Growing up without both parents’ support is one difficult way to start life. The last Census, released in 2016, was showed that 1 in 5 people in Ireland live in a one-parent family and from that statistic, 86.4% of one-parent families are headed by a mother, and 13.6% by a father. Only in Dublin, the total number of one-parent households is 66.365.
In Ireland, some supplies are given to one-parent families. One-Parent Family Payment and Child Benefit are the benefices for those responsible that had to take care of their children by themselves. The benefices can be received until the children have 22 years old, but for that is necessary to enquire about some requisites, some of them is that the parent must be younger than 66 and the children have to be in full-time education.
In a New York Times opinion of why fathers leave their children was said that they try to make things work when the pregnancy was discovered, but as the mother starts being ‘bossy’ it is not the fantasy that they had visualized anymore. “By the time the child is 1, half of these couples have split up, and many of the rest will part ways soon after”, said Brooks. The writer also says that the weakness is not the relationship with the child, but the one between the parents. They are waiting for their soul mate, and when that does not happen, they cannot handle the relationship anymore and the most affected is the child.
According to the Institute for Families Studies, the effects of family structure can be lower school achievement, more discipline problems and school suspension, less high school graduation, lower college attendance and graduation, more crime and incarceration (especially for boys), less success in the labour market, and more likely to become single parents themselves (especially for girls), thereby starting the cycle all over again for the next generation, it is despite the mental effects that are very common as well.
For those who had parents emotionally or physically absent, mental support is needed as it can impact various dysfunctions. The psychologist Natalia Rocha presents some important reasons why therapy is indispensable for those children. “They cannot understand what is happening, and sometimes neither can the parents understand that to explain to them. They may doubt themselves for the divorce and those scars can follow them forever.” Leaving the understanding of events only with the parents can transmit grudges that each has towards the other to the child.
The various dysfunctions can be neutralized with the necessary financial and emotional support, one can be provided by the government, but the other must be provided by a mental health professional.
The formation of an individual is the basis of what that person will be like as an adult and how they will respond to the problems that will have.
One Response
this is a very delicate and important subject! congratulations on the approach