The Effects of Single Parenting on the Family Single parenting has been a part of me throughout my entire life. Being raised in a single parent home, my mother struggled to support her four children. Today, I also am a single parent experiencing many of the same stressors my mother had to endure. While observing my mother juggle the time she spent working, mentoring her children, and participating in church activities, I had no idea of the complexity of her daily struggles. Now that I am experiencing the same situation, I recognize that much research has been completed on the issue of single parenting and its effects on the family. Many researchers, based on statistical data, believe that children born in two-parent homes have
Although I disagree, some researchers believe that little time with the absent parent is better than no time with the absent parent. Maybe I'm a little biased, but I think that absent parents often attempt to "temporarily" satisfy their feeling of insufficiency or quench their own selfish desires or shortcomings, at the children's expense, by experiencing a "moment" with their children to disappear once again. Leaving a child feeling as if they aren't worthy of more time or unwanted. From my life's experience and other situations that I have observed, this inconsistency causes more problems with the children in the long run. My father would sometimes call my siblings and I before our birthdays, Christmas, and special occasions, and he would promise us that he was going to get us various things. These promises would always yield nothing. As I think back, I can remember seeing the hurt in my mother's eyes because she knew that our excitement would end in disappointment. I can't think of any parent that isn't affected or moved when their child is emotionally hurt or disappointed. I don't think that I was affected by my father's unfulfilled promises as much as it affected a couple of my other siblings. One of my brothers grew to hate our father. He hated him so much that while riding to the burial site after my father's funeral, he stated, "What are ya'll crying for? He ain't never done nothing for us." Of course, this was disturbing during