CHAPTER 1INTRODUCTIONBackground of the StudyFamily is the basic unit of society. Thus, it is the foundation of humanity and especially the cornerstone of someone’s life. The essence of family build’s the life of people, serving as a strong support to his or her existence especially in terms of academic experiences. When one is facing challenges or tribulations in life, we can look for a help to our family. But how about if an arrow of circumstances would destroy our family? What will possibly happened to our lives? As a researcher, we noticed that there is a problem rising and rampant in the young generation today that leads them to depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation or tendencies, aggressive behaviour, poor performance in school and even academic failure. Hence, the one factor of it all is having a broken home or living without their biological problems.
Commonly, having a broken home or family or even living without a biological parents with your side is the most issue that destroys you as a person. Therefore, this controversy is needed an attention and solution for it talks about those children without their biological parents in their academic performance or achievement, and as of their academic life experiences. Something that is not or less known about this concern is the understanding of the academic life experiences of children without biological parents on their side. It is important as a researcher, since it is the common problem that some of the children are facing with now.
Thus, as a future educator we need to know and understand, and give empathy to the academic life experiences of children without their biological parents. According to Allen (as cited by Ventura, 2014) that pupils experience complex emotions that provoke of being alone and depressed, and having self-indulgence because of their parents separation and as a result of broken home. Therefore, it tends to give them a lost of awareness and concerns in going to school for their biological parents are without them.Students living without a biological parents behave aggressively and enjoying doing violent actions as a bully. On the other hand, other students tend to lose and affect negatively their social relationship and with peers, people around them and even to their family members. Children living without a biological parents might develop a pessimistic attitude that would lead them to mistrust that definitely lose their trust to people around them such as their family and friends or peers (Miranda, 2006).In addition, a good number of studies had found out that the problem regarding to the topic is highly not studied even though it is proliferating nowadays.
This manuscript written in a qualitative approach which utilized in narrative inquiry and narrative analysis. People who may benefit from the knowledge generated by our research study are the researchers, teachers, students, biological parents and guardians as well. This study aims to know and understand the academic performance, psychological, social and emotional aspect of the students living without their biological parents. Specifically, as researchers we want to know: what are the academic life experiences of children without their biological parents on their side, how do children deal their academic life experiences without the supervision of their biological parents, what are the perspectives of children without their biological parents on their academic experiences, what is/are the reason/s why their biological parents are without in their academic life experiences. Hereafter, the knowledge produce by this research study may benefit the people who have the heart for learning.Purpose of the StudyThis phenomenological study aims to understand the academic performance, psychological, social and emotional aspect of the students living without their biological parents. Ergo, the researchers wanted to determine it through interview and to gather data in selected five (5) children from V. S.
Bangoy Elementary School. Hence, in this study, we addressed the following questions:1. What are the academic life experiences of children without their biological parents on their side?2. How do children deal their academic life experiences without the supervision of their biological parents?3.
What are the perspectives of children without their biological parents on their academic experiences?4. What is/are the reason/s why their biological parents are without in their academic life experiences?Significance of the StudyThe results of the study could be beneficial to the following: Guidance Counsellor. With the findings gathered by the researchers, the teachers can understand the students’ behaviour better and can come up with programs that can guide the students to be better individuals.Teachers. With the results identified in the study, the teachers can understand their students better and can come up with classroom activities that can develop the students holistically.Students. With the teachers’ awareness of the situation of the students having an academic life experiences and living without their biological parents on their side, they will be more engaged in learning and can grow as a well-rounded individual.
Limitations and DelimitationsThis study was piloted in Toril, Davao City, specifically in V. S. Bangoy Elementary School with five (5) participants. The study was finished during school year 2018 – 2019.
The participants of the study were the selected children who were living without their biological parents. The study was restricted to understand the struggle, experiences and perceptions of the students coming from broken family.The qualitative research adopted the phenomenological approach focusing on the experience, coping, mechanisms, and insights of the students which data were derived from in-depth interview focused group discussion. The researchers properly organized the process by complying all the necessary steps that a qualitative research be accomplished.
Research ethics was observed and informed consent was taken from the participants of the interview and focused group discussion in order to insure validity and reliability of the data.Review of Related LiteratureReadings and other pertinent information are presented in this section. This is to establish a clear framework of the concepts and principles of the variables under study.Living without Biological ParentsNon-biological parent households provide some-what less favourable family environment for children to live in. The effect of parental absence is additive, with each additional biological parent absent in the household being related to a decline in child well-being. Commonly the self-esteem of the children when it loses that affects their academic performance, educational aspiration, and locus of control, and reduced of self-confidence, behaviour problems, and cigarette smoking (Sun, 2003). Research on the well-being of children and adolescents in divorced or separated homes has examined a wide variety of consequences, including emotional well-being and mental health, behavioural problems and delinquency, cognitive competencies, academic achievement and educational attainment, as well as life-course trajectories with respect to home-leaving, employment and earnings, partnership stability, and early childbearing. Such divergent views also find support in evidence from Germany: several studies based on large samples did not find higher depressiveness, impaired self-esteem, more problems in peer relations, or increased behaviour problems among children and adolescents from separated single parent families compared to nuclear families.
