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Jeremiah Blackburn
Professor: Malcom Campbell
UWRT 1103
March 25, 2015
Why single parents raise adults.
The average day for a child goes as follows: wake up, make the bed, shower, make
breakfast, clean the dishes used when making breakfast, pack lunch for school, make sure all the
lights are out in the house (to save on power bill), grab the key to the house, lock up on the way
out, race to the bus stop in time, go to school to learn for seven hours, take the bus back home,
find a snack, struggle with homework for two hours till its finally complete, make sure the
house is clean before the parent gets home around six or seven, parent makes dinner, the child
may sit and listen to the parent talk about their day for a couple hours expected to listen intently
and sometimes give some form of feedback, then both the child and parent go to sleep in order to
start the cycle over the next day. Is this an average day for every child in the world? No.
However, this day would sound extremely familiar to a child being raised by a single parent.
According to Robert Weiss, a professor at the University of Massachusetts who
collaborated with the medical school at Harvard in order to conduct his research on this topic, the
absence sents of the mother or the father in the life of a child creates an imbalance in the
hierarchy that is the family system. Due to this unbalanced system within the household, the
children are forced to assume new roles, roles that make up for the absence of the second parent.
Children in this situation are more prone to have the ability to relate to adults perspectives in a
variety of ways. When a typical child (age 4-8) sees a messy room with a big bed and soft

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pillows that childs first thought may be to fluff up the pillows, throw them on the floor and start
jumping on the big bed, this reaction would be completely normal for a child of that age.
However, put a child who has been raised by their mother their entire life in the same room, you
may be surprised to see that that child would, according to Weiss, most likely only pay attention
to the messiness of the room and pay no mind to the big bed and soft pillows other than to make
the bed and organize the pillows. This kind of behavior would be expected by an adult and a
mature one at that., Ssome adults I know thirty and up still dont make their bed. In the mind of a
child who has for as long as he or she can remember has been told to clean any mess that is made
in order to cut down on the load that a single mother or father must take on every day in order to
keep the home in running condition.
Saying that there are only positives to a child having the ability to relate to adults and to
act in a more mature manner towards work than other children in far from the truth. According to
Weiss children who have seemingly jumped maturity levels due to a lack of hierarchy within the
household, may also be more needful of approval, more dependent, or more diffident with peers
than other children.. So while on the outside the child being raised by a single parent may seem
more independent than other children in two parent homes, they are in fact in much need of
approval from others due to their lack of both parents words of affirmation. This fact raises
more questions about the matter of, how does being raised by a single parent affect the overall
wellness of the child being raised?
According to Matthew D. Bramlett and Stephen J. Blumberg, the authors of the article
Family Structure And Childrens Physical And Mental Health, approximately twenty three
percent of all households in the United States are made up of single parents. Bramlett and
Blumberg go further by using the 2003 National Survey of Childrens health to numerically

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organize the children who are raised in single parent households. With these numbers they
compared and contrasted the result of children in single and two parent households. The results
overwhelmingly stated that the overall health of the children raised in a single parent household
had poorer health than those raised in a two parent household. This data is validated by the level
of income one parent can acquire compared to the income two parents can acquire, which
directly relates to the quality of health insurance a parent is able to afford for both themselves
and the child being raised. As it always has been in the past the more money you have, the better
quality of healthcare you receive, and until the child has reached adulthood and can pay their
own insurance, which now does not have to be until the child is twenty six, the parent must
bearare that burden every paycheck when insurance is drafted from their account. This
transaction of money being moved may in most households may be one that is not known to the
children but not when the children hold such a stock in the running of the house.
Furthermore, according to Weiss writings the children, who inherently take more income
to provide for, are aware of the fact that they create this burden on the parent thus giving them a
feeling of responsibility to help in whatever way they can. Whether they can go make money
mowing yards or collecting cans or even getting a part time job if they are of age. The children
being raised by a single parent do this because the parent must express to them that they have a
responsibility to do what they can, no matter how hard or above their head the task may seem,
Weiss also explains this reasoning in his article.
The difference between the childs role in the one-parent and the two-parent
household is made manifest when the child fails to perform an expected task. In the twoparent household, the parents may decide that the chore is beyond the childs capacity, or
that getting the child to help is more trouble than it is worth, or that the child requires

