Oh for goodness' sake. Since some of my comments have already been explained, I won't go into it again, but I will defend a comment I made.
When you are at the age where the only single people you have available to date your own age are coming off their first divorce and invariably have children, yes, these people's children are baggage.
It's not a positive thing in the dating world. Repeating myself, if you date such a person you will always be second runner up. If that's OK with you, go for it. But for the rest of us, children are problematic and not desirable in a person you want to date.
And that should be OK. We all make decisions as to who we want to date. What qualities we accept in a person and what we don't. It is a judgement call. This should not be condemned, otherwise we might as well criticize anyone who happens to have a 'type' or other preferences.
We like who we like. Nothing is going to change that. You might as well ask Hugh Hefner to stop dating young skinny blonde women with big fake hooters and get someone his own age.
OK, the criticism may be "Well, you're missing out. This person may be the love of your life."
I'm willing to take that risk in order to avoid having to deal with children - who may or may not like you - a parent struggling to make ends meet and may not be able to be with you as much as either of you like due to the demands from the children or whatever little morality games may be involved ("You can't stay here all night, my kids will see you!" type shit).
This kind of thing you have to put up with if you want to be with these single parents because quite frankly, they're not your kids. So you have no say in how they're raised or how they're disciplined or how they're treated - or, how the kids treat you!
And of course, not to mention that not every person who has children and is divorced has an amicable relationship with their exes.
Indeed, Ryan and Reese do not seem to have had a very amicable divorce. I read this in some rag, not sure how accurate this is, but Ryan Phillippi supposedly made a BBM crack about Jake to his friends, re him dating Reese.
Ex-husband/wife jealousy. Jeez.
You avoid these headaches by avoiding single parents as potential dating partners.
So, yes, sorry to say, for many single people, a man/woman with children is not going to be our first choice in partners.
When you get down to it, all that matters is what Jake likes and feels is good for him, but we all know that his track record is not good dating-wise. Now he's possibly involved with a divorced woman fresh out of a long-term marriage. When the rumors of them together first started circulating, I put forth my opinion that he may be good for Reese - self-esteem support and all - but she was likely not IMO good for him because she was likely on the rebound. I stand by that opinion.