THEY'RE more expensive than prostitutes, their bodies aren't what they used to be and their children walk in during sex.

These are just some of the brutally offensive reasons that a growing group of men have given for not wanting to date single mums.

6 Jonathan Cass says that dating a single mum will make you feel second best Credit: Supplied

On a recent thread on the secret sharing app, Whisper, tried to explain the warped reasons they ruled out dating single mothers.

Here, Sun Online, meets the men who are breaking a taboo by refusing to date single mums.

Jonathan Cass, 52, has joined their ranks, having been single for three years, and now makes a point of swiping left on dating apps and rejecting women if there’s any mention of a little one at home.

"I don’t want to be second best," he says.

“There’s a real trend in current parenting that the children always have to come first and women now seem to live for their kids” says Jonathan, who works in film and television and lives in Dunmow, Essex.

And he's by no means alone in this.

6 A YouTube clip by Richard Cooper on the pitfalls of dating single mums has nearly 600,000 views Credit: YouTube

King Richez posted a video on not dating single mothers which amongst other things says: “She should be focused on her kids – not on penis” - and Richard Cooper's YouTube talk on the Dangers of Dating Single Mothers has been viewed 583, 297 times.

This clip opens with a slide showing a woman holding a baby with the meme: “Single mother here: please take care of some other man’s ball of flesh that eats money destroys dreams and s***s stress. I offer you my ruined floppy pu**y and mental issues!”

On another a shocking blog called Everything Must Go, one of the posts is titled: “Don’t date single mothers – here is why.”Reason number five is, “A woman who has given birth can’t ever have a body close to what she had before carrying a child. This is not saying that having a child isn’t worth it, but this is not about YOU having a child. That child is hers, not yours. Her body was changed by something that is of no benefit to you.”

'I don’t want to be second best'

6 Jonathan has nothing against parents of older children... but mothers of young kids are definitely ruled out Credit: Supplied

Jonathan explains: “I’m a really spontaneous person and love the idea of saying to my partner, ‘come on, pack your bags, let’s go away for a couple of days’ but you can’t do that with kids. Everything has to be planned and organised beforehand.”

He also struggles with the emotional burden of having to be a father figure to someone else’s child.

“I’ve been married twice and had a son in my first marriage – who is now 27 – and in between the two marriages I did date a woman with a son but I felt like she wanted me to become a father-figure to this child,” he says.

“It raised lots of complex feelings: I felt guilty to be spending more time with her and her son than my own and I didn’t like the idea of stepping on someone else’s toes as his biological father was still very much around.”

While Jonathan wouldn’t mind if a potential partner had grown-up children, provided they were no longer at home and doing their own thing, “young ones are definitely out.”

6 The expense of being with a single mum also puts Jonathan off Credit: Supplied

'I'm feeling selfish'

“I don’t want to be part of a family unit and splashing out on days out together. Single mums are too expensive. I’m feeling selfish and not dating women with children is part of that.”

There are two million single parents in the UK and 91 per cent of them women.

The list of celebrity single mums is endless and many, including Britney Spears, Kate Hudson, Louise Redknapp, Kate Hudson and Sun columnist Stacey Solomon, have spoken out about their experiences.

dating coach Richard La Ruina, author of The Natural: How to Effortlessly Attract the Women You Want warns that dismissing single mothers as potential partners is a risky decision.

“Finding love is hard enough as it so to narrow the pool even further is a mistake,” he says.

“Yes, dating a single mother adds an extra potential complication but it’s not a total deal breaker.”

'I won't spend my hard earned money on them'

Paul Dakers feels very differently.

The 45 year-old logistics specialist from St Ives in Cambridgeshire has never been married and has been single for over a year.

“I would very much like to meet someone and have a family of my own but I really don’t want to date anyone with their own children,” he says.

“I dated a girl for a year and she had three children and she lived a couple of hours away. She would come and see me every two or three weeks and I kept saying, ‘I’ll come and see you, I promise’ but I never did. I never met her children and didn’t want to.

6 Paul is concerned that it would be awkward to be around someone else's kids Credit: Supplied

“She’d talk about them constantly and I’d nod and shake my head in the right places but I wasn’t really paying attention. It puts me off that they wouldn’t be mine.

"What would they call me? Paul? Dad? Oh no. It’s weird. If they’re not mine, I haven’t brought them up and I’m not mentally prepared to cope with that kind of responsibility.”

“I might also feel reluctant to spend my hard-earned money on them.

"It is getting harder at my age now to meet women without kids and I know it narrows down the numbers but I’m trying to stay hopeful.”

6 Paul, centre, says it's hard to find love... but he's staying hopeful Credit: Supplied

'Her son walked in on us in the bedroom'

Dan Mower is another good example.

He is 46 but still wants to settle down and have at least two children, which can be an issue for some single mothers who are wary of entering new relationships and having more children.

“They’ve been there, done that and don’t necessarily want more,” says Dan, a self-employed businessman from North London.

“After all, it hasn’t worked out once before so why should they risk having more children?”

The need to breed The desire to procreate and carry on your ancestral line is something evolutionary psychologist Carole Jahme believes is inbuilt in men. “We are driven to reproduce and continue our lineage ,” says Carole. “When men are looking for a mate they look for someone physically and mentally healthy to breed with so that their child can be born strong. “It’s very possible that single mothers – especially those in their late 30s and 40s – may send out signals, even subconsciously, that they may not want to have more children. “Men are aware that an investment of time is needed to put into a child and, on the whole, it makes sense for them to invest that time in seeking a woman who is prepared to have their own biological child.”

Dan has dated a number of single mothers in the past but is now avoiding them altogether.

“I’ve not had great experiences dating single mums and don’t want go there again,” says Dan.

“One of my exes had a 12-year-old son and we’d been on-and-off for a few years. The last time we went out in February, we were trying to catch up in her bedroom – talking, being intimate – and her son just walked in on us.

“She seemed fine with it, saying he knew about us and he has the right to see her when she wants, but that totally put me off. I’m not the biological father though so it means I can’t set any of the standards or rules.

“The kids of another woman I dated didn’t really accept me and there was a feeling of ‘Who are you? You’re not my dad’ and it just added complications.”

Dan also dislikes coming second in a relationship. “A single mother will always prioritise her children over me,” he says. “I’ve been stood up a few times because the children are sick or the childcare has fallen through and I want someone who wants to put our relationship first.”

Yet relationship psychotherapist Caron Barruw says the problem isn't single mums, but the immature commitment-phobic men who won't date them.

"This is an immature and selfish way of looking at relationships", she says.

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“A woman would have to be very, very attractive for me to be able to look past the fact they have children and make me want to go out with them,” says Paul.

“I know it’s getting harder to find single women without children at my age but I’m going to keep looking. There has to be someone out there.”

Lucky her.