Furthermore, a recent study on the effects of parental separation on young children whose parents cohabited, but were not married when the children were born; found no evidence for increased emotional or behavioural problems among those who experienced parental separation (Walper et. al., 2015).
Life, in a single parent family or broken home can be stressful for both the child and the parent. Such families are faced with challenges of inadequate financial resources. In the study of Schults (2006) noted that if adolescents from unstable homes are to be compared with those from stable homes, it would be seen that the former have more social, academic and emotional problems. For it) is of the opinion that the family and its structure play a great role in children’s academic performance (Rochlkepartain, 2003). Parents are probably acts the clearest undimentional roles to give an interest in a high level of their children’s academic performance (Levin, 2001). Children of unmarried parents /separated families often fail and are at risk emotionally. However, this may not be completely applicable in all cases of broken homes.
Some children irrespective of home background or structure may work hard and become successful in life. Moreover, Ayodele (2007) stated that the environment where a child finds himself or herself goes a long way in determining his learning ability and ultimately his academic performance in school (Johnson, 2005).Children of Broken Homes Children of broken homes at times show regressive traits; they crawl into a shell; they feel different and inferior to others. On the other hand they have possibly become too aggressive and try to compensate for what they feel they lack in parents. Occasionally these children may become more self-reliant due to necessity. Seldom, as shown by the study, do children travel the middle of the road. Bather they show deviation from the norm. Children of broken homes, due to less parental interest and attention, are more apt to have poor habits of rest, eating, work, personal habits and other essential routines.
When one parent has to make the home and also earn the living, the children are left to themselves to prepare the meals, go to bed, rise, go to school, and do their homework. Children need the guidance, help and encouragement of both parents. Bad habits are developed because of lack of parental supervision. This is evident to teachers and other school personnel. School health records tell the story of poor habits; they show that children from broken homes sometimes lack proper rest, proper food, are poorly groomed, have inferior health habits and do inferior school work. Home is the highest and finest product of civilization and children should not be deprived of it except for urgent and compelling reasons. Home and children are the very basis of our society, and our society will break if the homes falter out of interest and joy in caring for children in their weakness family life has come into being and has persisted.
Family life has been the basis of our civilization and our nation, and if it breaks down, they also will break down. Homes are broken by death, desertion, separation, and divorce. The story of the broken homes is often a tragedy, since important, intimate human relations are shattered, and millions are deprived of a happy home life.
A normal home is a biologically organic unit. It is a cultural social, and economic unit; an interdependent learning set-up, where the child feels a belonging to an intact protective group. A child from a broken home feels he belongs to an impaired organization and is therefore open to disturbance both physical and psychological. He may grow up with a faulty character or a warped outlook upon society. He may feel inferior. There is less desirable learning by such a child. The stability of family creates a building block for children to progress throughout life. When parents separate, the children are left with no stability causing them to lose basic concepts of childhood that may carry with them throughout life.
Children of divorced or separated parents have less success and happiness. Watching parents take a home from a traditional family lifestyle to a “broken” home by getting separated is very devastating for a child’s mental well-being. Recent reviews of literature summarize evidence that children are emotionally distressed by parents’ separation. Young children, especially, are depressed and anxious, and they feel torn by loyalties to both parents.
The views that parent plays a central role in shaping the child’s development through their influence. Thus if parents keep having conflicts in their homes, children are bound to be affected as they grow up. They also asserted that children learn through imitating and identification with the parents and other significant adults. If the children grow up in a family where violence is a common phenomenon, they may end up doing the same in their families, unless intervention is carried out.
The first important influence on children is the family but children and families are interactive members of a large system of social institutions, such as the school, the workplace and community (Murphy and O’Farrell, 1994).Understanding the effects of living without biological parentsSeveral studies have demonstrated that children in step-household do not perform well in school as children living with their biological parents, yet explanations for this relationship remain undeveloped. Research on stepparents and stepchildren has flourished during the past decade a welcome change from the scant attention previously paid to this family form. Most of this work focused on the social-physiological consequences of life in a step-household for children self-esteem (Bray 1998), problem of behaviour (Hetherington, Cox 1985) and relationship with parents (Amato 1987). Less is known about the academic performance of children in step-households, although what has been written suggest that they perform less well in school than their counterparts in household containing mother and father (Dawson 1991: Zill 1988).
