Intro
In the early to mid-20th century, what was defined as a functional, traditional family remained undisputed to society. It comprised of an established rubric: a father with a good job with a stable source of income, a mother who would remain at home in order to take care of the household tasks, and most importantly, the children who would play outside and study at school and learn how to be a good person- this family was what society expected everyone to create. With the prerequisite to conform to the traditional family structure, single parent families were thought to only be formed from negative events such as divorce or abuse. This led single parenthood to become associated with various other issues, such as trauma, poverty, and struggle, and were consequently seen as hazardous to the health, wellbeing, and life opportunities of a child (Furstenberg, 1994). As a result, children being raised in single-parent families, or so-called "broken homes”, encountered an array of disadvantages, such as social stigma and discrimination. Unsurprisingly, the American family structure has radically changed due to the overwhelming ramification of modern society and the diversity of roles that are now expected by all genders. In the past half century alone, the importance marriage has declined and the rate of alternative family structures has tripled and continues to increase, becoming commonplace and widely accepted. Beginning in 2000, 27% of all U.S. children were living in single parent homes (Sigle-Rushton & McLanahan, 2004) with single mother families heavily outweighing the single father homes, which accounted for only 7% of the total single parent families in the U.S. (DeBell, 2008). This recent increase of single mother families has sparked a surge of research on the differences of single-parent children as a response of the unending debate on the effects of single parenthood on the health, wellbeing, and life opportunities of children. The research suggests that during their development, children can show a difference in behavior (Usakli, 2013), as well as a difference in academic achievement (Sigle-Rushton & McLanahan, 2004), rate of mental disorders, and rate of future financial struggle. Even so, it should be recognized that certain studies have recorded that there pertains no relationship between the contact of the child and father, and the child’s well-being (Amato and Gilbreth, 1999), however when both parents soundly get along, evidence shows that there are beneficial effects on the child (King, 1994).
The aim of this paper is to evaluate
Role Strain
Unfortunately, poverty holds a considerable percentage in single parent families, especially in single mother families. In single parent homes, 91.4% are single female-headed families, and 8.6% are single male-headed families. Of the 84.9% headed by single mothers, 91.4% were living in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). Poverty in families may have several different causes, however single parent families are particularly susceptible to poverty (Zhan and Pandey, 2004). While many parents strain under the pressure of financial stability, single parents must experience an even higher rate of stress, as they must undertake these responsibilities without the aid of a secondary person (Jackson et al., 2010). One study showed that full-time working mothers have a high risk of having clinical depression, but even more so for lone mothers as they habitually experience twice the amount of job insecurity, overload, and strain (Brown and Bifulco, 1990), an additional stress to the responsibility of motherhood. Single mothers are also more liable to unemployment than married mothers are, and were found to be significantly disadvantaged socioeconomically and in mental health (Cairney et. Al., 1999). One theory state that the consequence of higher stress can be linked to negative behaviors in children (Jackon et al., 2010). Additional research showed that this increased stress decreased parental warmth, involvement in a child's life, and support (Jackson et al., 2010; Taylor, Larsen-Rife, Conger, Widaman, & Cutrona, 2010). In addition to this, as a result of the higher stress levels of lone parent’s face, the disciplining methods exhibited when interacting with the child is often harsher (Jackson et al., 2010). However, conflicting research has been published that discredits this notion. To begin with, lone mothers have been shown to be affectionate towards their children than their dual parent counterparts. Research has shown that single parent children and dual parent children do not exhibit any difference in behavior, internalized or externalized alike, if the single parent children have not undergone any traumatizing events. Even in situations such as poverty
This proves to be a problem, as children who have face persistent financial struggles experience developmental difficulties (Duncan, 1994).
Child Functioning: Behavioral
There stands a strong association between parents and the manner in which children behave, as behavior is learned by the child during their developmental stage through observation and the guidance of the parent (Gergely et. Al., 2002). Compared to dual-parent children, lone parent children were reported to have a higher rate of internalized and externalized behavioral problems. These external behavioral problems have been summarized as a lack of emotional control, resulting in out-of-control aggressive and destructive tendencies (Holden, 1997). These children also experience a slower socio-emotional development than those from traditional families (Carlson & Corcoran, 2001), an outcome that may affect them in subsequent years. When comparing adolescents raised in the broad spectrum of non-traditional parenthood versus adolescents raised in traditional parenthood with two biological parents, lower rates of depression and delinquency was reported in those within traditional dual parenthood (Hao, 2002; Sun, 2002). The length of time that a child spends with their sole parent can also be associated with their level of socioemotional health; the less time they spend together, the lower the level of socioemotional development (Pearce et. Al., 2014). This also applies to reinstated families with a number of family transitions (Magnuson, 2009). This lower level of socioemotional development can be linked to the “acting out” behavioral tendencies that children in single parent families experience. This kind of behavior can be linked to the increased rates of criminal behavior, including arrest, conviction, and self-reported property and violent criminal offenses, experienced by those adolescents who had been exposed to single parenthood prior to the age of 16 (Fergusson, 2007). In fact, in 2002 56% of jail inmates had grown up in a single-parent household (James, 2004). These behavioral problems may have stemmed from the emotional distress of abandonment, anguish such as low feelings of self-worth and lack of confidence, that a child may feel at the absence of a parent (McMillan, Feigin, DeAngelis, and Jones, (2006) p.141-158; Mancini, (2010)).
