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Introduction
Parents have power in the family. Psychology professor David Geary emphasized that “children need parents. They need them to train, educate, and demonstrate how to compete and succeed in society. There’s no other way to develop that social context without the family” (USA Today, March 2002). Traditionally, it is the father’s role to provide food, shelter, and clothing to the family, while the mother takes care of the home and the children.
However, over the last 50 years, society has undergone many changes. One of the major changes in the family has been affected by the rise of divorce cases at present. It is said that only about half of all children in the United States in 1995 lived with both their biological parents (Hernandez, 1997).
If we ask what percentage spends their entire childhood living with both natural parents, the numbers are even lower. Donald Hernandez, in his remarkable book America’s Children (1993), estimated that only about 40 percent of the children born in 1980 have spent all their years up to age 18 living with both natural parents. Among African Americans, Hernandez estimates, this figure is only 20 percent, while among Euro-Americans it is about 55 percent. These figures are nearly double the rate of single-parent family experience over what occurred earlier in this century.
Single-parent families
The impact of having more single-parent families at present is that it can affect the growth and development of children. McLanahan (1997) concluded that “children who grow up with only one biological parent are less successful, on average than children who grow up with both parents. These differences extend to a broad range of outcomes, and they persist into adulthood” (p. 37). In his study, McLanahan (1997) found that children of single parents are about twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to have a child before age 20, and less likely to have a steady job in their late teens or early twenties.
These negative consequences seem to occur regardless of whether the cause of the parent’s absence is that the mother was never married or that the parents divorced. In contrast, children of widowed mothers, on average, do nearly as well as children reared by both natural parents—a finding for which we do not yet have any good explanations.
This does not mean that single parenthood is the cause of all evil. Rather, as McLanahan (1997) points out, it is but one of many factors that increase the risk that a child will do poorly in school or become delinquent. Nor does living in an intact family buffer a child against all problems. Many young people whose parents are still together nonetheless drop out of school or experience other significant personal problems. But, living with only one parent substantially increases the risks.
Both parents intact
In families that still have both parents intact, the traditional roles have not changed. The father is still expected to provide for the family, while the mother serves at home and rears the children. However, for economic reasons, the father and mother can act dual roles. A mother who begins working generally acquires more power in the spousal relationship, in part because she now has demonstrable earning power, and because she may feel more independent. Such power or self-esteem also spills over into her interactions with her children, perhaps especially with a daughter. For example, Bronfenbrenner (1989) finds that working mothers give more positive descriptions of their young daughters than do nonworking mothers.
Moreover, the mother’s employment forces change in daily routines and interaction patterns simply because she is not at home for as many hours. Fathers in dual-worker families spend somewhat more time in child care and household tasks than do fathers with homemaker wives, although it is still true that working mothers do about twice as much of this labor as do fathers (Parke & Buriel, 1998). This change in the division of labor may then affect the quality of the parents’ interaction with children, as well as altering the role model each parent provides for the child.
Conclusion
All parents still play an important role in developing their children’s values, beliefs, and attitudes to work within the environment and society they live in. Because of the many changes in society in the last 50 years, parents have to adjust to these changes to raise the family well. In the end, there’s nothing wrong with changes in the roles of a mother and a father in the family, what’s most important is that both parents are present and share roles. The equal mother-father team should have flexible role definitions and permeable boundaries between domestic and public life. In cases of single parents, the challenges are even greater because they have bigger shoes to fill in their families.
References
Bronfenbrenner, Urie. “Ecological systems theory”. Annals of Child Development, 6 (1989): 187–249.
Hernandez, Donald J. America’s Children: Resources from Family, Government, and the Economy. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1993.
Hernandez, Donald. (1997). “Child development and the social demography of childhood”. Child Development, 68: 149–169.
McLanahan, Sara S. “Parent absence or poverty: Which matters more?” In G. Duncan & J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), Consequences of growing up poor (pp. 35–48). New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997.
Parke, Ross D., and Buriel, Raymond. (1998). Socialization in the family: Ethnic and ecological perspectives. In W. Damon & E. Eisenberg (Eds.), Handbook of children psychology (5th ed., Vol. 3, pp. 463-552). New York: Wiley.
“Raising children – parents do matter”. Your Life. USA Today (Magazine). 130.2682 (2002): 7.
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