Help Single Parents and Their Kids to Thrive

Every primary care pediatrician has many children being raised by one parent – whether it’s a result of divorce, abandonment, or death. You can help these kids and their sometimes-overwhelmed parent navigate the challenges that arise both initially and over time.

Start with a quick overview assessment of the child’s functioning in key aspects of their lives (school, family, friends, activities, and mood); consider the different impacts an absent or lost parent can have at various developmental stages; and screen single parents for depression and how they react to the stress of raising a child or children on their own.

Remind parents that questions about the loss of the absent parent cannot be answered once. At every developmental stage, the child will want to know more as they rethink and reformulate what happened. The quality of the questions will change as the child gains greater intellectual development. Also, tell parents that as a child is exposed to other families and different situations, emotional issues about their own family are likely to change as well. Although hard and sad, the single parent should be open for questions that will come almost anytime.

If the feelings toward the lost parent are positive, you can recommend the family try to appreciate that the lost parent is still accessible through memories. Many kids (and adults) talk to the absent parent in play, in fantasy, or when going to sleep at night. You can encourage parents to keep important keepsakes; show pictures as appropriate; offer key stories; and consider how to elaborate on age-appropriate details over time. For example, a 12-year-old whose father died in Afghanistan might regrieve his loss when he watches the TV news, after an accomplishment like making the football team, at key ceremonies such as graduating high school, or when going off to college.

The loss of the other parent is not a single or isolated event for the caretaking parent. About 90% of the time, it is a mother or woman who is raising one or more children alone. The loss of the father often hits her recurrently. Reminders of single parenthood can come the first day of school when many children have two parents dropping them off; during graduations from every grade; at holiday parties; and on the sidelines of soccer fields. In addition to these big events, a single mother might face emotional challenges when she sees intact families on many smaller occasions as well.

This applies equally to men and women. Men who become single dads will face multiple social situations in which they, too, are reminded they are going it alone.

The emotional state and emotional responsiveness of the single parent is crucial and plays into how the child responds to a parental loss, depending in large part on their developmental stage. The way infants and very young children feel valued is the response of the parent, for example. If the parent is preoccupied or depressed, the quality and frequency of his or her responsiveness decreases, and the infant may perceive that she is just not as valuable to the most important person in her life. This has some consequences on self-esteem and even on learning.

At early school age, when a child is 5 or 6 years old, he begins to differentiate and may play sports with one parent and watch TV or read with another. The child of a single parent has to cope with everything coming from one source. It precludes the typical dance that happens around kindergarten or first grade when other children will say "I like Mommy better" or "I like Daddy better."

Older, school-age children with two parents might have one help with math and the other with science homework or school projects. Meeting needs gets more complicated for a single parent, particularly if he has two, three, or four kids all at different ages. The sole parent could be cooking with a 5-year-old, trying to kick a soccer ball with an 8-year-old, and at the same time trying to respond to the needs of his 3-year-old. Be sensitive to how overwhelmed the parent is in the home.

One of the most important elements to assess is the parent’s functioning. Divorce, death, abandonment, or an out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy can all put a single mother under a fair amount of stress, often both emotional and financial. How the mother reacts is going to have a major impact on her functioning as a single parent and on the child.