There has been a growing call for studies that explain the processes mediating the effect of family structure on discussed by Beller and Chung and parental practices as studied by Astone and McLanahan. There are several reason to expect that children in step-households receive fewer parental investments than their counterparts in household containing both mother and father. First, stepparents frequently have responsibilities to former household.
Second, the relationship may not be as conducive to parental investment because either the stepparent is less willing to receive them (Astone and McLahan1991). The bulk of research demonstrates that children in step-household perform less that with two parents the children from household had lower school class ranks and were more likely to repeat a grade than children in household containing the mother and father, children in step household. Most previous studies have concurred that growing up in various alternative family structures has negative educational consequences, compared with their peers raised in two-biological parent. Meanwhile children in stepfamilies were also found to do less well than their peers in two biological parents’ households.About half of American children will spend part of their childhood in a single-parent family (Andersson 2002), and most of these children will be living without their father. Is the conventional wisdom well founded? It amounts to the claim that the well-being of children living with their fathers is much greater than the well-being of children living without their fathers Children living with single fathers, or with the biological father and a stepmother, or with both biological parents, all fall in the father-present category.
This is clearly a heterogeneous group, and social scientists usually prefer to make comparisons between more narrowly defined groups when they test and refine theories. Though most research has not measured father absence per se, there is indirect evidence that children living without fathers may be disadvantaged on a wide range of indicators of well-being, including health, educational experiences, and academic performance. For a useful review, see Sigle-Rushton and McLanahan (2004). Children living with two biological parents tend to be healthier than children who do not (Coiro et al. 1994; Dawson1991) and are less likely ever to have been suspended or expelled from school or to have repeated a grade (Dawson 1991; Zill 1996). They also have higher average grades (Lee1993) and are less likely to have developmental problems (Corio et al. 1994; Dawson1991).
Similarly, children living with single mothers are more likely to become sexually active at a young age (DeLeire and Kalil 2002; Flewelling and Bauman 1990) and have less academic success (Entwisle and Alexander 1995, 1996) than children living in other family arrangements, and adults who were raised in mother-only families are worse-off financially than those raised by both parents (McLanahan and Sandefur 1994).Reports such as these certainly raise questions about the effects of father absence on children. Just as certainly, they do not constitute (and were not designed to be) rigorous empirical tests of the effects of father absence. The contrast between the certainty expressed in tendentious public discourse and the indirect nature of most of the evidence points to a growing disjuncture between research results and policy discussion. This disjuncture is well-illustrated in the National Fatherhood Initiative’s report, Father Facts (Horn and Sylvester 2002). This report, which is widely disseminated with over 100,000 copies in print (Sylvester and Reich 2002), summarizes a large body of research for the purpose of stressing fathers’ importance in children’s lives. In one typical passage (Hornand Sylvester 2002, pp. 116–117), it cites seven studies (Bankston and Caldas, 1998;Bisnairs, Fireston, and Rynard, 1990; Cooksey and Fondell 1996; Luster and McAdoo1994; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994; Smith 1995; Tucker et al.
1998) in support of the general proposition that father absence is bad for children’s academic achievement.Understanding the effects of broken homeLarge numbers of studies, mostly from the U.S., have addressed the effects of parental separation and divorce, pointing to disadvantages of children and adolescents growing up in separated families Pre-separation disadvantages among prospective separators were limited to greater dissatisfaction with school. Infrequent contact with the non-resident father did not affect adolescents’ well-being. Effects of family structure did not differ between boys and girls, but maternal education moderated the effects of family structure on adolescents’ life satisfaction Only few recent changes in family life have received as much public and scientific attention as the increasing instability of marriage. Ever since the “Golden Age of Marriage” of the 1960s started to wane, divorce became a prominent issue not only among demographers and family sociologists, but also among developmental and clinical psychologists seeking to determine the impact of parental divorce for the children involved.
Meanwhile, marital instability has increased considerably across many countries – as reflected in the crude divorce rate for Europe (EU-27), which doubled from 1.0 divorces per year per 1 000 inhabitants in 1970 to 2.0 divorces by 2010 (Eurostat 2013).As pointed out by Amato (2010: 661), “focusing on the average effects of divorce masks the substantial degree of variability that exists in people’s adjustment”. Over the past decades, large numbers of studies have contributed to a refined understanding of relevant conditions that may – or may not– occur in the context of divorce and may contribute to or ameliorate the many challenges in children’s and adolescents’ coping with parental breakup (for an overview see Amato 2010).
Accordingly, understanding the effects of parental break-up become a complex enterprise. Research on the well-being of children and adolescents in divorced or separated homes has examined a wide variety of consequences, including emotional well-being and mental health (Chase-Lansdale et al. 1995; Strohschein 2005), behavioural problems and delinquency (Burt et al. 2008; Fergusson et al. 1992), cognitive competencies(Sanz-De-Galdeano/Vuri 2007), academic achievement and educational attainment (Francesconi et al.
