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Single Parent Families

It always amazes me when I turn on the TV or read a newspaper article and there is some sort of debate going on as to whether a single parent household is just as good as a traditional two parent household. Are they serious? I just don’t see how there could be any doubt which is better. Now, I understand there will be some exceptions. Heck I could smoke for 40 years and never get cancer, that won’t be the case for the majority of people. I could not wear my seatbelt, get in a collision and still be OK. But that won’t change the fact that looking at the big picture I would have been better off wearing a seatbelt then not. It seems to me that the problem of single-parenthood is being ignored.
Carlin (1994) gives us a couple of reasons society is ignoring the single-parenthood epidemic. Some people (especially males) do not want to hear about it because it would cause them to change their lives, to adopt habits of responsibility including sexual responsibility where many of them prefer a looser style of living. Others (especially females) find themselves as the single parent raising their children without help from the father. They don’t want to admit that they cannot do it on their own and need help.
What studies have been done on this subject? What was learned? Weinraub and Wolf (1983) studied 28 mother-child interactions. 14 were single mothers and 14 were married mothers. Single parents tended to be more socially isolated than married parents. They worked longer hours and received less emotional and less parental support. They tended to have less stable social networks and experience more potentially stressful life change.
Wilson (2003) says the pattern of children being raised in single family households is now a leading feature in almost all English-speaking countries and some European ones. He believes welfare is a possible explanation for this: “If a welfare system pays unmarried mothers enough to have their...

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