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Single Parent Families And Their Problems Essay, Research Paper

Only a small minority of families fit description of being a “nuclear” family today. Until the 1960’s most Americans shared a common beliefs about family life; a family should consist of a husband and a wife living together with their children. The father being the head of the family, earns the family’s income, and gives his name to his wife and children. Today, the United States exhibits a pattern of attachments and disruptions in marriages and family structure, including single-parent families and such high rates of divorce that are certainly stressful for nation’s developing children and adolescents, leading the American family and the nation’s future to a state of crisis. Families are the institution in which character is formed, and what kinds of characters are being formed, what kinds of citizens are being made to carry on our society. It is strange that today whether through their parents’ divorce or never having been married, every other American child spends part of his or her childhood in a single-parent family. The increase in the proportion of children living with just one parent has strongly affected large number of children. And a single mother (textbook) heads 78% of those single-parent families.

In this paper, through structural-functional perspective, I would like to present problems that kids have to face in mother headed household.

Most of the time s single parenthood increases women s risk of poverty because it limits her ability to work. Women position in society is still not on the same level with men position. Most of the times they can t get a job because belief that women can t do some jobs as men can is still very strong in our society. And most of single mothers need two jobs to support her kids. Facing this fact her role in society is drastically affected. On the other side, if she chouse to pay more attention to her carrier and work, she will not have enough time for kids. Women with executive or professional careers putting in 40-hours, work, travel and work and home worries don’t have enough time for family. And so children are not left with “quality time,” which means little time, from parents and “quality phone calls such as: “Honey, I won’t be home. I love you.” Though the intent is not to neglect the child, this can turn out to be neglect in effect. The worry is what does this do to the children? It of course means that children can feel insecure. It’s easy to neglect things that mean a lot to the children, and it shows when they ask: “Why didn’t you come to my school play? Oh, you had a client? Do we really need that much money?” It means that the parents are not around to be in the thousands of daily things that make up a child’s intellectual, moral, and emotional education, and so babysitters are left to do it, as well as they are able and willing. In this case kids could look for a way out on the street or with friends that are troubled.

Socializing children, restraining their impulses, encouraging their talents, all take time. And parents who don’t do this are risking that their kids will not achieve all they can, and are more likely to drop out of high school as kids who get to spend quality time with their parents. What’s more, law professor Mary Ann Glendon says: Mothers, mostly African Americans females, who don’t spend a lot of time with their kids are not teaching how members of a community live together and respect each other’s rights. When parents put personal goals ahead of family, how will kids learn the opposite?” But why mostly African Americans? Research shows that 47% of black families are headed by females, mostly living in poverty. Single mothers (textbook) head 25% of Hispanic, 14% of white and only 13% of Asian American families. So as we can see African American women are in much worse position than women of other three racial groups.

Other problem for single mothers is to control their kids, mostly boys when they reach age of 15. Feeling strong and powerful and with lack of father figure in their lives boys tend to disobey mothers orders and advisees. Reasrech shows that 45% percent of single mothers asks for help because their teenage boys acted violently toward them (Smith). But there is not much government institutions can do for single mothers. Most of the time mothers love for their kid doesn t allows these institutions to react on the right way. These institutions are very limited in their actions and resources any way so they can t really play major role in kid s life. (Hamburg)

Kids from single-mother families are usually not good students or friends to their school friends. Especially boys, on average scored lower on reading and math tests, were absent more often, were more anxious, hostile, withdrawn, and were less popular than their classmates from healthy family environments. They are very troubled and most likely to quit school midway through high school. With lack of education they can t find a good job, some of them may turn against the low and have a very negative affect on society.

Several studies have also found character distortions in children from well-educated, middle-class-divorced families. Many are withdrawn and lonely; many others, while gregarious and popular, choose their friends for the status they confer, manipulate them, and can’t keep them for long. Glendon says: “Will a man who hasn’t had a father know how to be a father?” Children from single-parent homes were 100% to 200% more likely than children from two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems and about 50% more likely to have learning disabilities. (Smith)

No scale can measure the wounds of divorce for children, and recent research suggests they are wounds that never heal. Psychologist Judith Wallerstein, who has intimately followed

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