2010; Hilmert 2002), as well as life-course trajectories with respect to home-leaving, employment and earnings, partnership stability, and early childbearing (Cherlin et al. 1995; Ross/Mirowsky 1999). Given the many empirical studies which address differences in children’s well-being by family structure, several meta-analyses have sought to integrate available empirical evidence. In an update of his earlier meta-analysis (Amato/Keith 1991), Amato reviewed empirical evidence from studies mainly conducted in the U.S. during the 1990s (Amato 2001) and found consistent evidence for overall disadvantages among children from divorced families when compared to children from nuclear families, even though the effect sizes were rather small. Accordingly, Amato (2014: 15) concluded that “irrespective of national and cultural characteristics, the gap between children with divorced and continuously married parents is about the same on both sides of the Atlantic. “At the same time, there is considerable variability in findings across studies and countries (Amato/James 2010).
While some authors stress the dramatic consequences which parental breakup may have for the offspring’s well-being (Wallerstein et al.1988), others highlight the coping potential in divorced families (Hetherington/Kelly 2002).Such divergent views also find support in evidence from Germany: several studies based on large samples did not find higher depressiveness, impaired self-esteem, more problems in peer relations, or increased behaviour problems among• Sabine Walper, Carolin T 338 hönnissen, Philipp Alt children and adolescents from separated single parent families compared to nuclear families (Walper 2002; Walper/Wendt 2005; Wendt/Walper 2007).(effects of family structure page) Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents,Understanding the Effects of Broken HomesChild development/ behavior can be affected by a number of things, but a big factor may be the parents.
Depending on the severity of a broken home, the parent’s relationship with each other, as well as their children, can affect how their children behave and may even develop. This doesn’t mean that a parent’s divorce can make it so a child can never climb steps or hop on one foot, but it can make it harder for children to develop social skills and may even set back their achievements. Depending on a child’s age, the separation of their parents may cause extreme stress and, in the worst case, even depression. However, keeping the parent’s married might not be in the best interest either, depending on the family’s situation.
In my experience of coming from a broken home, I have never suffered from developmental or behavioral problems. However, this may be due to my parents living in the same house after the divorce, the age I was when my parents got divorced, and also the relationship I had with both of my parents, as well as the relationship they had with each other. Parents have an impact on their children, married or not. However, on average, broken homes have a significant impact on children and may even continue throughout their life. To understand how a broken home affects child development/ behavior, it is important to understand how children should normally develop/ behave. Although a child may behave and develop at their own rate, there are guidelines for a child’s development, as well as behavior, when it comes to their mental ability. The image above shows the developmental skills that a child should have at the given ages, many of which have to do with motor and social skills.
As seen in the diagram, children need to develop things they can do to help them do simple tasks, like brushing their teeth and walking heel to toe. Developing motor skills will make a child become more independent, seeing how they will be moving and grasping things on their own. So this is a no-brainer: children need to develop motor skills. But another thing a child needs to develop, also shown by the chart, is social skills. This would include naming things and understanding words. Barbara Solomon, a social worker with a Bachelor of science degree in psychology and a Ph.
D. from the University of Southern California, comments how “a lack of social abilities could signal a medical or developmental problem” (Solomon, 2004). So not only are a lack of motor skills an issue at a young age but so are social skills. Lastly, there are three types of behavior that parents should understand when it comes to their children. First, there is a behavior that is approved. This includes behavior such as being kind to other people, being understanding, and listening to others. The second type of behavior is one that is not necessarily wanted at all times but is tolerated.
This behavior can be caused by the child being stressed or sick and is understood in context, and, depending on the family, different types of behavior are tolerated. The last type of behavior is one that should not be tolerated. This type can be troublesome for a child’s intellectual development and may even cause harm to the “physical, emotional, or social well-being of the child” (Normal Child Behavior, 2015). This type of behavior can also be caused by the parent, depending on how they act emotionally.
Children may start to copy their parent’s behavior because of how closely they follow them for the normal emotional reactions of society. This may get troublesome, depending if the parent is aggressive and acting upon anger. In this case, when a child starts to mimic their parent, they develop the third type of behavior. A study to show cognitive testing in teenagers is shown in the image above.
This study was done by Anna Sanz-de-Galdeano and Daniela Vuri along with IZA, The Institute for the Study of Labor, in 2004. This was a study to see if the cognitive development of adolescents were changed based on the fact of their current family situation. This data shows the families that are intact has a higher cognitive ability than families that are not intact. However, the research that was also conducted showed the same children having lower cognitive ability before their parents got divorce. The research in this study shows that teenager’s cognitive ability will not necessarily decrease, but that does not say anything about the effect on younger children. This study concludes that in the short run, adolescents with divorced families may have a lower cognitive ability, even if they have a lower cognitive ability before their parents are divorced. In the long run, this is the same.
