Parents are usually the most influential people in a child’s life. The involvement of a parent affects a child’s social and emotional development. Parents control the appropriate and inappropriate social behaviors that their children learn, such as self-control, empathy, cooperation, and respect for others. These being the case, a missing parent can negatively affects a child’s emotional and social development since there is only one parent doing the work of what many other children have two people engaging in completing. A disproportionate number of ethnic minority children of low socio-economic status live in single-parent households in the United States. According to the 2010 census, 67% of African American children and 40% of Hispanic/Latino children live with single parents compared to 24% of white non-Hispanic children. Additionally, African American and Hispanic American single parents are more likely to live in poverty, be less educated, and to have never been married.
Only about 5% of children who live in single-parent households live in single-father households. In single-mother households, children are more likely to have poorer academic performance, an increase of teen-pregnancy, and more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors than children who are raised in two-parent households. There is also an increased risk of depression and the illegal use of alcohol and other drugs as well as anti-social behaviors.
There are surprisingly few studies about children raised in single-father headed households. The few studies that could be found reported that single-father households experienced negative child behaviors such as delinquency, drug abuse, and high-risk behaviors when compared to other types of households. Teachers also reported that children from single-father households were not as well-behaved as those from other household types. When compared to two-parent households, it stands to reason that there are fewer emotional supports and less economic resources in a single-father household. Also, there are less advocacy groups, support groups, and social service agencies offering support to single-fathers. Single-fathers are also less likely than single mothers to reach out and ask or assistance from family, community members, or agencies. They tend to try and handle things on their own, and often find it difficult to do so, not getting help until after it is needed, sometimes not until it is late to help their children or far into the stages of trouble that could have been fixed easier if interventions had been applied earlier.
While single-parent households struggle, single-father households appear to struggle more in the areas of social isolation and long hours spent at work. Their children are more likely to be unsupervised than children of any other type of household, the fathers are less likely to be involved in their children’s activities, and there is less likely to be a close emotional bond between parent and child as found in other household types. These are some of the reasons that explain the increase in negative behaviors of single-father households than in other households. The girls in single-father households tend to act-out more often and with more severity than did the boys (Mokrue, Chen, & Elias, 2012).
This is not always the case. There are always exceptions to these studies. One such exception is demonstrated by the scenario of Vance Tyler. This second grader is acting out in class. After his teacher calls for a meeting, his father is willing to come in and meet with her and his son. He is willing to listen to the teacher and is open to suggestions about what he can do to help his son. He shares that he has tried things at home and they do not appear to have worked. When the teacher suggests using the school counselor and accessing the services of community agencies, Mr. Tyler is willing to accept the assistance. He is an example of a single father who does not follow the statistics, but instead is willing to do what he feels is necessary and in the best interest of helping both of his children, the older child, his second-grader, Vance and his daughter, Nora, who is in kindergarten (site text).
References
Mokrue, K., Chen, Y., & Elias, M. (2012). The interaction between family structure and child
gender on behavior problems in urban ethnic minority children. International Journal of
Behavioral Management, 36(2), 130-136, doi: 10.1177/0165025411425707
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