Single parents are also a family, and they need more "love"

【Counseling】

Photo courtesy/Huang Lixun

introduction

The family structure in the 21st century is deteriorating, and the proportion of single-parent families is increasing year by year, whether in the United States, Taiwan or China. How the church responds to the voice of this generation and provides the psychological, emotional, social, religious and other needs of single-parent families so that children and adults can grow up healthily in single-parent lives is an urgent challenge that the new generation must face.

However, the current focus of many church ministries is nothing more than church building, church planting, or missionary work. If there are those who value family ministry, they mostly focus on the relationship between married couples, such as how to build a happy home, how to have a happy marriage as a couple, etc. There are very few ministries that focus on single-parent families.

It is understandable that the church pays attention to the happiness of believers’ marriages, but if in the process it makes divorced or widowed people feel ignored by the church, and makes those who have made mistakes or failed marriages feel ashamed in the church, this is the church’s fault. The Lord Jesus once said: "Those who are healthy do not need a doctor, but those who are sick." (Matthew 9:1) This is when it is implied that anyone is sick and needs healing. We are all sinners, we all have imperfect marriages, and we are all in need of God’s healing.

Difficulties and struggles faced by single parents

Becoming a single parent is a psychologically difficult transition. In the development process of the family life cycle, if a family or individual is out of touch with the normal order of the family, it will affect the stability of subsequent life. The shock and change of becoming a single parent forces individuals to accept new role adjustments in their daily lives in order to restore balance. Single-parent families do face more difficulties than two-parent families, and the struggles most commonly faced by single-parent families can be divided into the following categories:

A. Emotional distress

No matter what the reason is, becoming a single parent is an extremely painful experience. The loneliness, helplessness, shattered hope, blow to self-esteem, helplessness and anger at fate, fear and hesitation about the future that single parents feel cannot be fully understood by outsiders. In the early stages of becoming a single parent, you will experience psychological and emotional shock and denial, confusion and confusion, loneliness and desolation, depression and sadness, etc. This is called the "severe pain period". For example, if a partner dies suddenly or is divorced without any psychological preparation, the person concerned may be in a state of shock and denial, or may not know what to do next. Sometimes after waking up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, I don't know what the meaning of my life is. When walking in and out of the crowd, if I see couples in pairs but I am alone, I will inevitably feel sad. When this mood is at its lowest, you will fall into depression.

If we can understand that these are actually natural and normal emotional reactions, we can help the parties involved learn how to face and solve the pain with a positive attitude, so that they can get out of the haze.

B. Concerns about children’s upbringing

Due to partial deficiencies in the parental role, single-parent families often face many troubles and challenges due to overloaded roles. The main reason is that single parents are exhausted while taking care of family and work, which inevitably leads to a decline in the quality of care, companionship and communication with their children. If a child does not do well in schoolwork or behaves deviantly, single parents will inadvertently have a heavy psychological burden.

Another worry is that when their children are sick, single parents often worry that they cannot concentrate on taking care of their children, which can lead to depression and guilt.

When a child reaches marriageable age, the biggest worry is: Will the child growing up in a single-parent family have a negative impact on his or her future marriage? Do you have any doubts about the belief that "marriage is a lifelong commitment"?

Another problem single-parent families face in their lives is "holiday blues." Life is busy on weekdays, but when there are festivals, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas and other long holidays, single parents feel even more desolate and lonely when they see their neighbors and their families happily going away with their children. Although some single mothers also want to take their children on a long trip, they are worried that they have a poor sense of direction and the distance is too far to drive long distances alone. Some single fathers don’t know how to cook a sumptuous meal to celebrate the holidays with their children. Father's Day or Mother's Day is often an emotionally tangled time for children from single-parent families. For example, some primary school teachers ask their children to make Father's Day cards for their fathers on Father's Day. Children whose fathers are "absent" at this time often fall into an emotional low because they don't know what to do with the card. For many single-parent families, festivals are not only empty terms, but also bring more loneliness to the parties concerned.

