Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Suitable Phone For a 4-Year Old?
blogologue writes "I have a kid that's turning 4-years old soon, and I'm not able to be with him as often as I want to. To remedy this, I'm looking into whether or not getting him a phone could be a good idea to keep in touch. Being able to have a video chat is important, and as it is rare that a 4-year old has a mobile phone, and because he's got other things to do, it would be good to be able to turn off for example games and so on during time in the kindergarten. So other kids don't go around asking their parents for a smartphone. The main reason for getting the phone is keeping in touch, and as a bonus it can function as a device for games and so on during allowed times. Are there any phones that are suitable for such use? I don't mind if it's Android, iOS or something else, as long as it can be used to make video calls to other Android/iOS phones, and if it features other applications such as games, have limited, pre-defined functionality during certain periods of the day."
Are you serious?
The most "suitable" phone for a 4 year old is one without a battery.
Really, you need to focus on more important things for your child at that age.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
buy him a book, an erector set, lincoln logs. Do not get him hooked on the electronic teat at such a young age. My father was an engineer and even though he worked late hours, he still would take me to the ice cream shop at night and help me with my homework and have dad and son time. The time he spent was quality.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
64GB iPhone 5 with gold plating plus $10,000 iTunes credit.
Get that over-reaching sense of entitlement embedded early.
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
The best phones are the plastic ones you buy at the local bric-a-brac store. Sometimes these phones even let you call Elmo who will say "Hello", sing a song and wait for you to call the next person
. .
Dude, just don't. I understand you want to speak and see your son, but the reason 4yo don't have phones is because they are not ready for their use. Let the kid play with playmobil and later lego. Let him be a child and when he's ready for a mobile, he'll tell you by putting it on his christmas-list. I wish you wisdom with your decission and hopefully you'll find a beter way to keep in touch with your kid.
Eventually your capillaries will merge and you will form one all-knowing toddler-adult hybrid. I, for one, bow down to you, Todd-lor.
If you need to get in touch with him, call his sitter or day care and ask if they will put him on the phone. No way in hell a 4 year old needs a phone.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
https://d1jqecz1iy566e.cloudfront.net/med2/sb014.jpg
Oh, and for god sake pull your finger out and take your parenting responsibilities seriously.
Yes, I am sure you miss little johnny when you are away from him, so perhaps you need
to spend more time with them when you can, and get used to them having some space
and freedom when you cannot!
Ruining his life with a leash is not a solution to your separation anxiety.
A 4 year old shouldnt have a phone, a 14 year old shouldn't have a phone. We really need as a society to get off the cell phone kick. Very few of the people who have a phone need one.
You haven't been completely clear, but if the mother has primary custody and wants to limit your misogynist contact, she can obviously control the amount of contact you have. The specific device won't matter if she won't let him use it, or simply takes it away.
If she has called you a misogynist pig in any way that was recorded and which can be proven, you need a lawyer to deal with this I'm presuming you are not actually a misogynist pig, so your wife's unstable slander would be useful if you want to gain more control.
As for specific devices, at 4 your son knows what you look like. Why is video chat better than simple audio phone? There is still this thing in the universe called copper-wired POTS. You can phone at times you both are available (if the mother doesn't interfere) and at 4, you might be able to teach him how to phone you.
When my son was 4 I gave him my Droid Incredible, which was deactivated when I upgraded. He liked it, and would play angry birds sometimes. He also took pictures (the camera isn't great but it's better than pretty much any kid's camera available) and listened to music on it. It was pretty impressive the way he customized the device, too.
My friend gave his son, who is a little younger, an iPod Touch and an iPad around the same time. I know his son uses his devices more than mine.
Contrary to the bulk of these responses, both children were up to the task of having and caring for a modern touchscreen device. You'll want to slap on a good case, and you need to know you can trust your child with it, but they're fine.
As for the recommendation... Well, this is an area where Android is playing catch-up with iOS. iOS has lots of parental controls so you can lock down default apps and prevent installation of unauthorized apps. I don't think either OS is particularly easier to learn, but the ability to control some aspects of the OS might make this an easier sell to the child's other parent, or just easier to monitor for you. If you get an Android device, I suggest you get one that can use the user profile features in Android 4.3 (it was added in 4.2 but there's more control in 4.3.)