This study is consistent with was Cherlin et al. (1995) said, as far as the timing of a parental divorce, the age that divorce occurs “(ages 7 to 11 versus ages 11 to 16) in a child’s life does not make a difference for young adult outcomes” (Sanz-de-Galdeano and Vuri, 2004). So whether a child is younger versus older when their parents divorce, that does not necessarily mean it will affect them as an adult: the child will have the same cognitive ability before divorce, as shown in this study, as well as after the divorce.Another study suggests that a parent has a big outcome on their child’s emotional development.
Being physically present may not be enough for a child, and all that matters is their parent’s emotional attachment to them (Volling cited in Moges and Weber, 2014). If the parent is not emotionally connected to their child, “the child will struggle to learn how to regulate his emotions and interact with others appropriately” (Moges and Weber, 2014). With my personal experience with divorce, my mother was physically there, but she was never emotionally there. I would say that I suffered from irregular emotions when it came to my mother.
Sometimes, I would be really happy with her because she was there with me. Other times, and perhaps most of the time, I was angry with her because of how little she seemed to care about my life. Because I was so negative towards my mother’s negative attitude, it shows that this can “often lead to even more behavioral problems” (Moges and Weber, 2014). This is problematic when raising a child to become a well-adjusted adult because it may lead to further complications when interacting with others normally. There is no one way to raise a perfectly well-adjusted child, but parents can take a few precautions when taking care of them emotionally. It is important to give them “supportive environment, positive feedback, role models of healthy behavior and interactions, and someone to talk to about their emotional reactions to their experiences” (Morges and Weber, 2014). This will assure that the child will be alright emotionally when growing up, and not having any problems when it comes to regulating emotions and interacting with others.A study in 1971 showed 60 divorced families along with 131 children.
After five years, two-thirds of the children “were clinically depressed, were doing poorly in school, had difficulty maintaining friendships, and experienced chronic problems such as sleep disturbances” (Amato, 2005). As supported by the study, these children may have started acting aggressive and “engaging in bullying behavior, both of which can negatively affect peer relationships” (Green). However, another study, done in 1970, showed how after two years of their parent’s divorce, preschoolers did not show emotional and behavioral problems like they did the year before. So why does one group of children show more severe symptoms than the other group? The answer is this: research shows that the second most vulnerable group to divorce is young teenagers, represented by the group of children in the study done in 1971 (Blakeslee and Wallerstein, 2006). The first group to be the most affected by divorce are young children before they enter school. So, in this case, preschoolers will not be as affected as much as young adolescents would. At this age, young adolescents are being nudged slightly into the world, thinking about future jobs, school, sports and clubs, romantic relationships, and the list goes on. With all of this, divorce might add to the list to make it more stressful for the child resulting in emotional and behavioral issues.
However, if a parent did not want a divorce because of this reason, the outcome might not be as well aspected as one might think. If a child’s parents are always fighting, this will add more stress to the family and also may emotionally damage a child. As stated previously, parents have some say in how a child is emotionally. A child will also see how their parents interact and their imitate behavior, as well as negative energy (Moges and Weber, 2014). Fighting parents that stay together because of their child may end up doing more harm than none. Broken homes may not harm a child developmentally or cognitively but instead may have an important role within their education, behavior, social skills, and emotional skills depending on their age. Compared to a child being from a divorced family, a child that is born outside of marriage or only has one parent may “reach adulthood with less education, earn less income, … are more likely to have a nonmarital birth, and report more symptoms of depression” than a divorced child would (Amato, 2005).
The single parent is also at a loss financially, making it harder to buy their child things for school they will need to succeed. When it comes to education, children with broken homes may experience a lack of academic progress. This may “stem from a number of factors, including instability in the home environment, inadequate financial resources and inconsistent routines” (Green). Education is generally linked with the type of job a person receives, which in turn predicts their income. A survey done on average income based on the level of education in 1996 showed a high school graduate having $7,143 more annually than a high school dropout. Continuing, someone with a bachelor’s degree shows to have $23,101 more annually than a high school dropout, and an advanced degree shows $46,306 more (Fagan, 1999). The story is the same with divorced parents: earning annually $29,500 less than a married family would, says a study was done in 1995 (Fagan, 1999).
A child with only one parent is two times more likely to drop out of school, making it more difficult for them to earn a higher annual income than someone who had graduated high school. Research shows “that children do better at school and exhibit fewer behavioral problems when nonresident fathers pay child support”(King cited in Amato, 2005). With more money coming into the household, children are more likely to receive things that will help them in school as well as outside of school, building their academic progress, and making them stay in school.It’s already been confirmed with research that, on average, children will be better off growing up in a home where there are two biological parents that maintain a safe environment for their children.
