Unpopular opinion: Lay the hell off Alex from The Bachelor.

Sure, she has a touch of the crazy eyes whenever Richie looms in her sights. Sure, she’s game around melted chocolate. And sure, watching her and Richie make out like teenagers at every opportunity was a little TMI.

But let’s be honest, that’s not why we don’t like Alex.

Read Rosie’s season four Bachelor recaps.

Plenty of people are cranky at Alex Nation because they think that to “win”The Bachelorshe ‘played the Single Mum Card’. As if that’s a thing that mothers carry around in their purses alongside the Woman Card and the Race Card.

Last year’s runner-up Lana Jeavons-Fellows explained the theory on our Bach Chat podcast. She said that Richie Strahan was always going to choose Alex because it would have been “cruel” to keep her away from her child for this long if he didn’t. He could hardly pick Nikki when Alex had sacrificed so much. And so on.

Clearly, Alex having the temerity to pull out pictures of her child and mention his name every now and again was just a tactic to gain some kind of emotional advantage over the other “girls”.

Really?

Doubtful.

Anyone watchingThe Bachelorfinale last night would have been left in no doubt that Single Mums are a terrible choice for a partner.

Richie’s mum, Kate, who, quite frankly, is much more terrifying than a tantruming five-year-old, made it very clear how much better off her boy would be with that nice unencumbered young woman from up the road than with ‘complicated’ Alex, whose status as a parent came as a significant “shock”.

Utterly terrifying. Image via Channel 10.

Watching Alex trembling in fear about revealing this terrible secret - that she has a human child - to her potential in-laws was cringe-inducing in the extreme.

She wondered out loud why would Richie choose her with all her "baggage", when, again, he could be with care-free, loveable Nikki from up the road?

Well, it turns out that Richie, bless his monosyllabic socks, was much less phased by the existence of Alex's son than the rest of Australia was.

Even after Alex delightfully informed him that sometimes, um, five-year-olds get sick and you have to change your evening plans (now that's an understatement I'd like printed on a tea towel), he decided that maybe he could handle that.

"I have a human child." Image via Channel 10.

Because he loved her. Because maybe he doesn't mind 'complicated'. Because all of the world's most interesting people come with 'baggage'.

And because having a child is not a disease, or a shameful secret.

I don't want to upset the status quo (it is Friday, we're all tired), but actually, people, parenthood does not ruin your life. Alex is not a boring shell of a person because there's a child in her world.

Any parent will tell you - when they have enough energy to do so - that children bring colour and dimension and immeasurable joy. That a busy, boisterous life full of love is not the poor relation of the freedom to have long brunches and binge-watch Stranger Things.

And yes, children are demanding. And yes, children come first. And yes, children can be deeply, deeply

annoying

challenging at times.

But maybe Richie, like Sam Wood before him and, indeed, the Bachelors' fearless leader, Osher Gunsberg - who is about to marry his partner Audrey Griffin, mum to a tween daughter - knows that life isn't all yachts and helicopters and champagne on Rosie's Sex Couch.

Maybe he knows that a "Single Mum" is a woman of impressive strength, energy, humour and compassion, not a figure of sympathy.

A woman who has lived and given life. What the hell is so limiting and reductive about that?

Today Alex has said that Richie hasn't yet met her son, Elijah. That much-pored over fact only strengthens her credentials as an excellent parent.

She loves Richie. If we are buying into the narrative of the show, she loves him a littletoooomuch (those crazy eyes again). But clearly, her son's well-being comes first, and she is making sure she protects him from anything that might hurt him, or make him feel unsafe or insecure.

And that, my friends, is the kind of woman any man would want to be with.

Maybe Richie is smarter than we think.

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