Single Parent Families Research Paper

Structural characteristics in American families today are divergent as of to those characteristics quondam. Earlier in history, the average norm was to be a nuclear family. A Nuclear family implicated that the father worked while the mother stayed at home to care for the house and for their children. Nuclear Families are in contrast compared to a single parent family, in which, singular parent families consist of a single parent who parents alone/ in their own living arrangement. In reference to the u.s Bureau of the Census (1985), 25.7% of all families were headed by one parent and continues to double. While single parent families embody the significant form of families today, very little knowledge is understood about them. Majority of past research was focused on the effects of children in single mother homes in which they were affected by the father. In an article called Demographic, Theoretical and legal themes, by Norton and Glick, they concluded that single parent families hold a detriment position in society corresponding to other family groups.

Considering that the other family groups are characterized by a high rate of minority representation, mobility, low education and poverty, it was found in the article by hill outlines that the key fundamental difference between two parent and single parent families is that the latter lacks the expected positions of normality in the family. When focused on the influence of the combination of job and home life accountabilities, studies show that single parents were at a overwhelmingly high risk of role strain and reduced amounts of physical and emotional wellness. Many of single parent families tend to be unemployed rather than employed. Although it was found that employed single parent families have the least amount of time on household and personal care work, studies show that single and married families(employed and unemployed), both have parallelly low times for recreational activities. There seems to be a common clinical problem, that you hardly find in two-parent families, which often occurs in single parent families, known as Parent Becomes Peer.

This often involves the parent to become abdicated from their parental role in order to treat their child as a friend/peer. The Parent Becomes Peer phantasm results in a dysfunctional parent/child amalgamation (relationship) which requires intervention therapeutically. In the topic article Never married teenage mothers and their children by Campbell Breitmayer and Ramey, the reports of free educational day-care to disadvantaged mothers are presented. The researchers found that by providing free educational day care for their children at an early stage of life, increased the likelihood of completion of High School, self-support and post-secondary training. It was a bridge created to show the difference of accomplishments and non accomplishments for teenage single mothers. Furthermore, the study of disabled children of single and married parents by Schilling, Kirkham and Schinke, debated the measures of headed stress roles, life satisfaction and the perception of the child.

A team of Guidabaldi, Cleminshaw, Perry, Nastasi and lightel reported a study on the connection between post-divorce adjustment of elementary school children and chosen home environmental conditions, to be unique. They found that the examination illustrates that children from divorced families perform more poorly than children of two parent families, academically, socially and physically in health measures. However, single parent families may have more emotional responsibility pertaining to the amount of engagement of connection towards the head household parent. Connections of which are traditional and family relations that can be strongly bonded over. In overall being involved in a single parent family is one of the hardest positions to be in. the ability to have a consolidated family is just one of the central staples within society.

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