Actor and R&B singer Marques Houston made headlines in 2020 when at age 38 he was engaged to a 19-year-old, and publicly defended online criticism of their age gap.
She’s now 22, while he’s 41, and they welcomed their first child in 2021.
Houston now tells Page Six that women his own age came with too much “baggage.”
“A red flag to me [was] always with a woman that had a kid,” he said. “Nothing against single women, but single mothers with children are a red flag for me.”
The “Sister Sister” star met wife Miya Dickey in 2018 through a mutual friend.
“I tip my hat and respect women that are raising children on their own,” he told us. “But when I grew up, I never really wanted to have kids.”
He elaborated, “I would talk to my dad a lot, and he would always tell me to have your own kids because you never know what the baby daddy‘s are about. So if you’re gonna have kids, make sure it is with a woman that never had kids. So that was always my red flag… and a woman with an attitude. I don’t like women with funky attitudes.”
“I’m 41, she is 22. I could’ve married a 44-year-old woman, and it could’ve been disastrous,” the singer said.
“Women that are my age… they kind of have a different outlook on life. Like a lot of women my age are very independent. They are very like, ‘I don’t need a man to do this for me ’cause I can do it for myself.’ I come from a generation that I love to provide for my wife.”
He added of finding the right woman, “There’s a lot of women my age I’ve dated, they may have baggage. They may have kids, they may not. There’s so many different women I’ve been with throughout my life, and it just so happens to be that this one [Miya] caught my heart. Everything that I prayed for — and everything that I wanted in a woman — she came with. Although she was young, I’m young in spirit.”
But the former Immature singer says he can’t catch a break when it comes to fans being critics.
“In the Immature days, we [would] have light-skinned girls in our music videos. Then people would question… ‘Why can’t you get a black girl?’ And then it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I only like light-skinned girls.’ Then the plus-size girls will come and get me. I was like, ‘Man, I can’t catch a break.”