However, I'm not sure a phone is really necessary. In fact, I think a phone would be more likely to be dragged around when not needed and more easily lost. It's more likely to become a nuisance. Since your son won't be with you, you have to consider the people he will be with. You don't want the device to become a problem and be taken away.
I would suggest an older device, this way it's less of a loss if it's broken or lost. At this point, you could easily get an older iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. A first generation Nexus 7 isn't a bad choice either. I'd go with one of the tablets, personally. They're better for video chats.
Blogologue's 3.9 year old son wants a phone, but doesn't know how to ask daddy for it. So he hacked blogologue's /. account and posted the question. Later he is going to spike his coffee, and make him think he wrote the post himself during a late night of slashdot reading.
That makes the most sense.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I'm a firefighter, my wife's a paramedic...we're away from our kids (not simultaneously) for 24 hours each shift.
Facetime is a wonderful thing for when one of them needs, well, a little facetime with whatever parent is at work. They get to chat with grandparents as well.
We bought a couple of refurbed iPod touches, put them in otterboxes, threw a few apps on them, and handed them over. They can facetime us as long as they have wifi (at our house, family, close friends), their texting is limited to iMessage and locked down to the existing contacts...this way they have an opportunity to learn proper etiquette and manners about the phone and texting and pictures.
They're 7 and 8, have had this for two years, and they're not little tech junkies. Also, I'm not paying an extra $40 per month per kid for connectivity that's only occasionally necessary.
Some people have to work. My 6yo daughter has been video chatting me and calling me on the phone at work since she was 3. We can't all retire on childbirth and she is the youngest of five spanning 19 years age. Many of us can be telepresent most of the time though. The modern age is wonderful. When you're 3 almost nothing will wait until daddy gets home. To her pushing a button to get remote facetime with daddy to negotiate a diplomatic solution to an argument or calling him to bring something home is a normal and expected part of how life works. Daddy is always there, no matter where he is. This is disruptive and transformational. This is a child who is going to come of age not understanding how some people are unavailable sometimes because this is the only world she knows. She is precocious, but this is becoming the norm.
I encourage this because when I was three years old access to daddy was something I would never again enjoy in this life to the present day, for even one minute. I feel the lack did not improve my level of joy throughout my life, though I could be wrong. Sometimes daddy is an ass. As my mother is dead I have to accept her judgement on the issue. I can aspire however to be better: to be the available, accessible and good daddy I wished for when I was my youngest daughter's age.
The future is here and it is scary and amazingly awesome.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Good luck with that. I pal of mine has spent the last year trying to get his kids returned to him. He had full custody in California, and when the kids went for a 1 week visit to their mother's house in Illinois, the state decided they would just give her full custody and declare it illegal for the children to leave Illinois. When the cops came to deal with the physical abuse, instead of sending the kids back home to the father, the state of Illinois decided to seize custody of the children themselves. No one claims the father provided anything but a safe and loving home to the kids. The state of Illinois just decided that putting the kids in jail (for their protection from their mother) is better than allowing the kids to return home. And that is just scratching the surface of the abuse that the courts have put on these kids.
The short version of the story is, men and children get screwed in divorce courts. A good lawyer is only as effective as the mother wants to let him be.
News Flash: Life happens. Even when you plan on having children, one cannot even remotely plan for every event forthcoming (especially four years later) that would elicit the need for a 4-year old to have a cell phone.
News flash:
Some separated parents don't have as much access to the kid(s) as they would like.
If the mother's anything like the description she's probably already filled the kid's head with lies about misogynist-daddy and a phone won't fix anything.
No sig today...
This is a child who is going to come of age not understanding how some people are unavailable sometimes because this is the only world she knows. She is precocious, but this is becoming the norm.
I'm not sure accepting that creating needy children who have no ability to be patient is a good thing; It will, and is, creating a slave generation. It has been proven time and time again that the ability to delay gratification is directly, and strongly, linked to long-term success as an adult. But if short-term thinking and immediate gratification got us into this mess, surely it can get us out as well.
I encourage this because when I was three years old access to daddy was something I would never again enjoy in this life to the present day, for even one minute. I feel the lack did not improve my level of joy throughout my life, though I could be wrong. Sometimes daddy is an ass. As my mother is dead I have to accept her judgement on the issue. I can aspire however to be better: to be the available, accessible and good daddy I wished for when I was my youngest daughter's age.
