What would make a nice man from a normal, uncomplicated, middle class family choose to keep getting involved with women with so much baggage?

Hear hear.

Why not?

Because it's a myth that any family is nice and normal all the time. We're all a bit chaotic and dysfunctional in overt or covert ways. Often in families that try to present a perfect image it's really common to have one member who is ill or "troubled" so that the rest of the family can continue to say they are perfect and the scapegoat member is the problem. Open your mind OP and try to have a bit of humility and compassion.

This with bells on. I know so many people who have done all the "right" things and are desperately unhappy and dysfunctional but they have stayed married and not had kids with more than one person. Maybe open your mind a bit and you might be able to see that people who split up, get divorced and, shock horror, have children to different men! Can actually be decent people. People who have the veneer of middle class respectability can be some of the most hypocritical and nasty people I've ever met.

If he's divorced with a child and a step child then he had lots of baggage himself. Though I don't like to call children baggage.

So I'm from a WC background. Many here know I've been to prison, and have family members who have. So you, OP, would probably think the same about me or several of my female relatives if we dated your brother. Though most of us lack the chaos in our personal lives that you describe.

I will say that chaos is definitely more prevalent in people like us, than people like you given that you self identify as being different to the women he dates.

What I can tell you is why some men from the higher socio-economic classes seem to have a penchant for women like us. Now some of it is indeed problematic stereotypes they apply to all women they believe come from a certain background, so they don't always apply to everyone, and nor are they exclusive to women from the lower classes.

Either way, they say that we are:

• more resilient

• more content with traditional gender roles

• more sexually adventurous

• less bitter towards men generally

• more tolerant of imperfection/"baggage"

• happier to accept and respect their parenting views.

Again, a lot of why they believe this is problematic in various ways; where it is true, it is often more indicative of powerlessness that empowerment. But swings and roundabouts.

👏👏👏

Indeed. I own my home but that doesn't make me more or less chaotic than someone who rents. It's pure good fortune (a chunk of inheritance and being of an age that meant it wasn't so tricky to buy ) that means I own rather than rent

Some of the best most stable parents I know rent their homes and are single parents.

Meanwhile I know quite a few very MC sahms who are out drinking heavily every weekend and constantly heading off on weekends away, while their darling husband heads away most weeks work conferences and screws his colleagues

It's not the women @BakersKitchen.

It's your DB playing out his Prince Charming complex and creating a Drama Triangle where he repeatedly sets himself up as rescuer of women and children, knowing his version of victimhood will protect him when it all goes to shit.🤷‍♀️

The sad thing is he's playing with the real lives of his partners, the children, you and his parents.😔 Meanwhile you all scrabble around to put blame onto one another.🙄

Your brother is the one who brings more baggage than anyone else.🫤

I don’t see what is “chaotic” about having children from a previous relationship and renting a home? If you’d said they were drug-addicted strippers you might have a point. My children have different fathers, and I can assure you that there is absolutely nothing chaotic about me. I’m quite boring.

Referring to your DB child and those of his previous partners as ‘baggage’ makes me sad. You don’t sound like a particularly nice person.

If you all think your brother has ADHD, why have you not encouraged him to seek help and a diagnosis?

Sounds like he is the family scapegoat. Your family could function so well because everyone's dysfunction (we all have some) got loaded onto him. Whenever I see the words 'nice' and 'normal' it's a clue about the way in which that person is locating their own darker side externally in other people or other situations.

It’s almost as though you feel your brother is contaminating the rest of your stable middle-class clan by his feckless dating choices among poor, WC women with multiple children. Like he’s letting the side down.

Worse, his children may grow up with loads of half and step-siblings from multiple relationships, regard university as an expensive pipe dream for rich people, and think it’s normal to live in ‘poor quality rented accommodation’ (as of course it is for many). It doesn’t take long for MC trappings to get lost, generationally. You might have to ‘explain’ your WC nieces and nephews at parties. ‘Chardonnay? From the ne’er do we’ll branch of the family!’

My DS was very much like this. He was divorced and had 2 children who he couldn’t see very much because of the distance.
He ADHD ( undiagnosed ) and was often out of work but always seemed to be in a relationship with similar women with children .
Some of them were bonkers. One kept her year old child in a high chair all day long , two reasons ,, so the house would be kept very tidy and also so he wouldn’t learn to walk and she could claim a disability benefit for him down the road. I know this sounds mad but she’d already done it with some of her older children (it worked) .
DS eventually met a lovely woman of the same age as him . She encouraged him to get his ADHD diagnosed and to start on medication, which has done the trick . They have been together now for 4 years and he’s in full time work .
maybe your brother has an undiagnosed illness and would benefit from seeing a doctor .

Is he selfish and doesn’t see that bringing up children is hard work so just sees the ‘baggage’ as irrelevant in his self absorbed life. Sees the women as suitable partners but ignores the DCs.

@BakersKitchen Well just tell your db what you're really thinking: "Please don't bring any white trash chav living in social housing to our door step again."

Seem it now, please ignore post. I can't edit it.

The normal middle class lifestyle modelled to him as a child was a SAHM.
Can I ask where you got that from? Did I miss it?