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Should I tell my online dates I have children
 Hi Eva, I’ve been dating on and off for a year or so, and I’m looking for a long-term relationship. I was wondering if you could advise me on the etiquette of telling dates that you have children. As I was a teenage mother, although I’m 35, my children are already in their teens. This news is often met with an uncomfortable silence, ignored, or with nosy questions. I never put this info on my profile. Questions like “who do you live with?” or “who did you do [insert activity] with?” inevitably come up and I don’t like lying, but on the other hand I don’t want to put guys off. Should I mention it in the pre-date chatting stage, leave it until after a couple of dates, or mention it on the first one? A reader. 
Should I tell my online dates I have children?
Swipe Right, our new advice column, tackles the tricky world of online dating. This week: When’s the right time for full disclosure? Get help making your profile work: forward screenshots to [email protected] for a personal critique and upgrade 

Thu 19 Mar 2015 19.50 GMT Last modified on Thu 19 Mar 2015 20.10 GMT
 
Hi Eva,
 
I’ve been dating on and off for a year or so, and I’m looking for a long-term relationship. I was wondering if you could advise me on the etiquette of telling dates that you have children.
 
As I was a teenage mother, although I’m 35, my children are already in their teens. This news is often met with an uncomfortable silence, ignored, or with nosy questions. I never put this info on my profile. Questions like “who do you live with?” or “who did you do [insert activity] with?” inevitably come up and I don’t like lying, but on the other hand I don’t want to put guys off.
 
Should I mention it in the pre-date chatting stage, leave it until after a couple of dates, or mention it on the first one?
 
A reader.
 
One time in my life I went on a blind date. A real blind date. I hadn’t seen a picture of his face. Imagine that! A friend introduced me to the man in question via email, and besides a few details about his hobbies and interests – “he also likes reading” – and an assurance that he was good-looking, I knew nothing about him, and vice versa.
Indeed, a couple of hours after we met at the Met and walked around an art exhibit together, this man confessed that he’d spent the first 20 minutes in my company wondering if I was the right woman, because our mutual friend had described my hair as curly and I had straightened it.
Over the course of the brief period of time we dated, everything was a surprise. This was kind of exciting, but also devastating when the man surprised me with the information that he was still in love with his ex-fiancee. I’m not saying that’s something he should have told me on the first date, but it wasn’t kind to withhold it, either.
I like to practice a bit of do-unto-others: if you want to meet people in an honest fashion in the hopes of finding a meaningful long-term relationship, then you should present yourself as an honest kind of person. (If you want to meet people to have sex, never to contact them again, then feel free to lie like crazy, but make sure that you’re not using these lies to manipulate honest folks into thinking you’re offering something other than casual sex.)
In this particular case, you want to have a long-term relationship with someone. You’re conscious that children is going to be a dealbreaker for many people. But do you want to get involved with someone who’d consider your beloved children a dealbreaker? Nope. Being a parent isn’t something you can conceal for a while, like a snoring problem or a fondness for jokes about flatulence, until you’ve won a new partner over in every other respect so that they’ll forgive a flaw. Having children is not a flaw. And people who pretend they don’t have kids come over as bad parents, don’t they? There’s nothing sexy about a bad parent.
By revealing the fact that you have kids early on, you may get fewer approaches from potential partners, but I think in proportion you’ll get more approaches from people who are good for you: people who will think that it’s cool that you are a mom. I don’t have kids, but I would imagine that being rejected by someone because of their existence would feel very harsh. So if I were you I’d drop a mention of your family into your profile: not necessarily as the first thing about you, and certainly not as the only thing about you, but as one of a number of interesting and great things about you.
You need to believe that’s the case, and you need a partner who believes that, too. I think if you’re upfront about it, you will find your person.
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