7 major challenges faced by single parents

Single parent family is a family where the children are raised by only one parent either the mother or the father. The reason for this can be due to the choice of the parent involved here or just a misfortune.

Parenting in itself is a tough role, and with a single parent, it only gets tougher. As the entire responsibility of child care comes on this lone parent, there are many problems that they go through.

Single parents are constantly judged for their choices. Whatever they do, they are always questioned. Society always prefers a family where both parents are present. Single parent families are hardly welcomed.

In a two parent family, generally, income from both the parents is available to run the household expenses. In the case of lone parent households, income comes only from a single parent. This drastically affects the lifestyle of the family. Sometimes due to tight financial conditions, many reasonable demands of the children become hard to meet.

As single parent is already on a guilt trip, they do not try to be strict with their children. They could see the child suffering due to the absence of the other parent. Thus, in an attempt to be good to them, parents start being lenient to their children and even unacceptable behavior starts getting accepted.

Loneliness can be terrible. But parenting alone can be worse. Taking care of other souls when your own world is falling apart is very difficult. You can’t even opt out of it as parenting is a long term commitment.

Father and mother both are important for a child. Filling in for your partner’s role can be taxing and emotionally draining. Apart from providing finances, there are many things that parents do for a child. All this now has to be done by a single parent.

When it comes to household chores, a good house-help or a babysitter is also difficult to find. So the lone parent has to juggle between professional and personal commitments.

As a single parent is constantly on the run to make ends meet, they hardly get time. Due to this, they may not always be available for their child. They start missing out on many occasions where they are expected to be present.

As a single parent child, separation can impact the child’s mind more than one can even imagine. Separation or losing the partner can be difficult for the single parent itself, but this also affects the child in many unknown ways.

Children may start to feel the absence of the other parent and miss the beautiful time spent together as a family. This also indirectly leads to self esteem issues within the young minds of children. Furthermore, they may have difficulty making friends. In some cases, it is even observed that school performance to gets affected.

This leads to guilt among single parents. But they should know that efforts matter whether single parents or both parents are involved. Two parents in a family do not guarantee a good outcome.

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