Single Parent Struggle - Research Paper Example

?[Your full November 24, Single Parent Struggle Struggling as a single parent is one of the hardest tasks to accomplish for a human being. There may be many reasons for a parent being single: divorce and teen pregnancy are two major reasons. Before the divorce, it becomes critical to think about living an independent life, especially when there are children. It is quite difficult to anticipate how kids will survive the change in their lives, and how they will react to the absence of one of their parents. Teenage pregnancy is another problem that leaves adverse effects upon the single parent and the child. The rate of out-of-wedlock teenage births has increased over the years, and this has put a great threat to the ethical and social concerns of the society. This paper tends to argue that a single parent, whether divorced or teen mother, has to struggle hard to survive and raise kids. “More than 40 percent of marriages in America end in divorce” (The Survivor’s Club, para.2). One has to think about a lot of issues, from managing finances to raising kids to looking for a new life partner. Once the decision has been finalized, and the divorce has occurred, the hardest part is to re-assemble the shattered pieces of one’s personality, mind and heart, and to recover from the trauma. A single parent has to go through many sorts of discriminatory behaviors at workplaces and other areas of life. As for a single teen mother, she is stigmatized by the society so much so that this perception creates great negative impacts on her life and her opportunities in education and employment. Single teen moms do not find themselves capable of graduating their high school nor do they go for proper prenatal care out of embarrassment. The baby, when comes to the world, fails to get proper psychological and social development. Single teen moms have difficulty in keeping up with school requirements and relating with peers after giving birth (McDermott and Graham). Furthermore, Single parents suffer from much negative behavior from their children. For example, in case of divorce, children are the ones who suffer the most when their parents are having clashes with one another. They adopt many negative behavioral patterns, which might not show at the moment, but are very powerful and get expressed when they grow up into teenage and older adults. Parents start their new lives, but the lives of children get shattered because they have to live with one of the two parents, due to which they become deprived of the love of the other parent. This makes them under confident and frustrated, and they grow up into disturbed individuals. Preschool children are normally attached to their mothers, so their reaction will not be very strong if their fathers leave, as Cooney, Hutchinson and Leather state, “Post divorce relations between young children and their parents are largely differentiated by the gender of the parent” (153). However, school age and adolescent children react very severely because they do not understand the concept of parents parting each other. They may finally adapt to the situation, but they become vulnerable and feel deprived. School age children may feel very miserable, scared, timid, helpless, and deserted, when one of the two parents is not around. Adolescents show severer reactions through anger and aggression. They may even become involved in sex and drugs. Hence, it is important for the divorcing couples to think about how their children will solve the riddle of their lives. Children of divorce may benefit through proper counseling. Children learn to cope with the circumstances resulting from divorce. Counseling helps them in their emotional stability, which is very necessary for them to grow up into normal and stable individuals of society. Since all children possess unique qualities, they react to counseling strategies in their own ways. Their age and development phase counts very much toward their reaction to counseling. Opponents of this argument suggest that there are a lot of people out there who have decided to get separated from their spouses, have signed the papers, have convinced their children that they would be going to live a single-parent lifestyle, have moved, and have finally settled. However, what happens next is a matter of sensibility and good planning. An ill-planned life after a divorce results in a greater havoc and a heavier mess than before. On the other hand, a well-planned life after a divorce brings much more happiness and satisfaction than the time before divorce. All of us have known someone who has survived a divorce with strength and potency; and, all of us have also known a person who has chosen to be a victim of traumatic stress for good, or at least for many years after the divorce, not letting the dark shadows of sadness and gloom end. According to Wendy Walsh (para.2): “A pain-free divorce is limited to those who are completely void of emotion and are likely to have caused their own divorce. The rest of us have pain associated with divorce. But how we deal with that pain is the big secret to surviving divorce.” However, this argument does not prove that a divorce is pain-free for children. Having the ability to deal with pain may benefit the single parent, but not the children. Putting it all together, a single parent’s struggle needs a lot of courage, strength, and wisdom. It is easy for a person to fall prey before stress and anxiety, but the real thing is to cope with the stress with efficiency, and at the right time. The more one delays in coming out of his stress shell, the fewer are the chances that he will be able to lead a normal life again. Pain has to be born, and has to be forgotten, for life to get started all over again, with the same strength and energy that was there before meeting the catastrophe that made the parent single. Hence, the argument is justified, through using examples of divorce and teen mom, that a single parent’s life is hard. Works Cited Cooney, Teresa M., Hutchinson, M. Katherine, and Diane M. Leather. Surviving the Breakup? Predictors of Parent-Adult Child Relations after Parental Divorce.” Family Relations 44.2(1995): 153-161. McDermott, Elizabeth, and Hilary Graham. “Resilient Young Mothering: Social Inequalities, Late Modernity and the 'Problem' of 'Teenage' Motherhood.” Journal of Youth Studies, 8.1(2005): 59 – 79. The Survivor’s Club. “Surviving Divorce: 20 Dos and Don'ts.” Divorce. Huff Post, 2013. Web. 23 Nov 2013. < http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/01/post_601_n_790653.html>. Walsh, Wendy. “Surviving Divorce.” AskMen AskMen.com, 2013. Web. 23 Nov 2013. . Read More