Debates on Single Parent

Public Policy Debate

Single parents have often been the focus of public policy debate. The debate has included both practical considerations around the role of government in their support, and moral ones in response to the decline of the traditional family. The moral debate tends to divide between liberal and conservative positions with liberals welcoming or accepting the changes in family structures, while conservatives decry the declines in marriage and the rises in divorce and cohabitation.
The major issue facing single mothers and their children in the United States today is Poverty. Female-headed single parent families comprise 50% of all families in poverty (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1979). Statistics show in the U.S. Census Bureau that children raised by both parents grow up with more financial and educational advantages.
Hence, a policy debate tends to split along similar lines with fiscal conservatives emphasizing a minimal role for government and an employment focus, while liberals tend to support more government involvement in an attempt to minimize poverty through things like social programs such as welfare and insufficient child support.
Children from all family types are at risk when they are experiencing parenting that is inadequate in the terms of attention, being there to nurture and monitor. This can happen in families that are experiencing economic stress and may need to work more than others. (http://social.jrank.org)

Other Debates

Other debates consist of whether or not children from single family homes encounter and engage in violence, which can affect their adult lives.
Also, the debate about whether or not the fact that children from single family homes can become emotionally distracted or upset and preoccupied by the exposure of their family lives, which affects their education in a dire way. One side thinks that adolescences education might be deferred or they can drop out completely due to parental efficacy. Their attitudes toward the importance of an education and the investment and time the put in their children’s education can determine whether the child will enroll in higher education as an adult while the other side believes that it is other factors that contribute to this dire affect in their education.