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discipline or a lecture on household citizenship. In any event, a decision will usually be
made on the parental level regarding how the issue is to be handled. In the one-parent
household the child will be directly confronted by the parent. The child is failing to
meet a partnership responsibility. One mother insisted that her children inspect her workroughened hands so that they would realize that she was doing her part.
So clearly according to professor Weiss research, the children of single mothers especially, take
on many added responsibilities that are to be taken seriously. If not taken seriously one may
receive a very harsh speech on why being responsible is important in life, which in most cases in
my own experience are worse than any physical punishment. Many life lessons that may be
taught at a later age in most two parent households are taught at a young age in single parent
households, not due to trying to raise the child faster, but out of necessity.
Lessons that lead some of the children in a single parent household to compete for
dominance in some cases. As spoken of in Weiss article a woman was alone in raising her four
children and the oldest had always tried to fill the void that his father was to fill in the family
construct. However the second the son who was more good looking than the first was the one
that the two younger siblings always looked to for guidance. This unfortunately cause rifts within
a house that is already unstable in nature.
Being raised by a single mother I am able to relate and confirm most of the findings that
researchers like Weiss, Bramlett and Blumberg have found. Growing up I had many of the same
experiences described in their articles. While I concur with all the positive effects of being raised
by a single mother, for example having the ability to relate to adults as well as not having to go
through all the stages of life where most kids have to make mistakes in order to learn major life
lessons, the detriments are also equally prevalent in my mind. Not having a male example in my

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life to ensure that I become a good man, not learning all the stereotypical lessons that a father
teaches his son, not having that balance in disciplinary action, and many more reasons why a
father would have been helpful in my upbringing. However, the effects are different with every
child, there may be overarching similarities, but each case will be different in the path the child
may take.
When it comes to researching this subject the results conveyed to the reader give an
adequate decent ideagrasp of the life a child being raised by a single parent may experience but
the full scope of each childs circumstance is impossible to obtain. Researchers must take into
account religious beliefs of the parent doing the raising, if there is strict moral code in place that
creates an entirely new atmosphere for the raising of the child., aAll the responsibilities that a
child must take on are taken on with an attitude of a servants heart if a good moral code is
imbedded in their thought processes. One must take into account the financial standing of the
parent, as stated in the findings of Bramlett and Blumberg most of the low income single parents
are women, making it more common for single parent households to be poorer due to the fact
that nearly eighty percent of single parents are women. Another variable is whether or not the
parent raising the child receives child support from the biological parent, this may seem
insignificant to some but that one or two hundred dollars a week may be the deciding factor
between having groceries that week or eating what is left over from the week before.
When raising a child there are many things that can go wrong and parents may not see the
effects of a certain decision they made when the child was barely a teenager until the child is
grown and having children of their own. With single parent households it is the same, decisions
have to be made in order to keep a semi normal sense of order in place, if that means that the
children have to grow up and take on more responsibilities than most kids their age, so be it. The

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results of being raised by a single parent will be researched, quantified, and studied for years to
come, but one thing will not change, every individual is just that, an individual, and every family
is different and will inherently yield different results.

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Works Cited
Bramlett, M. D., and S. J. Blumberg. "Family Structure And Children's Physical And Mental
Health." Health Affairs 26.2 (2007): 549-58. Web. 1 Mar. 2015.
"Economics of Single-Parent Households." Society. 30.1 (1992). Web.
Wang, Shirley S. "This Is Your Brain Without Dad." WSJ. Wall Street Journal, 27 Oct. 2009.
Web. 01 Mar. 2015.
Weiss, Robert S. "Growing Up a Little Faster: The Experience of Growing Up in a Single-Parent
Household." Journal of Social Issues 35.4 (1979): 97-111. Web. 01 Mar. 2015.