Essay

Polito 1
Chris Polito
Paola Brown
Eng102
25 March 2008
Single Parent Struggle
For many years, children growing up in a single parent family have been viewed
as different. Being raised by only one parent seems impossible to many yet over the
decades it has become more prevalent. In today’s society many children have grown up
to become emotionally stable and successful whether they had one or two parents to show
them the rocky path that life bestows upon all human beings. The problem lies in the
difference of children raised by single parents versus children raised by both a mother
and a father. Does a child need both parents? Does a young boy need a father figure
around? Does the government provide help for single parents? What role do step-parents
and step-siblings play? With much speculation, this topic has become a very intriguing
argument. What people must understand is that properly raising a child does not rely on
the structure of a family but should be more focused on the process or values that are
taught to these children as they learn to mature. Children of single parents can be just as
progressive with emotional, social and behavioral skills as those with two parents.
People claim that the only way for children to gain full emotional and behavioral
skills is to be raised by both a mother and a father. When a topic such as this one has a
broad amount of variables it is impossible to simply link these problems to only having
one parent. In the article, “Single-parent families cause juvenile crime”, author Robert L.
Maginnis states, “Children from single-parent families are more likely to have behavior

Polito 2
problems because they tend to lack economic security and adequate time with parents”.
The simple statement that raw criminals are products of single-parent adolescence is
absurd. What this writer must understand is that it can be extremely difficult for one
parent to raise a child by themselves for many reasons. A...