This explanation, while heartfelt and readily related to, is not a good reason to be doing what you are doing. A child who always has a parent to do things for him/her is a child who will not grow up. Part of growing up is taking personal responsibility, learning to be patient, and independent problem-solving ability. With an expectation that, with the push of a button, a parent will always be available to solve any problem that might arise, you are sowing weakness into the character of this malleable young person. You are, in a very real way, stunting emotional development.
I know this is an incredibly unpopular thing to say right now, but consider that the first thing we do to a new child born into this world is to slap them in the face. Why would we do that? Willingly induce pain to a brand new life that literally hasn't even been in the world a minute? It's to induce breathing. To get that child sucking down yummy nitrogen-oxygen mixtures. The pain is for the benefit of the child. All too often, letting a child learn something "the hard way" is seen as child abuse, but the reality is that human beings don't learn things by being told, they learn things by doing. And a lot of doing involves screwing up and getting hurt. You can't accomplish or amount to much of anything in life if you aren't willing to endure pain, and struggle, and loss. This is a lesson that has gone missing in the latest generation, and as they start to move into the workforce, we're seeing clear signs that it has created a pathological problem that may take them decades to sort out, and in the interim leave them emotionally, financially, and even physically vulnerable in ways previous generations were not.
The future is here and it is scary and amazingly awesome.
If I hopped in a time machine and went back 40 years and told everyone there that in the future, we will have instant real-time access to all of the knowledge of humanity, and global communication capability with billions of other humans, they would probably be shocked. And when I told them that in spite of these achievements, we mostly use these capabilities to entertain instead of educate, and have so ingrained them into daily life that we have created children incapable of functioning without continuous access to these devices, they would likely be equally shocked. I very much doubt they'd believe that this is how the technology would influence our society, believing it to be some kind of dystopian science fiction written by a hippie who smoked too much pot and got paranoid of the government.
You're right. It's scary and awesome. But on the level, I'm going to go with it being more scary than awesome; Our technology has created an unparalleled degree of dysfunction in the everyday person. But I hope, very much, that I will be wrong in this conclusion and that my inability to see a future in
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Don't get HIM a phone. If you must, get a phone that you hand off to his teachers/day-care/babysitters when you aren't around, so you can call in an emergency and so they can call you from a number you recognize in an emergency.
Once you've established that it will be adults in control of the phone, just get any old phone that can do video chat and which is on your network.
But a 4 year old with a phone in his possession, for him to be responsible for? Unless you have very unique requirements and a very responsible almost-4-year-old kid, this is probably not a good idea.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Oh, you asked for this and all the others that modded you up, you AC, you!
Says the single guy who can't even comprehend life-changing events like having a child.
Ummm, so life changing events only happen to married people with children? And, I'm sorry but even single guys had childhoods and would have the ability later to recognize when one is about to get fucked up.
News Flash: Life happens. Even when you plan on having children, one cannot even remotely plan for every event forthcoming (especially four years later) that would elicit the need for a 4-year old to have a cell phone.
And if you would have shown even an inkling of experience in parenting in your smart-ass comments, you might have seen that.
There is *NO* reason a four year old "needs" a cell phone. None, zip, zero. If you were a reasonably sane adult you would know exactly why!
So, either father a child yourself and then come to the adult table to talk shop, or kindly STFU.
Again, you have to father a child to be an adult and talk "shop"? WTFTM
And no, it's not every parents fault if a kid grows "fucked up". That is likely more due to the influence of ignorance coming from society, as you have so deftly demonstrated.
Again, had you a shred of experience in this matter, you might have known that.
Actually, there are hundreds of studies that show that most fucked up children get fucked up by the home environment they are brought up in, i.e., Mom and Dad did it. "Fucked up" children seek acceptance and emotional support from outside the family and often in or with the wrong people that end up reinforcing bad behavior or leading them into new bad behaviors, all to get back at Mommy and/or Daddy. The "influence of ignorance coming from society" is the finger pointing BS that every bad parent tries to run up the flag pole to duck blame for their effed up child. One only wonders how many of yours need psychotherapy.
