I am not a parent, I am a soccer account on the fediverse, so this is the best I’ve got:

If you’re looking for a gentle on-ramp into having a kid around the house, maybe starting small with something like a home stay program is easier? My local usl 2 team and my local mls side are always looking for people to host young adults who come to the city to train, and there are a lot of foreign exchange programs (by way of example -- maybe your area has something similar?). It might be easier to assess how you feel about being a single parent with a teen for a summer than an infant from a surrogate, and as much as I hate to say this, building a bit of a resume as a single man may be required for you, and something like that might help.