As far as depression goes, depression can be triggered by a lot of things including grief, stress, major life changes, and even side effects of medication (Tandoc, 2016). Depression and aggressive behavior cannot always be directly connected to a child’s parent’s relationship, but on average it has a big impact on the child’s life. However, if a child is experiencing this type of behavior and it is directly linked to the married parents, it may be because of fighting. E. Mark Cummings, a psychologist at the University of Notre Dame, explains how “kids pay close attention to their parents’ emotions for information about how safe they are in the family” (Cummings cited in Divecha, 2014). Children go home for a place to feel safe, not attacked. Understanding how close children follow their parent’s emotions will make parents think differently about what they are saying when around their children. Cummings goes on to say “when parents are destructive, the collateral damage to kids can last a lifetime” (Cummings cited in Divecha, 2014).
Parents have an impact on their children directly, but also collaterally, meaning they do not know what ways their parents have impacted them. When I was growing up, I remembered a fight my parents had that I could not remember until something triggered it. After remembering the memory, I realized why I feel the way I do towards aggressive behavior. This has impacted me, and most likely will throughout my life, because of a fight my parents had when I was younger. This continues to show the effect that parents have on their children, even if they are still married. But in the end, several studies still show children who have divorced parents may experience struggles such as these and many others that will hinder their life in the future.It is hard to pinpoint what makes a child behave a certain way, or do things the way that they do. But it has been shown over and over through research that broken homes affect children, depending on their age emotional standpoint with their parents, more than married families do.
There is never one way that a child can be raised, and just because one may be brought up in a broken home does not mean they will suffer from depression or emotional problems. Broken homes will not necessarily hinder a child’s development or cognitive ability, however, it may cause a problem with their education or behavior. On average, a single parent or divorced parents earn less money than a married family does, making it harder to pursue things that their children might need for education or other needs, causing further problems in the future.
It is important for families to understand how to provide a stable and safe home for children to grow up in to limit problems, such as these. In the long run, a child that grows up in a safe environment will grow into a well-adjusted adult and will pay off in the generations to come.EmotionalAfter a divorce, children from pre-school through late adolescence can experience deficits in emotional development.
Children of all ages may seem tearful or depressed, which is a state that can last for several years after a child’s parents’ have separated, explains psychologist Lori Rappaport. Additionally, some older children may show very little emotional reaction to their parents’ divorce. According to Lori Rappaport, this may not be developmentally beneficial.
Some children who show little emotional response are actually bottling up their negative feelings. This emotional suppression makes it difficult for parents, teachers and therapists to help the child process her feelings in developmentally appropriate ways.EducationalSlowed academic development is another common way that separation of the parents affects children. The emotional stress of a divorce alone can be enough to stunt your child’s academic progress, but the lifestyle changes and instability of a broken family can contribute to poor educational outcomes. This poor academic progress can stem from a number of factors, including instability in the home environment, inadequate financial resources and inconsistent routines.
right000SocialDivorce affects children’s social relationships in several ways. First, some children act out their distress about their broken family by acting aggressive and by engaging in bullying behaviour, both of which can negatively affect peer relationships. Other children may experience anxiety, which can make it difficult for them to seek positive social interactions and engage in developmentally beneficial activities such as teen sports.
Teens from broken families might develop a cynical attitude toward relationships and harbour feelings of mistrust, both toward their parents and potential romantic partners, explains psychologist Carl Pickhardt in the article, ‘Parental Divorce and Adolescents’ published in Psychology Today. By its very nature, divorce, changes not only the structure of the family but also its dynamics. Even if you and your spouse have an amicable divorce, simply creating two new households permanently alters family interactions and roles. Based on the new living arrangements, your children may need to perform more chores and assume additional roles in the new household’s basic functioning.
Additionally, in some broken families, older children may take on a parental-type role when interacting with younger siblings because of their parents’ work schedules or inability to be present in the way that the parents were before the divorce.The home is the primary institution for children, home as perceived by Abdulganiyu (1997), Christe (2009), defined home as a place in which an individual or a family can rest and store personal property. Haven’t define the concept of home it is therefore important to define family.
The family can therefore, be looked at as a social group characterized by common resident, economic, cooperation and production. When a child is born, the family is the first primary group with which they come into contact. Transmission of social values of right and wrong, what is morally and religiously accepted or condemned by the family, it follows therefore that by the time a child attained five to seven years of age he must have learnt what are his rights, obligations and roles within the society. However, the background of a students go along way to determine his/her individuality. As the child enters schools, he/she will start manifesting different attitudes and expectations. In addition they may be of the same age group, developed at different rates and so may be able to cope with the intellectual and social task of the school in varying extent.However, a home can either be stable or broken.
