Single Parenting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Single Parenting - Essay Example Parenthood has now taken a sharp turn and cases of children being brought up in single families have increased significantly. This has been as a result of divorce cases or children born out of wedlock. In other cases children are born by parents who are just cohabitating and are not legally married. Such children face a lot of challenges both at family level and society level. Such children are usually considered by societies to be illegitimate and thus highly condemnable. These children are therefore born with illegitimacy stigma and are therefore faced by several problems and negative altitudes. Thus, the school counselors should consider such children as a special group when dealing with them so that they can better address their problems (Katz, Dunham & Zimmerman, 1997). Research has revealed that there is a relationship between the changing family structures and children in respect to examination performance, the research shows that children who are brought up by both parents perform better are more resistant to peer pressure influence whereas students from single families... They also have a higher rate of dropping out of school as compared to those children brought up in a family structure consisting of both parents; they also have greater psychological and social problems. Variation of deviant behavior among the children from single families depends on what caused the single family structure. Studies have shown that those as a result of divorce are more likely to be more deviant as compared to the children raised in single families where one of the parents may have died or born of single mothers. The worst case of deviant behavior is when a child is raised by either a step mother or a step father who mistreat them in their early development stages. Such children develop very negative altitudes in life which often accompany them throughout their lives. While dealing with such children, the school teachers and counselors should consider their plight, so as to be able to assist them in an attempt to prevent them from engaging in deviant behavior (Shih, 20 08). Single parents are faced with numerous problems in raising their children, they sped a lot of energy and time in practicing parenting and yet their results usually have numerous shortcomings. With out help from the other spouse and society single parents try to raise their children effectively. However, monitoring discipline among their children is quite difficult since the burden is laid on one person who is also expected to provide for the entire family with all their needs. The children can therefore take advantage of their parents and engage in practices that are considered to be defiant. It might not be possible for the parent to monitor each child closely and therefore the children who have a propensity of misbehaving have an opportunity to do