Single Parents VS. Married Parents
Introduction
The structure of the family has faced dramatic changes especially regarding the rise in the number of single parents across the world. Most of these challenges arise from the social, cultural and political changes that have been experienced.. These challenges have impact on parenting as families struggle to bring up their children. This annotated bibliography endeavors to summarize as well as evaluate various ideas from scholarly sources especially peer-reviewed journals. The sources to be used in this paper will be arranged alphabetically.
Kalmijn, M. (2013). Adult children’s relationships with married parents, divorced parents, and stepparents: Biology, Marriage or Residence. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 75 (5), 1181 – 1193.
In this article, the author compares different relationships and the strength of children’s attachment to different parents encompassed therein. The three types identified are: biologically guardians who have remained married and those who have divorced and stepparents selected from history data from the Dutch. Through a multilevel model, the data was compared between as well as within children. The results indicated that there was a large difference especially regarding the ties to these different parents. However, the differences tended to reduce with the consideration of the period of time of shared residence during childhood were accounted for. To some extent this showed that attachment during the early years contributed to the way children develop ties at latter ages with their parents. On the other hand, divorce proved to have negative impacts compared to biological relatedness which indicated positive effects. Similarly, the protection from marriage favored fathers as contrasted with biological relatedness impact. This, too, shows the importance of security in a family and how it may not be necessarily likened to the type of marriage relationship at hand.
Liu, S.H. & Frank, H. (2012). Should we get married? The effect of parents’ marriage on out-of-wedlock children. Economic inquiry, 50 (1), 17-38.
This study focused on the impacts of marriage after childbirth on the developmental milestones of the children. With a sample drawn from Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study as well as potential outcome model to explain self-selection into a marriage, the authors made their analyses. The study made comparisons between children with the same background traits as well as parental mate-selection prototypes differing in terms of marrying after childbirth. It was found that parents who marry after childbirth contribute to an increased cognitive performance at an early age. This study is evidence that children who find themselves in families where one of their parents is not the biological are likely to understand and process issues faster than others born in the same family. This is because they enter into a new world where they accommodate new figures into their lives and learn to accept them even though they may be connected to their absent parent figure. Single parents, therefore, should not dismiss marriage relations because of children due to their ability to adjust with new parents.
Lopez, T.N. & …