However, the association amid father absence and internalizing and externalizing behaviors (especially in adolescents) remains to be a subject of underlying scrutiny. Genes may be conspicuous in internalized behavior such as depressive indications and externalized behavior such as delinquency, as these can both potentially be heritable (Jocklin, McGue, & Lykken, 1996). Therefore, parents who are experiencing emotional instability might have a child who is correspondingly also experiencing emotional instability, however not due to the relationship with the parents and of the parents, but to the genes the child possesses (Amato, 2000). Furthermore, studies have shown that the presence of biological fathers is not necessarily the cause of reduced delinquent behavior. The delinquent behavior is improved by developing a closer relationship between the adolescent and a father figure, a positive male role model, which may not imply the biological father in the case of many families. The involvement of an unfamiliar, non-residential father into the life of an adolescent exhibiting delinquent behavior proves to not only make no effect, but may be harmful to the child (Yuan and Hamilton, 2006). Other discrepancies include environmental factors such as economic instability and location disadvantage, which also yield the same high rates of delinquency, adolescent depression, and father absence (Agnew, Matthews, Bucher, Welcher, & Keyes, 2008; Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2011).
Throughout all these studies, a consensus has emerged concerning the link between father figures and adolescent delinquency. The presence of a father figure does indeed reduce adolescent delinquency behavior, even if there still persists deliberation upon how a father figure’s presence instigates these diminished delinquency rates. Some studies argue that the quantity of a father’s interaction demonstrates to be meaningless, that the quality of father presence attests to have positive outcomes (Bronte-Tinkew et al, 2006). Whereas other studies insist that the decline of delinquency in families results from a father’s emotional involvement, as opposed to a father’s behavioral involvement (Harris and Marmer, 1996).
Child Functioning: Mental Disorders and Social Interactions
The effects of single parenthood on mental health is one concern touched upon in various studies. Those who have been exposed to single parenthood prior to the age of 16 showed a greater rate of anxiety disorders from 21 to 25 years of age (Fergusson, 2007). Concerning children of single families following divorce, a number of studies have consistently shown that there exists a connection between negative child outcomes, parental depression, and inadequate parenting quality (Amato, 2000; McLanahan, 1994). In stark contrast, children of single mothers by choice have not experienced parental conflict, and hence are less liable to undergo the financial instability or the psychological predicaments that most commonly ensue from marital breakdown and unplanned lone parenthood (Hertz, 2006; Jadva et al., 2009).
The negative psychological effects Father absence has can even persist from childhood to adult life, and in some cases, even later (McLanahan, Tach & Schneider, 2013 p.399–427).
Academic Performance and Cognition
To a certain extent, households in poverty transpire because of low or subaverage household income, which arises due to a lack of continued education (Lleras, 2008). This is crucial to know, especially when a survey by the U.S. Census Bureau (2010) showing the education level of single mothers in the U.S., that only 47% had only a high school diploma or no diploma at all, while 53% had obtained a higher degree or an incomplete higher education degree. This lower rate of continued education is also observed in the children of father-absent families, as they graduate from high school and attend college at a lower rate than children raised in traditional dual parenthood (Sigle-Rushton & McLanahan, 2004). Some findings have suggested that child cognitive can be directly associated with a father's absence, at least in some instances. In one study, the idea that single parent children are easily susceptible to stereotype threats was supported by studying an educator’s inclination to reward their students to conform to their predetermined expectations. It was suggested that students that were anticipated to be unsuccessful academically would receive negative feedback from their educators when they performed well, and their academic performance would decline due to pressure (Hetherington et al., 1983).
Nevertheless, a significant body of research has found that between father absence and the intellect and the cognitive abilities of a child, there is little to no connection. A number of studies have concluded that there is indeed a reduction in cognitive functioning in children with absent fathers, a reduction that can be directly linked with the above average levels of stress and conflict in those homes. When taking academic performance into consideration, studies showed that there were no differences in the math or reading scores of children regardless of whether their fathers were present or absent (Mott, 1993). In fact, a few absent-father children in a strong home environment showed to score significantly higher in reading and mathematics than their counterparts who have a father present, but lack an average level of support from home (Mott, 1993). In fact, a few absent-father children in a strong home environment showed to score significantly higher in reading and mathematics than their counterparts who have a father present, but lack an average level of support from home (Mott, 1993). Stemming from this, it was proposed that where cognition is concerned, a strong family environment is imperative rather than a father presence (Mott, 1993).
Discussion
There were two main limitations on the findings of this topic. Firstly, single parent families are usually established as one overarching category in the majority of the research studies, presumably for the sake of researching purposes. Single parenting was generally defined as having one parent in a household with one or more children, infrequently making a distinction between parents who have never married, and parents who have divorced. For instance, differences in childhood development could arise between children who experienced a divorce in comparison to children who grow up without knowing a second parent. Secondly, studies often do not show a clear framework in which variables are considered. Thiessen (1997) supports this suggesting that researchers should create a framework that incorporate all these variables when studying single parent families. Due to the lack of clarification on the variations in the family structure of single parents, the research may lack strength and reliability.
Conclusion
Findings from the present study supports two main claims. First, after adjusting for contemporaneous family circumstances (e.g., poverty, housing, area advantage, and parental mental health), the developmental outcomes of children in the traditional and nontraditional families show no differences (Lucas, 2013; Perales, 2015). When a difference is present, it is due to these contemporaneous family circumstance, predominantly poverty and the other stressors of living in single parent families which prove to be the most detrimental effects that can occur to the children of lone parent families. The absence of a parent (particularly the absence of a father) does involve a small amount of effects on the child, however it is much too inconsequential and trivial to actually make much of a difference.