Fatherless children: causes, effects, and social outcomes

Psychology - Fatherless Children

PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES RELATED to FATHERLESS CHILDHOOD

Regardless of specific psychological perspective, the absence of either parent during a child's formative years typically has significant developmental implications. To a certain extent, this is true whether it is the mother or the father who is absent from a child's life, but more particularly, there are different issues typically associated with the loss (or unavailability) of the father that are substantially different from those associated with the loss (or unavailability) of the mother. Boys rely on their fathers to model various elements of male behavior; for girls, the relationship with their father often establishes aspects of their future social expectations of males and their patterns of intimacy in relationships with men in adulthood. To a large extent, the psychological effects of absent fathers on children depends on the specific reason and manner in which the child loses contact with the father, but generally, it is unlikely for fatherless children to remain completely unaffected by the loss. Single Parenthood and Child Development:

In the most general sense and everything else being roughly equal, children who suffer the loss of either parent experience less fulfilling childhoods than children who have the benefit of both parents for the duration of their formative years (Zuckerman, 67-8). Single-parent homes tend to be predominantly fatherless, primarily because marital dissolution is the most common precipitating factor and because it is much more common for mothers to retain primary custody where parents do not share custody of children equally (Wen, 12).

Because of the prevailing discrepancy in compensation rates between males and females in the workplace, fatherless households are much more likely to struggle financially which naturally impacts childhood negatively. Likewise, because females already suffer a higher incidence of depression than males, children raised in fatherless homes are more likely to suffer the developmental consequences of depression in the primary caretaker, which predisposes them to depression and to other significant psychological disorders attributable to depression disorders in parents (Kasl, 94-5).

Both male and female children exhibit greater issues of personal psychological dysfunction and social maladaption attributable to absent fathers, but in all cases, those consequences are greatly exacerbated by animosity and negative statements on the part of the mother about the father. In virtually all cases, this generates issues representing various combinations of internalized guilt for loving their fathers and resentment, either of the mother where their loyalties lie with the father or of the father, where their loyalties or sympathies lie with the mother. Many times, children exposed to these circumstances experience conflicting sentiments across the entire spectrum of emotions toward their parents (Branden, 88; 93).

The Importance of Fatherhood for Male Children:

Male children rely on their fathers to model appropriate male behaviors but during early and middle childhood, tend not suffer as much from absentee fathers because they bond to their mothers roughly to the same degree as female children of the same age.

However, as male children transition into late childhood and adolescence, they tend to withdraw from their mothers and confide much more in their fathers. In fatherless households, the male child often withdraws from the mother in much the same way, but without the option of shifting emotional connection to the father. As a result, fatherless male adolescents exhibit substantially higher rates of delinquency, alcoholism, illegal activity, and perform worse academically (Gerrig & Zimbardo, 226).

The Importance of Fatherhood for Female Children:

In female children, absentee fathers predispose them either to negative expectations or to unrealistic idealized expectations in their dating relationships with men that ultimately increase the likelihood of disappointment and by virtue of multiple mechanisms that undermine those relationships (Bannon & Southern, 22-3). Typically, females raised without their fathers select emotionally unavailable partners who will allow them to reenact the male abandonment they experienced as children. Alternately, they may become dysfunctionally sexually promiscuous in a subconscious effort to receive male approval and intimacy from men.