A stable home is one in which both parent (mother and father) lives together with their children, while a broken home is the one in which one or both of the parents are not living together with the children. It is the level at which the home operates that determine the academic achievement of a science students in school. Broken homes been it unstable can influence the achievement of a science students academically. Also, children that have suffered from neglect or lack of love (in a broken homes) are known to be psychologically imbalanced to face the realities of life. When there is disunity in the family, or a difference between a mother and a father, the child is caught in the middle and will be at disadvantage. According to Blackby (1999), adequate research need to be conducted in this direction to ensure smooth transition of children from early stages to adulthood.
The child’s home and his family offer the best education since his parents serve as teachers. The parents lay the foundation for the desired social, moral, emotional, spiritual and intellectual well-being of the child. The training a received from home is of greatest importance in his/her total personality formation and his/her academic achievements as a science student. It can also be observed that the pattern of life in the home (stable or broken), the economic and social status of the family in the community and many other conditions that give the home a distinctive character can influence the achievement of science student in school. Abdulganiyu (1997), added that research have shown that children differs in various ways as a result of variables of their home background such as socio – economic status, parental attitude to school and child rearing practices. These home background variables are also found to be positively related to children’s academic achievement, more especially science students that need care and love.Similarly, Giwa (1997), have investigated the factors within the students home background or family that affect their performance s in school, variables such as socio – economic status, family size, birth order, and parental attitude, child rearing practices, parental absence or presence have been found to affect social and intellectual learning experiences of children in schools.
This is so because children are born with some psychological, emotional and intellectual needs such as need for love and security, the need for new experiences, the need for praise and recognition and the need for responsibility. Many of these needs are not offered to the children of broken homes which will influence their performance in science. The extent to which these needs are met during the formative years of children between birth and the age of six or seven in the extent to which they enter school well equipped or ready to deal with the social and emotional aspects of schooling. Based on the observation above and in line with the assumption that economic and social future of many children in most localities is being undermined by cultural practices that promotes widespread divorce amongst couples and brought unnecessary hardship to the growing children. It is pertinent at this juncture to point out in spite of all the needs expressed as to be met by the students most especially science students, this research also has intended to seek for how much science student is affected in academic achievement, either as a result of his home been stable or broken.Parental Separation and Child OutcomesParental separation has been reported in the literature as being associated with a wide range of adverse effects on children’s wellbeing, both as a short-term consequence of the transition and in the form of more enduring effects that persist into adulthood. Effects reported include adverse impacts on cognitive capacity (Fergusson, Lynskey and Horwood 1994), schooling (Evans et al. 2001), physical health (Dawson 1991), mental and emotional health (Chase-Lansdale et al.
1995), social conduct and behaviour (Morrison and Coiro 1999), peer relations (Demo and Acock 1988), criminal offending (Hanson 1999), cigarette smoking (Ermisch and Francesconi 2001), substance use (Fergusson, Horwood and Lynskey 1994), early departure from home (Mitchell et al. 1989), early-onset sexual behaviour (Ellis et al. 2003) and teenage pregnancy (Woodward et al. 2001).A further range of impacts in early adulthood and beyond include higher rates of early childbearing (McLanahan and Bumpass 1994), early marriage (Keith and Finlay 1988), marital dissolution (Amato and DeBoer 2001), lone parenthood (McLanahan and Booth 1989), low occupational status (Biblarz and Gottainer 2000), economic hardship (McLanahan and Booth 1989), poor-quality relationships with parents (Aquilino 1994), unhappiness (Biblarz and Gottainer 2000), discontentment with life (Furstenberg and Teitler 1994), mistrust in others (Ross and Mirowsky 1999), and reduced longevity (Tucker et al. 1997).On the face of it, this seems like a long and forlorn listing, which suggests that parental separation bears down heavily on children and blights their lives to a significant degree across all domains of functioning.
Yet the picture is not as bleak as this litany of problems might suggest. In most cases the size of the reported effects is small; a minority of children are negatively affected, generally only in the presence of other exacerbating factors; and in many cases the existence of a causal connection is contested and other competing explanations for these associations have been put forward. In other words, it is important to be cautious in interpreting the meaning of these patterns of association.Many scholars who have identified associations between family structure and family change and child outcomes have drawn attention to the relatively small size of the effects. Joshi et al.
(1999) describe the effect sizes they measured as “modest”, while Burns et al. (1997) refer to effects that were “very weak”. Allison and Furstenberg (1989) report that the proportion of variation in outcome measures that could be attributed to marital dissolution was generally small, never amounting to more than 3%.
