Broken Family Ties.

With family norms becoming ever changing in today's society, it has really changed what family is and how it appears in the media. For example, the view of a family forty years ago was a mother, father, two kids, a dog and a white picket fence out front. Now the view of a family today is much different. The pieces are interchangeable. Today it doesn't matter if there are two fathers, two mothers or just a single person. In class we discussed how 27% of households contain a single person. This is a change from 1950 where approximately only one and 10 contained a single person. 

Growing up in a single parent home, I realized how hard it was on my mother. She didn't have to work insane hours, but she had to work long enough to where me and my brother were in daycare starting at 6:30, then school, and then more daycare until 7:30 or 8 o'clock. This left a very small amount of time that was spent with my mother. With less time to spend with my brother and I during the week, it really made the weekend the most important time of the week for my mom, who got to spend time with us.  Now this is a huge difference from my friend who had two parents that worked 9 to 5 jobs and could be there for their children. Now from my observation with children growing up in dual parent homes, I noticed their parents don't really spend as much time with their kids on the weekends as my mother did.  This link really shows how single parent homes can have a larger impact on their lives than just losing a parent. http://futureofchildren.org/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=37&articleid=107&sectionid=692


Now divorce is a large problem in today's society. As we discussed in class, almost half of today's marriages will end in divorce. Now there are people who want to get divorced but can't because of the crushing legal fees. The large numbers of divorces in the US leads to another aspect of a broken family. With the ousting of one of the parents, most likely being the father in the relationship, leads to an almost single parent home. With divorce comes child support, in some cases, which can really effect the father who is more likely to have to pay child support can ruin the financial standing of the father.  This also creates an almost fighting over the children which can cause a lot of stress on not only the parents but also the children. This link like the above one shows the impact of divorce on children and their development. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/surviving-your-childs-adolescence/201112/the-impact-divorce-young-children-and-adolescents

Now even with growing up in a single parent household, the impacts were not really felt by me but they are felt by thousands of children across the United States.