Effect of Single Mothers' Stress on Quality Child Care

The mother reports that the child responded well to different people and family members and friends reported the child was easy to care for. The mother however reported that being a single mother was stressful.

In response to the question set, I will go into detail of the study, consisting of the background, main hypotheses, as well the aims, procedure and results gathered from the study; explaining the four research methods chosen to investigate,

The methods or style of parenting, teaching and engagements strong impacts on the child development as it is the primary socialization point for children. It gives children a point of reference as when they are young they grow observing and learning keenly on what their parents are doing. Studies show that, children that are raised by active, involving and playful fathers performs better in school, have higher IQ and can cope with school related stress easily compared to those that are raised in families where father figure is absent or less involving. It also shows

Thesis: To understand that there are many parents raising their children alone with no help at all. Many single parents have different circumstances that cause them to raise their children by themselves. Being a single parent is not easy there are good days and bad days and most single parents must make it through no matter what. Many single parents do not realize that their children are looking at them for the rest of their lives.

Today, there has been a minimal amount of research conducted on infant-mother relationships, and their association with the entry of toddlers into nonparental childcare facilities. There also appears to be a lack of knowledge on toddler stress levels during this adjustment period. The current study was conducted in Berlin, Germany, where children typically spend about a year at home before they enter nonparental childcare. Due to this delay, researchers were able to ask questions such as:

What a majority of research has found about the role of a parent is that it is extremely stressful. (13) found that a lot of stressors came before even becoming a parent. The idea and roles of being a parent was enough to add stress too expecting parents. For women the biggest stressor was the role itself of becoming a new mother and for both men and women the social and gender expectations placed upon them also caused stress (13). Not only is the idea of becoming a parent stressful but the added stress of societal norms plays a huge factor in the way parents approach and feel about parenthood. (16) also attributes parental stress to the birth story. Dependent upon the parent’s birth plan and what they expect to happen during delivery and what actually

Through many years, children growing up in single family homes has been discovered as problems. “At first glance, defending single mothers and their children. Raised by a strong and resourceful single mother, I turned out OK” (Wilcox). Being raised up with one parent seems to be stressful and impossible, but for decades its become possible to happen. In the society today, there are children growing up overcoming emotional stages and achieving their goals whether if they have both parents to show them difficult paths in their life that they will overcome as a growing human being. The problems that occurs within raising a child in a single family home compared to a married home can be different or the same depending on the disciplinary actions. There are many questions asked, does a child need both parent figures to be raised? Does a son need a father figure, does a daughter need a mother figure? Among all the questions asked, is there a person taking care the main responsible with much undertaking, on the single parenting topic it has become an interesting argument. People need to be more informed with raising a child. Raising a child does not rely on the structure of a family, it is more to how a parent is discipline and having a proper process of teaching their child with learning how to be mature and respectful. Children of a single home can be progressive with the same emotional, social able, and interactive behavioral skills that is raised with both parents.

This section will provide the rationale of the methods employed and highlight how the study will be performed. The study will examine the population with the sample size identified, data collection method and its analysis will be offered.

The study Transition to Child Care: Associations With Infant-Mother Attachment, Infant Negative Emotion, and Cortisol Elevations (Ahnert et al, 2004) shows the consequences child care has on young children. The researchers studied young children transitioning into child care and revealed that the children had higher levels of cortisol, a hormone that is produced in response to stress, in the child care setting than at home. “Analyses of both behavioural distress and HPA system activity levels clearly demonstrated that entry into child care was stressful for these toddlers” (Anhert et al, 2004: 645). Even with their mothers present the cortisol levels were still elevated due to the stressful surrounding.

There are many various types of childcare that a parent can choose from when it comes to educating and socializing their child in order to prepare them to attend elementary schools and higher education. Childcare centers range anywhere from Head Start centers, daycare centers, family childcare centers, to childcare provided by parents or relatives. Each childcare option comes with its own costs and benefits. Head Start centers, which are funded through the government for predominately low-income families, and children, provide children with the socialization and cognitive resources a growing child’s brain desperately desires (citation). Family child care is another type of childcare, in which a child goes to a private location such as an individual’s

Specifically, trying to determine whether or not the factors can be adjustable and what coping processes had an impact on children that are exposed to high levels of stressors, such as a divorce. In addition to the study, researchers inspected the relations between program-induced changes in parenting and children coping through the processes by testing whether or not experimentally; did these induced changes in parenting, account for any provisionally induced changes in coping through the processes. The research was broken into several models: short term mediation model, which was a follow up after 6 months and a long term mediation which was a follow up after 6 years, both follow ups were conclusive with effects improving the quality of a mother child relationship leading to improvements with coping during post divorce. The reasoning of the trials indicated that participation from the mothers in the program significantly reduced the child mental health problems and improved parenting with effective coping processes through effective

The journal article is talking about the difficulties which the single-parent families facing, such as emotional problems, housing stress and financial stress. It generated different viewpoints from different literature, and suggested an approach to meet the needs of single-parents.

The study by Estefan, Coulter, Vandeweerd, Armstrong, and Gordki had two main purposes. The first was to determine the different stressors and attitudes given by the parents in a child welfare-parenting program. Program files and interviews were used to conclude the statistics of the different stressors that could cause ineffective parenting to children. The second main purpose was to get a better understanding of the different issues, so there can be better involvements growth in the parenting.

The more negative terms that are used to describe sole parent families include; broken family, struggling, disadvantaged and separated. These terms can quite often reflect negatively towards the parent whom is solely taking care of the child(ren). Through the negative terminology, it can negatively affect the wellbeing of the individuals. “broken family” can negatively impact physical wellbeing due to the fact of the stress that is placing upon the individual, hence affecting their self-worth and belief in themselves as well as their confidence in raising the child(ren) alone, therefore, ignoring their own health, such as not gaining the correct dieting requirements, therefore further impacting their physical wellbeing. Emotional wellbeing however, is hindered greatly due to stress, especially of the parent believes that they have failed as a primary provider. Through the negative perceptions of self, spiritual wellbeing is impacted as their purpose in life, to raise their child(ren) has been compromised by the terminology throughout the community. However, through positive terminology, such as “independent” will have a positive influence on emotional wellbeing through empowerment and therefore will supply strength to embrace their situation. Through politically correct terms, such as “divorced” and “widowed” can improve physical wellbeing as sole parents gain the mind-set of improving self in order to provide for their family and therefore, improve, ultimately, physical

The objective of this chapter is to describe the procedures used in the analysis of the data and present the main findings. It also presents the different tests performed to help choose the appropriate model for the study. The chapter concludes by providing thorough statistical interpretation of the findings.