Impact of Single Mother Relationship with Their Sons

[Name of the institute]The Impact of Single Mother Relationship with Their Sons

Introduction

Parenting is hard work that demands much, pays little, and is endless job. Many researchers speaks to parenting as a two-party concept; that is, mother and father working together in mutual respect to serve as role models as they share responsibilities in raising children. But, today, the concept has shifted from family to single-parent unit, most specifically, a mother-son unit, as well as single-mother's perspective of raising a male by herself. The percentage of black children born in the single parent family is increasing day by day. Most of these household are lead by black women. When women have such an immensely important responsibility to raise their children and also have to handle the discrimination on the basis of color of skin then this is obvious that parenting is going to be the toughest task for the single black mothers. This relationship will be discussed in this paper and will see the impact of this relationship.

Background

Today's families are constantly redefining themselves and have been for many years. There is very little to debate over the fact that the numbers of divorces or children born to single women are increasing (Battle, 1995). These two situations alone not only involve the two parents but ultimately the children as well. More and more families are being divided (Battle, 1995). This in turn creates a whole new set of dynamics and expectations within the family. Children whose parents divorce are much more likely to live with their mother than their father (Battle, 1995). For many young women it seems a much more logical choice to remain in the home with their mothers, but this does not necessarily hold true for young men. For young boys or men, living with their mothers may create different expectations from both mothers and sons (Battle, 1995). For young men, regardless of age, family life can take on a wide variety of new roles and expectations not only by those within the family, but those outside the inner family circle (Battle, 1995). The tie that binds mothers and sons has been idealized in Western society as one of the most powerful bonds, yet one that has also been identified as a particular cause for worry.

Raising a child has always been a challenge. When a family has two parents who work together to raise a child, there is much to do. When a child is raised by only one parent, especially when a parent is of a different gender than the child, what issues may develop?

Discussion

Building on the work of research and various qualitative studies examined by different researchers about how Black mothers participate in raising their sons to become men reveals that Black mothers recognized the interrelationship of masculine and feminine experiences and expect Black males to contain in their masculine and feminine self (Porter, 2001).

Boys may react with more anger and outwardly aggressive behaviour than girls if ...