To the OP, cellphones aren't allowed in university classrooms let alone kindergarten. You truly are cracked and should get some help for yourself before you really screw things up. The child is young enough to forget this stupid crap if you stop now and think of something other than your needs, because that cell phone is certainly NOT fulfilling any four-year old's needs. Based on what I've read so far I'd say the child would be better off away from you and the mother, frankly.
Dude, back off.
He could be deployed, divorced, hospitalized or whatever.
You have no answer, then just but out.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
3 Things:
1. You don't need to be a baker to know when you have a bad pie. (In case you don't get analogies: You do don't need to be a parent to spot a bad one)
2. I AM a father of 2 and I can't imagine a case EVER where a 4 year old *needs* a phone. Just about every comment on here condemning the premise (and parent) that a 4 year old should have a phone is spot on.
3. Best "phone" for a 4 year old is an old one with the battery taken out. Our kids loved these. Sometimes a block of wood worked just fine (yes, in our household we still use wooden blocks and other toys that don't come in fancy packaging, and yes our kids can pretend that just about anything is phone, or a car, or a plane)
-CF
Look dude, we understand that you are hurt because she left you for another. And even worse she left you for a "fat flabby girl". But your attitude stinks. Your kid WILL have 2 mothers and a father. That is a fact. If you go around him calling them "cunts" and all sorts of stuff, you will fuck him up, because whether you like it or not he will have affection for them both and there is nothing worse for a kid than having to chose between parents.
So for the kids sake, man up and stop being a jerk. There are loads of decisions that you and your former partner must be able to cooperate around, so you must find a way to be civilized around her.
And back to your question, the kid should not have a phone with him to kindergarten. Not only does it disrupt the kindergarten but it will also get destroyed or lost in a week. Even if he is a little kid he must be able to feel he has his own space, not being constantly on guard because daddy might call. Give him a cheap android tablet that he can have around the house. Then he can be in his room and skype you, without you risking seeing naked people.
A good lawyer would easily take the kid away from them.
Not a chance. Here is the algorithm that divorce courts use to determine custody:
bool
getsCustody(parent)
{
return parent.hasPenis() ? NO : YES;
}
Just so you know, I am a Stay At Home Dad and have been nothing else for 20 years. When Marissa Miller pulled the plug on working at home it was this sort of half halfheartedness that she was shaking out of Yahoo's business model. If your are working, then work and give either your employer or customers your complete attention. If you find yourself unable to separate from your child then stay home. You can't do both. Don't lie to yourself and your child that a cellphone is a replacement for your being there. It's not. When I married my wife we decided that childcare was of paramount importance. Since she was a well paid professional and I was a struggling student (Yes, I got that lucky), I stayed home. The son went to school in the day and I went at night, or he stayed with family. Yes, Family! You didn't disturb Mommy; Auntie, or Grandma, or Uncle or me or whoever took care of what needed doing. There was somebody who's job it was, and is, to take care of my son. As more children arrived my duties - Think about that word for a moment - Duty; ... my duties have continued. And by the way, Yes, that means I finally didn't finish my degree. Instead, I am there for my children. Yes I've had to sacrifice to do that. My children are worth it.
A 4 year old is not able to handle a phone and is too young to be allowed to make the judgement of when to call you. They need to know to call 911 in an emergency and stay on until help arrives - unless there is a fire, then they get out! Go to someone trusted and have then call for help. That is it. They should be cared for 24-7 and their caregiver will make any calls needed. If you can't trust your child's caregiver to make every fucking decision that needs to be made get another caregiver or do it yourself ! A cell phone will quickly become a stick to bully whomever is the caregiver. "If you don't give me more ice cream I'll call daddy and he'll be angry at you"
Save your money and send your kid to a good school. I always recommend a Montessori if at all possible. You will learn that one of the first steps to raising a healthy, happy and independent adult is having them learn to separate. They start to learn this at about 4. Yes you go away, and yes you come back. At school they learn to operate as a member of a society with rules and responsibilities. With family you learn to be part of a family. A mutually dependent social structure. That means every member needs every other. This is what you want, to raise a good person.
Yes, yes, yes. Parents really need to understand how their hate towards someone the child loves will fuck up the child. Seriously, this is important: respect the child's mother for the sake of the child.
