Relationships, Marriage, and Family - Single Parents, Blended Families, and Foster Families (SOCI 1306 Sociology)

Relationships, Marriage, and Family SOCI 1306 Single Parents, Blended Families, and Foster Families The number of single-parent homes is rising. The percentage of children living with a single parent alone increased from 25% in 2008 to 32% in 2017. Twenty-one of them thirty-two percent reside with their mother. In 1968, for instance, just 1% of children lived with a single father; by 2008, however, that number had increased to 3% (Livingston 2018). Today, 4% of children live with their father. A little over sixteen percent of kids are raised in blended homes, which include stepparents and/or stepsiblings. Since the Census Bureau started taking accurate measurements of this statistic in the 1980s, it has stayed largely constant. Four percent of children reside in households headed by unmarried spouses. (Part of that figure consists of parents of same-sex partners who were previously forbidden from becoming married.) Sometimes parents are unable to care for their children any longer. Three million kids lived with guardianship in 2018 who weren't their biological or adoptive parents. The reasons might include drug or alcohol misuse, incarceration, mental health disorders in the parents, physical or sexual abuse of the children, or parent desertion. A vast range of arrangements and kinds of individuals and organisations are involved as a result of the diverse array of reasons. According to ChildStats 2019, over 20% of these kids live with other relatives and nearly half of them live with their grandparents. Sometimes, informally, a grandparent or other relative takes up child care temporarily; other times, a longer-term agreement is made, including the state's or a local agency that deals with child welfare. Twenty-five percent of children who do not live with their birth or adoptive parents do so with non-relatives, such as foster parents, temporary guardians, or persons with whom the kid has other ties. Adults with state certification who look after children under the direction and control of an appropriate agency are known as non-relative foster parents. Foster parents follow the rules and receive financial assistance for the kids in their care. (A relative who looks after the kids in accordance with agency requirements is frequently referred to as a "kinship" foster parent; these foster parents may also get financial assistance.) Siblings are typically kept together when children are put in foster care or other non-parental care by agencies and families. Typically, siblings provide each other someone to help with societal obstacles and continuity across time. According to studies, siblings who are put together exhibit greater levels of connectedness and prefer living in the foster family than siblings who are not placed together (Hegar and Rosenthal, 2011). Sibling separation can hinder their acceptance of their new home and make them worry about one another or their biological family (Affronti, Rittner, & Semanchin Jones, 2015). In situations when there are significant age differences or very young children involved, siblings may take on a larger parental role than they would otherwise. When youngsters are transferred to live with others or after a divorce, these elder siblings could assume certain parenting duties. "Parentified" siblings, who are frequently still very young themselves, may find it difficult to negotiate the complexity of parental duties. These can be extremely traumatic events that result in obsessive disorders, lifelong problems with relationships, and problems with self-care (Lamothe 2017). The impact of these cultural transformations on children is a concern that is raised by modifications to the conventional family structure. Statistics from the U.S. Census have long demonstrated that children raised in two-parent households have more advantages in terms of education and finances than do children raised in single-parent households (U.S. Census 1997). Parental marital status appears to be a key predictor of a child's future success. Living with a divorced parent usually has benefits over living with a parent who never married; this is especially the case for children whose fathers have divorced. This is consistent with the data showing that parents who have never married are often younger, have completed less education, and make less money (U.S. Census 1997). When living with just their mother, six out of ten children are either near or below the poverty line. 69 percent of children raised by single moms live in or close to poverty, whereas 45 percent of children of divorced mothers do so (U.S. Census 1997). Even if age and education are important variables in these variations, it can be concluded that parent-child marriage benefits kids in general.