Does Single Parenting Have Any Effect on a Child?

By: Ken Austin

Times have really changed. Old people always argue that the modern culture has forsaken and outgrouwn the values taught and instilled by old customs, beliefs and traditions.

Moralists and conservative people are almost always raising their brows and expressing disgust over how current belief and culture systems are evolving. What has been unacceptable in the old world is now becoming fast and rapidly rising trends.

Taboos and outcast-driving issues of yester years are now very common have set minds of people that they actually are just normal and acceptable.

Single Parenting

One of the issues that were raising the ire of people decades and even centuries back is the issue of single parenting. A quick look at social philosophies link single parenting to adventurism and liberation of people.

The Catholic Church has always been the dominating mentor and guide of traditions, norms and living. The church is so adamant to advocate the sanctity of the sacrament of marriage of matrimony.

That is why the procreation outside wedlock is strictly considered a ground for excommunication. It is one of the greatest sins, according to the Catholic Church, to engage in pre-marital sex.

Single parenthood, in that sense, can be taken in as a punishment of some sorts, to the people who disobey the teachings of the church. But radical thinkers think otherwise. So, is it?

Single parenting is becoming a rapidly rising trend in the society. Studies in the US alone indicate that there are four single parents to every ten parents, there are two single parents for every 10 adults in the country.

Your great grandparents must be really turning up their graves of they could be able to hear such statistics. How times have changed!

The Child

Because single parenting or parenthood is somehow a choice and decision, taken by the parent, one voice is still unheard of. It is that of the child’s.

Psychologists and advocates argue and insist that single parenting has adverse mental, emotional and psychological effect to the child. Tests from time to time validate that premise.

Several studies have found that the child’s thinking and mental mind set is somehow altered or affected if that child was raised by a single parent.

Although single parents must be commended for raising a child alone, he or she should not be blamed for any mental or psychological result of the situation to the child, as psychological assert.

Tests and observations have consistently concluded and found that single parenting makes children more aggressive and rebellious. Experts say the behavior could be the outcome of the angst and humiliation the child experiences while growing.

Because traditional and normal families have two parents, the mom and the dad, jointly raising kids, single parenting somehow makes the child feel abnormal, different and unaccepted.

The society can sometimes be too cruel for such children, which can make things worse. Humiliation and awkward feeling of insecurity is dangerous if left untreated or undetected in the child. That child can take the burden for the rest of his or her life.

Thus, single parents and their children both need professional help through counseling. Reasonable advise and guides should be given both to the child and the single parent to make sure both of them deal with past, present and future issues from single parenting.

Counseling from professionals can form or make up a support system that will make single parenting easier and more effective. Because single parenting is no ordinary parenting, the parent and the child must learn to accept the situation minus the negative feeling.

Nowadays, single parenting is becoming a normal occurrence. Society is not that judgmental anymore towards the single parent and the child. Probably, it can be because of the immunity due to the rising number of single parents. Anyway, it can be positive because at least, single parents choose to be productive.