Certainly government subsidies can make households economically viable, but they can’t replace the work ethic or capability of an individual parent, which is the basis of making a marriage commitment for childrearing to a parent, vs. being a single parent by choice and getting some casual help from the other parent. The critical point being “casual” help, vs. dedicated support, so the kids aren’t being relatively abandoned or neglected due to the lack of a second parent able to support when the first one is unavailable for whatever reason. There also is the issue of consistently showing up, being a proxy/predictor for staying with the family and doing the family tasks.
On the related point: the state certainly can pay any number of caregivers, but you can’t expect that you are going to get the same quality of childrearing from same. Sometimes you will, and sometimes you won’t – and the frequency of “won’t” increases with the number of caregivers you requisition.