Parenting and Family Education

Archive for the ‘single parenting tips’ Category

There are goods and bad about every thing, same is true for single parenting. However if you sum up the two for single parenting the bads will far outnumber the goods. Therefore all single parents work with a disadvantage.

All parenting issues are centered on children. This also holds true for single parents. All single parents except few have to work and also look after the children without the help from the other partner. The question is whether a single parent has time and ability to earn and look after the children alone. If the child goes to school he is being looked after there while the parent is at work but for preschool children some sort of arrangement is to be made so that they are looked after at home during their parent’s working hours. Preschool is difficult to afford and there may be more than one kid. At this time the grandparents may step in to play their role. This is very important as according to the US Census conducted in 2000, 5.6 million kids reside with their grand parents. Many preschool children are not fortunate enough to have grandparents or any other relative to look after them when their parent is at work. In this case either the parent should work at home or arrange something for the children. This is the major difficulty faced by single parents.

Second difficulty faced by single parents is time management. Raising kids is a full time job and so is your work. Managing the two in the same 24 hrs puts extra stress on the parent. So every day you start off as a machine. You get up early and prepare the breakfast. Then you get yourself and your child ready for the day. You leave for work and drop your child at school early at 7 am. Then you get past all the traffic to reach your office. After a tiring day’s work you leave your office at 5 pm and pick your child on the way home. Without a moment to relax you start to prepare dinner and help your child with the homework. You are lucky if you don’t have to bring your work home. As soon as you are finished with homework and dinner it is bedtime and you put your kid in bed after a bath and a bedtime story. This is what happens each weekday. More so, special arrangements are required for the kids during holidays. Not that it is physically and emotionally taxing it also affects your progress in your profession. This is another difficulty faced by single parents.

If you are a lone parent or planning to be one it is important for you to realize that proper planning is the key to your success and so is a support network. The biggest issue to solve is the time distribution between yourself, work and children so that you can spend few meaningful moments with your children. It is also a drawback that all single parents have to do all the work alone but patience, a little support and good planning can help you a lot.

Whether single or not, all parents leave long lasting impressions on their child’s life. This is particularly true for single parents. Death, divorce or whatever is the cause of this singularity, it likely leaves deep impressions on the emerging personality of the child. What actually matters is the way the single parent responds to the task of single parenthood. In whichever manner the single parent has dealt with the parenting challenge, there are deep effects on the child’s character and individuality as compared to the children of parents living together.

Being a child to a single parent is a complex situation. Children look up and follow their parents. If the parents are confident and stable, their children feel secure and confident. The sense of belonging to a single parent who is either living as an unmarried heterosexual couple or a homosexual couple or without a partner at all has a disturbing effect on the child’s personality. Although the laws and norms of societies have changed, unlawful children are made fun of. They are called bastards, illegal and at some places natural born children. As it is a social taboo, it always haunts the child that his mother was never married to his father or at times the fathers refuse to recognize these children as theirs. They are singled out by others at school and playgrounds and made fun of. All these effect the child’s personality and self confidence. As a result of which they become reluctant to attend school and socialize. These are part of difficulties that children of lone parents have to go through.

Bringing up children as a single father is a tough task. Being a father you have to go to work as well as look after your young ones which is very taxing. You can really fatigue. As a single father neither you nor your child has the liberty to share your thoughts with the mother. The children particularly feel comfortable to converse with their mother for many of their problems. A number of public schools also don’t consider single parents worthy for the task which adds to their worries.

Some of the societies don’t accept single parents who exercise this option by choice. In many areas it is considered illegal and morally corrupt. Others consider it a religious taboo particularly the Bible belt. As the society looks down upon them and socially isolates them they feel left out. This makes their life nerve-racking. It is not always easy to migrate from one place to other due to job and financial reasons.

From the above it appears that there is nothing positive in single parenting, how ever on the contrary there is some ray of hope also. Recently some work done at Cornell University about the implications of single parenthood, particularly single mothers on the academic and behavioral progress of children in early teens revealed no harmful effects. This is very encouraging for single mothers. At last it is now obvious that if they are considerate and looking after thier young ones with love and affection, the single status would not be a hurdle in bringing up confident, well mannered and contented children.

There are number of programs available to assist single parents in improving their educational standards. For lone parent considering such prospects, you have a number of options with you.

The National Pell grant program is established to support low and middle income single parents to study in college. Their grants ranges starting from $400 up to $4,300 depending on your income and family strength. The college you want to join will require you to submit a full financial statement. Your income will be greater as you are the single bread winner for a family unit of 4 rather than living alone. FAFSA is the standard form used for this purpose by all the schools which provide financial support. To run this program with uniform justice these forms are standardized and in this way all the institutions can judge the applicants in an equal manner. All you have to do is to select your school, apply on the form and if you are on the merit you can start off.

Student loan is another way to finance studies for single parents. These low interest loans are supportive as they usually have minimum interest rate and return of payments are postponed till graduation or if you are unable to attend the compulsory number of hours. If you are looking for the loan it is mandatory to be careful about the terms and conditions. If you are unaware about the terms, try getting some assistance first. Most of these are mandatory to return and you cannot get rid of student loans by filing bankruptcy. Adding up of interest will result in piling up of hundreds of dollars to be paid back. Private student loans are one such type of loan in which there are variable interest rates, moreover the terms are not as good as standard federal student loans.

A number of single parents decide to return to college and a number of adult scholarships are available to support them. You need not pay to look for these scholarships as you can get the help of certain non profit organizations. These agencies are available allover the country. One such agency is CFNC.org which mainly looks after residents of North Carolina. Similar websites assist lone parents as well as other students to find student scholarships.

In general a large number of single parents decide to resume the college either to acquire a degree or to get a higher qualification. The aim is to increase their job prospects. Pell grant, student loans and adult scholarships are all viable options for low or middle income single parents. Some options out of these are for specific groups such as single mothers. The idea is to use as much free assistance as possible to find the best option and then to look for the correct place to find it. This is where admission offices of various schools come to your help as they are keener to teach committed adults as compared to non serious young ones.