C. Life and economic pressure

After becoming a single parent, another realistic and urgent problem is that the financial situation is often not as good as before. According to research, the lives of 60% single-parent families in the United States fall below the poverty line, and single-parent families dominated by women are the most serious. The reasons are: 1) Many women's jobs pay less than men. 2) Single-parent women shorten their working hours in order to take care of their children; many single-parent women were originally housewives and lacked work experience. Once the family is divided into two and the main income earner leaves, the remaining single parents will have to face sudden changes. increased economic pressure. 3) Some fathers who have not obtained custody only provide a small amount of money when faced with issues such as food expenses and children's education expenses. Some even irresponsible people walk away, forcing the other parent to live a very difficult life. There are also single parents who have accumulated huge legal fees due to various legal lawsuits during the divorce process, causing financial problems in their future lives.

▲Member of single parent ministry of International True Love Family Association.

D. Interpersonal stress

Since society still has negative evaluations of single-parent families, single parents tend to have low self-esteem or be overly sensitive when faced with strange looks from around them. They psychologically believe that everyone is discriminating against them and are unwilling to take the initiative to interact with friends, leading to self-isolation. .

After becoming single parents, some people do not want to have contact with relatives of their ex-spouse or friends of both parties in the past, so they will inevitably lose some relatives and old friends; some people move away from their original place of residence to avoid being exposed to the situation and hurt their feelings. Some people have lost some close friends; some people have changed their previously established interpersonal relationships due to job changes; and even worse, some people have neglected contact with the outside world due to the busy roles of parents and financial problems in life.

Child counseling for single parent families

Studies have shown that children from single-parent families, especially children whose parents are divorced, will also experience various emotional distress similar to that experienced by adults. Among them, 27% children will take about two years to recover; the other 34% children will take about three to ten years, because these children will hide the pain in their hearts, especially boys; finally, there are 39% children Never recover from sorrow. Such children grow up to have expectations for intimate relationships and are vulnerable to injury. They are more sensitive than other children, more afraid of being rejected, betrayed or abandoned, and lack the ability to "bear loss". When encountering setbacks or failures in career or interpersonal relationships, they are particularly vulnerable to injury and often feel lonely, hopeless, and lacking love and protection.

However, some scholars have pointed out that for the children of 75% to 80%, the divorce of their parents did not cause permanent harm to them. It may be that the vast majority of the children have adapted and embarked on the road to recovery two years after their parents divorced. road. Because, rather than being exposed to the conflicts that often occur before parents divorce, it is better to grow up in a loving single-parent family. The latter is relatively more beneficial to the psychological development of children. However, if single parents unthinkingly believe that "single-parent families are harmful to children," this idea will have adverse consequences. Because these children may think that they are really abnormal, and the result of long-term thinking that they have problems is that they actually develop deviant behaviors. In psychology, it is called "Self-fulfilling Prophecy" (Self-fulfilling Prophecy), which means "others expect you to be abnormal", and in the end you "really become abnormal". If children from single-parent families have been severely traumatized in the past, in addition to needing professional counseling to help them get over the pain, the church can become the "second family of origin" for these single-parent children. Here, they can open their hearts, accept God’s unconditional love and healing, grow in health, and receive God’s grace and blessings throughout their lives. The church is the family of God. In this family, anyone with a hurt heart can be healed, and single-parent families are no exception.

I hope that the church can pay attention to and care for single-parent families and help them truly realize that God not only has grace, mercy, comfort and healing, but He can also make roads in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. If single parents can believe that God will do something new and turn their suffering into a "make-up blessing," then the church will become a source of spring for single-parent families, allowing them to hold their heads high and start over.

Author profile

Pastor Huang Lixun has received complete training in Christian theology and marriage and family counseling. He is currently a lecturer at the "International True Love Family Association" and a counselor at the Single-Parent Family Care Center. He is often invited to share topics such as marriage, parent-child, and single parenting in North America and Asia. He is the author of "The 10 Big Sayings to Say Goodbye to Marriage" and "The 10 Big Sayings to Saying Goodbye to Parenting".