The modest nature of the associations between separation and children’s outcomes means that knowing that a child comes from a separated family, and knowing nothing else about the child, has little predictive power in terms of the child’s wellbeing. There is a wide diversity of outcomes among both groups of children from divorced and intact families, and the adjustment of children following divorce depends on a wide range of other factors.Demo and Acock (1996) note that “the differences in adolescent well-being within family types are greater than the differences across family types, suggesting that family processes are more important than family composition”.
Indeed, O’Connor et al. (2001) showed that differences in adjustment between children within the same family are as great as, and even slightly greater than, differences between children in different families. Demo and Acock (1996) note further that measures of family relations explained the largest proportion of variance in adolescent wellbeing.The majority of children whose parents have divorced function within normal or average limits in the years after divorce (Kelly 1993). As a group, they can not be characterised as “disturbed”. Furthermore, there is a considerable range of functioning within both groups of children from divorced and intact families. Among children whose parents have divorced are many who are functioning quite well, while among children from intact families are many with major adjustment problems. In short, there is no one-to-one relationship between divorce and psychological adjustment problems in children.
In fact, not only do some children do well despite the divorce of their parents, but some children actually benefit from the divorce. Demo and Acock 1988 note that adolescents living in single-parent families can “acquire certain strengths, notably a sense of responsibility, as a consequence of altered family routines”. It is likely, however, that such benefits will accrue only where the altered routines are structured and predictable. Changes that involve the emergence of more chaotic patterns of family life are unlikely to be beneficial for children, even if some strive to furnish a sense of order where their parents fail to do so.
Butler et al. (2002) note that the children in their study demonstrated “an active role helping their parents cope with divorce, even in circumstances where parents did not seem able to contain their more negative emotions and impulses”.Children also benefit where a parental separation provides release from an aversive family situation; for example, where the parental relationship is highly conflicted and the children are drawn into the conflict (Booth and Amato 2001, Jekielek 1998) or where the child’s relationship with a parent figure is of poor quality (Videon 2002). Videon (2002) notes that: The prophylactic effects of parental separation are amplified as adolescents’ satisfaction with the parent–adolescent relationship decreases. When adolescents are residentially separated from an unsatisfying same-sex parent relationship … their level of delinquent behaviour is lower than adolescents who continue to reside with a same-sex parent with whom they have a poor relationship.
A further circumstance where children may benefit from a parental separation is where a parent exhibits antisocial behaviour. Jaffee et al. (2003) found that the less time fathers lived with their children, the more conduct problems the children had, but only if the fathers exhibit low levels of antisocial behaviour. In contrast, when fathers exhibit high levels of antisocial behaviour, the longer they lived with their children the more conduct problems the children exhibited. In such cases, children are likely to be receiving a double whammy of genetic and environmental factors that heighten the risk of conduct problems. Nevertheless, despite all these caveats and qualifications, it remains true that children whose parents separate do less well, on average, across a range of measures of wellbeing. A pressing question that follows from this is why these associations arise. Before examining this question, I will consider briefly whether remarriage changes the outlook for children who have experienced a parental separation, what impact multiple family transitions have on child wellbeing and whether the effects of parental separation are primarily short-term or whether it also has more persistent and enduring consequences for children’s wellbeing.
Difination of TermsAcademic Life Experiences. This refers to the experiences of children without biological parents to their academic life.Children without Biological Parents. This refers to the children in school which without biological parents on their side.
CHAPTER 2METHODThis chapter will discuss the method, data gathering procedure, the questioner use by the researchers and the respondents of this study.Study DesignThe researchers decided to conduct a qualitative study specifically the narrative research design to address the purpose of the study which is to understand the academic performance living without their biological parents of the elementary students and to know the struggle experiences in overcoming the situations of V.S Bangoy Elementary School in their academic life experiences because the researcher find it appropriate to their study. A narrative design is use to conduct interview to explore individual stories to describe the lives of children without their biological parents (Creswell, 2012).
Thus the researcher planned to use interview to gather information to the selected pupil of V.S Bangoy Elementary School in Toril Davao City.Research ParticipantsThe participants of these study are the selected students of V.S Bangoy Elementary School in Toril Davao City S.Y 2018-2019. Using out own questioner researchers came up 5 participants pupils. Hence during interview the researchers choose the prepared respondents for the reason that they are convenient and accessible to be studied.
(Creswell, 2012)Research InstrumentIn these study the researchers made questioners which was used to gather data. The researchers were conducted interview to understand the life academic experience of a child. These questioner has 5 questions that will surely stimulate the reliability of the questioners, the researcher conducted a pilot test.Data Gathering ProcedureBefore conducting the actual data gathering procedure, the researchers conducted a pilot test in V.
S Bangoy Elementary School to get the reliability of the questioner. The researchers gave a letter to the school and after permitting to conduct the study, the class adviser allowed the researchers to select students to be interview.Data Analysis ApproachQualitative Approach which utilize narrative inquiry and analysis.