I cannot even begin to describe how much my life has been fucked up because of the abandonment fears that fighting between my divorced parents caused. I was always living in the household of a parent that I was told was evil and wicked by the other. And then when one parent got too depressed to care for me I was thrown to the other parent who eventually kicked me to the street. I was used as a weapon for my parents to fight. They were too busy with their hate to see how fucked up I became (and I was booted out for being too depressed--my step-mother was going to leave my father if I didn't go).
The article poster needs to ask himself if he wants the child to have 14 years of spiteful and antagonistic relationships between parents before the child is an adult. Does he want the child to develop attachment issues and develop an intense fear of intimacy? Does he want the child to develop mental health problems that may never be resolved? Or can the poster be a man and treat the mother the way that the child would want?
You are selling your kid short. My daughter is 4 and has figured out SO MANY things already using various tablets and phones. It's really amazing to watch them figure things out.
Actually, I gave my 3yo daughter an older smartphone with no SIM. She has the annoying "talking tom" app she likes.
By having it accessible and fully functional, I achieve two things:
1. She is not as obssessed with appropriating ours
and
2. This is not a novel thing to be coveted, but rather just another toy. She plays with is maybe an hour a week, much (much much) less than she plays with her dolls.
Of course, the phone stays home. The concept of her going somewhere with it is, more or less, unthinkable to me (though, to be fair, not much different than her taking her favorit doll with her places).
Shachar
I pal of mine has spent the last year trying to get his kids returned to him. He had full custody in California, and when the kids went for a 1 week visit to their mother's house in Illinois, the state decided they would just give her full custody and declare it illegal for the children to leave Illinois.
You should talk to your lawyer about that, but I believe the answer is... pursue action against the mother in California. Since she lived there very recently, your state should have clear legal jurisdiction over the matter.
Get a judgement from a court in California, and then go to Illinois to have the judgement enforced.
Or else, try to get criminal charges made against the wife --- she'll want to come answer for the charges, or else face extradition.
Either way... you can't flee across state lines to avoid civil or criminal charges in another state; the judgement made in one state can simply be executed in the other, as long as the judgement is made in a court with jurisdiction over the individual.
I know this is an incredibly unpopular thing to say right now, but consider that the first thing we do to a new child born into this world is to slap them in the face. Why would we do that? Willingly induce pain to a brand new life that literally hasn't even been in the world a minute? It's to induce breathing. To get that child sucking down yummy nitrogen-oxygen mixtures. The pain is for the benefit of the child. All too often, letting a child learn something "the hard way" is seen as child abuse, but the reality is that human beings don't learn things by being told, they learn things by doing. And a lot of doing involves screwing up and getting hurt.
I'm all for experiential learning, but I don't know anyone who slaps newborns in the face to get them breathing. (N.B.: I deliver newborns for a living, and work with a bunch of other people who do as well and am aware of their practice patterns.) Babies usually squall on their own just fine, and for those that don't we'll vigorously towel-dry them. For the even smaller subset who're affected by maternal drugs or other conditions and haven't gotten it together to breathe, we'll flick their feet with a back of a finger (along with verbal encouragement, albeit mostly for our own amusement and by way of explanation to concerned parents). If they're still not sucking down oxygen after a couple of minutes then they get a mask to the face or a tube down the trachea. The previous practice of slapping newborns on the ass to kickstart them has been out of fashion ever since I started practice. Of course, practice patterns vary and maybe you live in a face-slapping place.
The ass-slapping turns out to be unnecessary, though I have stood by while my own children attempted to snort juice up into their noses for an experiential lesson in why we might not do that.
I would have loved to have had such a device and wish I did have one at that age.
The thing is, its the job of the parent to say no to things that the kid wants that wont be beneficial. Instant gratification taught to the child @ 4 is not a good start to life.
If your kid needs mobile LTE internet, better give him a phone. Otherwise, he's going to get an early start on subversive behavior, perhaps stealing other people's phones.
"If I dont spoil my child he will do bad things" is a terrible justification. If your child does "subversive behavior", you use discipline, and he becomes a better person.
So you're saying there's something he can do about it...
bool
getsCustody(parent)
{
return parent.hasPenis() ? NO : YES;
}
Code like that belongs on the daily WTF... "parent.hasPenis()" is a boolean function.
No sig today...
florida called, they want their title back.
I agree with the gist of what you are saying - buying a phone won't give the father or the child any more control over how and when they communicate. But:
Why is video chat better than simple audio phone?
