Is Having a Child With Your Ex *That* Unusual?

Let’s forget about that Kanye West performance on Saturday Night Live for a few seconds to focus on Sunday’s episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. In it, Kim Kardashian reveals that Scott Disick has been thinking about having another baby with his ex Kourtney Kardashian, making four. The exes share sons Mason, 8, and Reign, 3, plus daughter Penelope, 5.

“So Scott just texts me that he wants to have another baby with Kourtney,” Kim tells the sisters’ friend Larsa Pippen. “I think he just wants one more, and she wants one more.”

“She definitely wants more kids,” Larsa agrees. “If they both want to have more kids, why not have them together? Their kids are gorgeous.”

“I mean, it’s like, Scott has a girlfriend, Kourtney has a boyfriend — we get it,” Kim says. “They don’t even have to have sex. It could be IVF.”

Scott, 35, has been dating 20-year-old Sofia Richie for over a year, and at the time, Kourtney, 39, was dating model Younes Bendjima. They’ve since split and she’s got a new, even younger guy.

Kim emails the Kardash-Jenner clan to ask what they think.

“I have to tell the rest of the family to be like, ‘Guys, should we encourage this?’ ” she says. “How cute will that be? They have to have another baby! I mean, I would want all my four kids with the same person. When I got pregnant with North, I had no idea if Kanye and I were going to end up together. I was like, ‘We can break up, but let me just at least have some sperm, so I can have another one so I could have siblings.’ If she’s going to have another baby, why don’t they just have one together even if they’re not together? I think that I do hold onto this hope of Kourtney and Scott, just because I’m so used to them being together.”

Alicia Silverstone is in the same spot. The actress wants to give her 7-year-old son Bear a sibling, and may ask her ex-husband, Christopher Jarecki, to help her.

“I have always dreamed of having a little girl, but of course I want another little Bear too,” she told Working Mother. “So whatever happens, if it happens, is good by me. I’m not in a relationship, but there are other ways to make babies.”

The two split last February after 12 years of marriage.

“He is now fiercely independent. And that’s another reason I want to have a baby,” she said of her son. “Bear doesn’t need me! I mean, of course he needs me, but he’s so free. He’s always talking to people, asking if he could help them. He busses tables at restaurants. He hands things out and takes the trash back on airplanes.”

As for her ex, no they’re not getting back together. “[Bear] doesn’t have any idea that I’ve ever been on a date. I have talked to him about how one day Mommy and Daddy might want to find another person to be with. That was hard. We had a really deep conversation about it, where I was preparing him in case I did find a boyfriend. But I just wanted to check in on him to see how he was doing. I would say, ‘Mommy and Daddy like to live separately.’”

Parents magazine reports it’s not that unusual to want kids to share full siblings, and turning to an ex for that. They say keep in mind to keep the peace, though, because things can get sticky.

“We all know breakups can get nasty. Add a child to the mix and pregnancy hormones, and things could get even uglier fast. But I hope for the sake of the baby things remain civil. The best thing to do in that situation is to always put the child first. His or her needs are more important than your petty grudges with your ex. So sometimes it requires being the bigger person, and letting things go (even if you have a really good zinger — remember the baby and bite your tongue). Unless your ex is truly toxic with abuse issues of any sort (physical, emotional or drug and alcohol-related), your baby is going to benefit from having both parents in its life,” they report.

A woman posed the question of having a baby with an ex on Quora, and was advised to think hard about it. 

"It will be a hard journey for you raising the kid of the man you loved and being constantly reminded of his absence. He may move on and have another wife later on. Are you ready for the emotional challenge?"

Some research shows the negative effects of half-siblings (full sibling children are a main reason many people return to an ex for another baby.) 

The National Longitudinal Study of Youth examined a phenomenon known as "multi-partnered fertility" or MPF.

"This happens when parents who are not romantically involved with each other form new relationships and have another child with a new partner. It's not new behavior, but it's happening more often as more people are having children outside of marriage," they report. "For children, MPF means having a half-sibling, but it also means, for first-born children, that they usually experienced their biological parents splitting up — if they were together at all, lived in a single mother household for some time, experienced their mother finding a new partner at least once and perhaps lived with a stepfather, and finally experienced their mother having a baby with a new partner...We find that first-born adolescents with half-siblings with the same mother but a different father do have less favorable outcomes compared to their peers with only full siblings, even after accounting for the mother's background characteristics, socioeconomic factors the child experienced growing up, and family instability and structure."