Best Way to Raise a Child in a Single-Parent Family

This term covers several kinds of families, each with quite different backgrounds. It can apply to a family that has experienced the death of one of the parents, or to a family headed by a mother who was never married, and who has raised her child alone. However, by far the largest num­ber of single-parent families are those that arise from a dissolved marriage.

The period following separation or divorce is usually one of chaos and turmoil. Every child—especially boys under the age of five—is affected by the impact of changing to a single-parent family, and may become anxious when leaving the remaining Parent, or may behave badly at home and at school. Fortunately, these short-term effects pass. The long-term psychological effects °f becoming a single-parent family are not entirely predictable; some children continue to yearn for their absent parent, while others do not.

Living in a single-parent family poses particular difficulties:

• Physical demands. A single parent usually has to work in order to pay the bills and, as a result, has little energy left to deal with home life at the end of the day. If the parent does not work, the family may experience the strain of new­found poverty. This takes place against a background of preparing meals, shopping, and managing children who are emotionally weakened by the marital split. The single par­ent also has to deal with the former marriage partner, in­laws, and friends. The sheer volume of these demands dic­tates that a single parent cannot do justice to them all.
• Emotional demands. The head of a single-parent family has no one to support the everyday decisions, and this can undermine the parent’s self-confidence. In a two-parent family a woman has her partner to reassure her that what she thinks and says is valid, and, of course, vice versa; a sin­gle parent doesn’t. A single parent has no feedback about whether decisions are right or wrong, apart from the chil­dren—and they’ll probably challenge parental authority anyway. This means a single parent is likely to be less effec­tive and less powerful in leading the family.
• Age gap problem. Parents in a two-parent family may use the fact that they are adults to encourage their children to be responsible. In other words, they can use the age gap between themselves and the children to establish their authority as parents. A single parent often confides in the children because a partner is not present to share concerns. This means that the parent may have difficulty acting authoritatively toward the children.
• Dependence. In a single-parent family, parent and children depend on each other more than they normally do in a two-parent family. This happens simply because now fewer peo­ple are in the house. While this can be very positive and can enhance a parent-child bond, it also means the parent has less freedom to release feelings. When a single parent gets angry with a child, no one else is available to take over the situation—and, also, the child doesn’t have another parent at home to whom to turn.
• Lack of money. Another difficulty that faces a single-parent family, especially when the woman is the parent, is the abrupt economic change, a factor that has indirect psycho­logical effects. Now that an ex-spouse’s income has to main­tain two homes (and possibly two families), less cash is available to spend on food and clothes. Luxuries become a thing of the past. This too adds stress.

• Poor housing. Single-parent families often have accommoda­tion difficulties. If a marital separation is sudden and un­planned, the newly single parent (usually the mother) may be forced to leave the family home very quickly, taking her children with her. Urgently needing somewhere to live, the family may have to turn to welfare for emergency housing— and anything available under this type of allocation is usu­ally basic. Such an environmental change is yet another pressure on a single-parent family.

Although this sounds a bit gloomy, many single parents are quick to point out that life in a two-parent family also has stress points, especially if the parents have relationship difficulties.

Psychologists have found that children in a single-parent family, when compared with children in a two-parent family, tend to be less capable socially and intellectually when starting school, and tend to achieve less educationally. On the positive side, though, these children tend to have a satisfactory sex-role identity, a keen desire to succeed in life, a good parent-child relationship, and a satisfactory psychological development.

A child from a single-parent family, therefore, experiences a combination of positive and negative influences. The happiest single-parent families have the following features:

• Good parent-child communication. Such communication is positively related to the family’s mental and physical health; the more openly parents and children can express their feelings and ideas, their anxieties, and their happiness, the better for all of them.
• Stable home routine. A clear structure in family life helps a child adjust to having a single parent, and gives him a feel­ing of security.
• Frequent access to the noncustodial parent. In most instances, the child benefits by maintaining regular contact with the estranged parent.
• No arguments between the parents. No child likes to see his parents quarreling, whether they are separated or together. A child is more likely to adapt to living in a single-parent family if he doesn’t see his parents fight in front of him.