I travel for work a lot and Skype video is infinitely better then audio phone for talking to my 3-year-old. If I try to talk to her on the phone she will often either lose interest, listen in silence, or say things like 'I'm playing with this." - "What?" - (holds up toy to phone) - "This!" - "But what is it?" - "It's THIS!"
On video I can talk to her, but also watch her doing her own thing, playing, talking to me when she wants to and showing me things for me to comment on. She can see me, understands better that I am there with her, and neither of us are under pressure to come up with random things to say. It's a completely different experience and one that reassures her when she misses me and lets me see what she is up to, how she is progressing, and understand her mood better.
Amazing how /. technical elite become downright ultra-conservative assholes when traditional subject are concerned. Your post and many others would be the equivalent telling a woman in the 80's that there is no reason she would need a micro-wave if she cannot take the time to cook properly for her family.
There are plenty of cases where a parent is legitimately separated from his kid:
1. divorce: my wife is from a different country - if we divorce and she goes back closer to her family, it would take me at the very least several months to sort things out. My case is easy tough, I can consider moving at all. There are cases where it is simply not easy legally (Australia - UK is already a problem and that's an easy one culturaly, what about China / Russia / Japan) What stuff preventing the guy to move like uninteresting resume, lack of skills.
2. he is deployed, a sailor, or anybody that needs to be months away from home. Maybe he wasn't 4 years ago. Crisis man.
3. crisis. I have friends (with older child) that have had to take work several hundred miles away from home. People hit by the crisis are not the kind that can afford a personal jet for commuting. Moving a family to a new city to follow an unreliable jobs can be expensive and almost as bad for the kids. Not even considering that the kid could have health issue or other specific needs making it even harder to move.
4. shit happens. I known/heard of people being separated for tons of shitty issues like health reasons, legal problems, visa problem.
The reason there used to be no reason for a 4 year old to have a mobile in those situation was because it was socially acceptable to not interact with your kid in those conditions. I have never seen anybody suggesting that we should make a law prohibiting soldier, sailor to have a family for example. There is a possibility this guy is just trying to do better than what society is expecting him to. That is also his fucking right not to expose all the details of his potentially shitty situation.
Seen it happen in Texas. Pal of mine had one daughter, married a lady with three kids of her own. She ran off for two years, leaving him with HER kids. She came back seeing her kids from time to time, but never having anything to do with them other than a visit once every couple of weeks. He effectively raised the kids most of their elementary school lives. Then she met another guy, started divorce proceedings, took her kids back (well, I guess they were HER kids, even if they had hardly seen her in the past three years).... but the thing that really gets me is she tried to get him for child support - and he wasn't the biological father of ANY of the kids! And the state was going to allow it! He lost all visitation rights. Yet not once did anyone claim that he had been nothing but a kind, loving, sacrificing father.
In the end, I think that the only thing that ended up happening is she got her kids, no visitation, no child support, and no division of assets. I guess you can say he got out lucky, but he did loose any visitation with the kids he had raised for three years after she abandoned him. At least he got to keep HIS daughter.
I've seen a few other guys have similar issues - loving, kind, caring fathers, mother's a witch, even abusive, but kids will get awarded to the mother or another family member before the father. I've seen courts take kids out of loving households and place them in abusive homes and then try to blame the physical injuries the child has on the parents if someone even made a hint that the father was anything less than perfect and the mother tries to stand up for him.
The system is broken, ran by social workers who are way underpaid and overworked (knew one who was really good, had a masters in the field, top pay in the field was $30k a year, and would often work 14 hour days - but there are tons of bad ones too, or ones who just don't care anymore), and it seems that it is almost easier to send someone to death row over a dad winning custody.
Long story short - men get screwed by the system.
And I guess the moral of the story should be to make sure you really know a person before jumping in bed with them. Sadly, I think many people end up learning that the hard way (if they ever learn it at all).
It matters. A stream of strangers sleeping in the same house, never knowing who's going to be next, is disruptive and unsafe. Those strangers often have direct physical access to the kids, and it should be considered from those grounds, much as running a bed&breakfast in the house should be considered for the child's safety. And if the male, or female lovers have mom over visiting them constantly, what are the arrangements for overnight child care?
The same standards can, and do, apply to single dads who try to date.