Is it possible that being married is, in some ways, the best test of and training ground for whether you’re capable of being a good parent? Especially for men, but likely for everyone? Children demand so much and offer so little back. If you can’t accept a different person’s interests as your own and flesh of your own flesh, how can you accept the enormous demands of someone who truly is flesh of your own flesh but will likely drain you, extort you, defy you, and in short shrift inevitably leave you behind? Take a little while and read the giving tree, which is a very bittersweet book that nicely captures the pleasures and pains of parenthood. Giving up yourself for a child is a terrible thing to ask of anyone. I never had any idea how much it would demand of me. But, of course, they are the most precious pains and precious losses. Marriage is a training ground whose daily practice is fulfilled in living example by your historical relationship with your children.
Women, historically, have certainly used marriage, both proof of worthiness for it and performance in it, as a litmus test of worthiness for men (and to a lesser degree themselves) to be parents.
Making Nobody Happy 