Children in Single Parent Homes-hurting or Helping them

Single-Parent homes damage the lives of children, adolescents, and even adults. Family, a group consisting of children and two adults living together. But, not every family in the world consists of a father, mother, and a child. In today's world the likelihood of children living in a single-parent home is very natural. In most situations it is occasionally the father absent, especially in African-American homes. In an, ""Academic Achievement of Children in Single Parent Homes: A Critical Review"" Barajas stated, ""U.S. children were living in single-parent families; among African American children, 53% were living with only one parent. The vast majority of these single-parent homes are headed by women. DeBell reported that single-father homes represent only 7% of the total single-parent homes in the country.""(Mark Barajas, 2011) Having just one parent in a child's life can sometimes be enough to make them want to strive to do better in life overall. In all reality, children need both parents in life to have a successful outcome. Single-parent homes disturb children psychologically generating negative effects on the child's mental and emotional health, behavior, and academic achievement.

Single-parent homes affect the mental and emotional health of children. Mental health refers to humans coping with the ability to process information. Emotional health, on the other hand, refers to how humans express the emotions dealing with the information. When living in a single-parent home, children constantly try to live their life to the fullest knowing they do not always have all the support they need. A good mental and emotional health status of your kids needs to be very important factors to consider keeping healthy when going forth in the process of transforming into a single-parent. When a child goes through depression they tend to smoke and try different drugs to make them feel good about themselves. Lirio S. Covey and Debbie Tam stated in, ""Depressive Mood, the Single-Parent Home, and Adolescent Cigarette Smoking,"" ""Depression scores correlated with the number of cigarettes smoked. These associations suggest that depressive mood and stress may contribute to the onset of smoking.""(Am J Public Health 1990; 80:1330-1333.) Parents should really keep an eye out for depression and other mental issues their child could go through. Some may complain and some may even disown their children from all of the mistakes they make. Whatever may happen, parents need to go through tough times just so they know to do everything in their power to raise their children into wonderful people of the world.

A number of studies have shown that single-parent households lead to poor or defiant behaviors of children. Children start to develop horrible behavior due to a lack of discipline. Single parenting is a challenge to reinforce rules due to the lack of support from the other spouse. Poor behavior leads to drugs, gangs, and even jail time. Most poor behavior takes place in the opposite gender specific parent; on the other hand, Children tend to act better with their actual gender specific parent. According to the author of Parent“child Gender Matching and Child Psychological Adjustment after Divorce,"" Previous literature has suggested that children may adjust better to living in the same gender parent home as opposed to living in the opposite gender parent home.(Jan Faust) To gain full control over behavioral skills, a child must grow up in a family with a mother and father present. Single-parent families cause juvenile crime, author Robert L. Maginnis states, Children from single-parent families are more likely to have behavior problems because they tend to lack economic security and adequate time with parents.

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