Contemporary_Issues_in_the_Scarlet_Letter

Children raised in a household with only one parent normally exhibit many short term and long term qualities that can negatively affect the child’s future, along with the view of himself and others. A child raised with only one parent, for instance, may feel left out in the early stages of school. While most preschool and kindergarten-age children would usually be dropped off for school by both a mother and a father, the child with only one active parent could begin to wonder why he is the only one without a father. With these thoughts in his head, the child may exclude himself from social situations such as playing with other children and making new friends, because he thinks he is not like them. Other children, on the other hand, may notice a difference and ignore the child while playing. This, in turn, could affect him long-term. His self-esteem and social skills may not fully develop if the basic foundation isn’t established. In the preschool and kindergarten stages of schooling, teachers and advisors try their best to involve the parents in as many things as possible. Children feel rejected if they can’t be both parents to school functions for parents like open house. Children of a single-parent household grow up to not know how to properly maintain their own household. As a child, one can only know what he observes. Typically, single-parent households are not wealthy ones; therefore, the parent may be working several jobs to keep the family afloat. If he, as a child, observes his single mother working all day to provide for them, instinctively, that is what he will gravitate towards as an adult. The child will not have adequate knowledge of how to balance a career and home life. A child growing up in a single-parent home also does not have the opportunity to be exposed to what a proper relationship between two parents should be like. Because of the child’s ignorance, he may fumble around in relationships for decades, never settling and leading an unstable life. The children of single parents most likely will gain independence later in life than those of two parents. At a young age, the child would typically observe his parent being partially dependent on something or someone else, whether that may be another family member, the government, or a pay check from work. If one lives with a dependent parent for the majority of his childhood, he will grow up to exhibit that same dependency in his adult life. When a child is not nourished and loved by both parents, he becomes rather unbalanced in several aspects of life. The mother and father both have different roles in parenting, and one cannot be both. The child needs to be loved by his mother and father. If not, he may harbor feelings of animosity towards the one who is absent, because his or her role wasn’t sufficiently fulfilled in the child’s life. These feelings reserve the power to cloud his judgment and view of both parents in the short term aspect but also very late into life. Also, without love from both parents at an early age, the child could grow up with severe mental issues. It is proven that attention and love help the mental growing process significantly, but when a child only receives half or less of that love, he may be mentally damaged for life. Along with the mental effects, the emotional effects can be severe. The child’s life will not be fully satisfied with a missing factor as great as love from either parent. The child, knowing neither what exactly love is, nor how to show it properly, will carry along awkwardness when it comes to parenting and love for children into his adult life. Likely, he will not be able to show his own children the love that he should have had from both parents in his childhood.