Monday, 25 May 2015

SINGLE FATHER



1.0 INTRODUCTION

            A complete family with a mother and a father presence and very important to generating prosperity to excellence of child’s life. The family is the basic social institution built as a marriage between a man and a woman, according to the tradition, religion and law. It consists of father, mother and children. Both of parents such as mother and father are important to the institution of the family because the family structure that better enable the child’s to find the meaning of, stability, secure and a healthy life, competent and productive citizens. That personally can produce prosperous family child welfare. Families have an important role in a child's life whether a household or family unity will be affected. The basic of family can collapse due to dissociation separation or the death of any one of the spouses.           
            Single parents phenomenon is not something a new among the people in our country. Our society sees an increasingly rising number of single parents today. Like single mother, single father are one of category community that totally increases day by day. Based on the 2000 Population and Housing Census of Malaysia, there were 126,810 single fathers in Malaysia at the time. The number is likely to be underestimated, and has definitely grown much larger today considering the increased rates of divorce and separation.The existence of man as father and wife keep the family without the presence a common thing that happens in a family.The term of ‘single father’ is includes men in a variety of family circumstances whether are separated, divorced, widowed or never married but living together with adopted child without a cohabiting partner.According to Wan Halim Othman (1995), a single father is a father who bears the responsibility to educate, care, have to pay and bring up their children without involving a wife.
            The profile of single father household is more likely single mother which is most of them typically less educated and less well-off than their married counterparts. They are also younger and lack of information’s. It is tough to be a single father and breadwinner at the same time. Personal emotions and issues aside, single fathers are weighed down with additional responsibilities that they have to deal with on their own, and on limited resources. However, single father householders differ from single mother householders on several indicators, which is households headed by single fathers appear to be much better off financially when compared with those headed by single mothers.


2.0 SINGLE FATHER ISSUES

            Being a single father is not something easy even though some researchers showed that living as a single mother is tougher. Sometimes, he has to face challenges cause by both inside the family and outside the family factors. Besides, single fatherhood gives various effects especially towards his children.
            Single father can we describe as a person who face it divorce or death of their wife and non-marital childbearing. They are rare for us to hear about them rather than single mother because a single father really minority than single mother. Based on that, if we realize that single mother have face it many issues to support their own life with their baby. So, it also happens to single father that they need to face many issues in their life and solve it their issues. Not easy to say that they are really strong to face it especially how about to treat their children. According to Kieran McKeown (2000), a single father is also often seen as dangerous, useless, self-destructive or irresponsible person because everybody thinks that single father cannot adapt and survive their life to the better.

              Besides, single father also has issues on most socio-economic indicators. Based on the research show that not all single fathers are categorized as a stereotype but many do and concerned about what is happening in disadvantages communities where young men are not being supported to take up one of the most important roles to be a good single father. This statement related about issues of the single father to take care their children. In the United State, some studied showed lower educational achievement of the children from single father families than from single mother families (Biblarz&Raftery, 1999).  The children will affect their education with single father than are fathers who are raising children without partner in the household. That issues is will be serious because the children who lives with single parents will have tendency to be disengaged from  studied compared to students from two families (Hyunjoon Park, 2008)

            Crawford and MacDonald (2002) showed that it is likely that mental health issues impact to single father and single mother.  Single fathers also will face it issues about emotional distress and difficult in make a range of services for housing, parenting and financial support due to lack of sensitivity of father’s needs from the government providers is a major issues for fathers to access services. So, for context counselling that issues is important such as domestic violence, behavioral change that happen to single father. Based on a one researched, Fletcher, Silberberg and Baxter (2001), there is also lack of information and resource materials to promote many aspects of health and other support services such as childcare and parenting to encourage men to have greater involvement with their children.

3.0 EFFECTS ON CHILDREN
            Like single motherhood, single fatherhood also caused some effects towards himself and his children. One of the obvious effect is the educational aspiration level of the children that living with a single father. In sub-Saharan Africa countries, children headed by a single father tend to have lower educational chances in term of school enrollment and attainment compared to children headed by single mother (Lloyd and Blanc, 1996). However, this effect may vary across the world (Park, 2008). Borgerset al. (1996) found that children from single-father families have greater educational opportunities than those from single-mother families in Netherlands. By highlighting the point, children from single-parents families have lower educational aspiration compared to children from two-parent families (Downey et al., 1998; Amato 1993).
            Furthermore, poverty is also the effect of single fatherhood towards his children. According to McLanahan and Sandefur (1994), children headed by single father are poorer than children headed by two parents. In addition, the children of single-father families are more likely to experience health, behavior, and mental problems compare with those from two-parent families (Parke, 2003). Some single fathers may experience unstable relationship with cohabiting partners and this situation can increase the children’s aggression level and anxiety or depression, make the children emotionally unstable compare with children who are living with two parents (Osborne and McLanahan, 2007). Children may have to defense themselves from negative perceptions about their situation such as derogatory label that they come from a ‘broken home’.

4.0 EFFECTS ON SINGLE FATHER
            Life of a single father may be is not as hard as a single mother. However, most of the public attentions and charities focus on single motherhood, leaving behind single fatherhood. Systematic deterioration in the lot of single fathers is due to less attentions have been given to them (Buckley, 1998). There is less research done on single father. The information on single father is obtained as part of studies on single mother (Flanagan and Richardson, 1992; McCashin, 1996).
            Some single fathers are young and usually they are less educated. This may be due to marriage at young age and they stop study after married. Lack of education makes them hardly employed, resulted in exclusion from the labour market and an important source of identity and fulfillment through work (Murphy, 1996). Moreover, these will affect single father as a breadwinner and caregivers. According to Park (2008), financial status of single father is much lower compared with father of two-parent families. Thus, this leads to the poverty of single father.
            In addition, most of single fathers tend to busy with breadwinner which make them have less time with their kids. This will affect the relationship between the single father and the children.


5.0 CONCLUSION

            The conclusion that we have on this topic, while single parenting may pose some negative impact on their children, at least at the initial stage, many researchers found that children of single-parent families grew up to be as healthy and emotionally secure as those from two-parent families. We often underestimate the emotional resilience of children as they grow into adulthood. When the older children in single-parent families take up the task of caring for the younger brothers and sisters, they also learn
to become responsible people, and form close relationships with their siblings.


 prepared by :
Siti Mariyam Binti Mohd Zaini
Ainul Sarikin Binti Ibrahim
Taqiah Binti Mohamed Salleh











REFERENCE

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