The psychological impact of single parenting

By Dr. Keith Ablow

Published July 22, 2012

| FoxNews.com

A new focus of psychiatry and psychology should be dedicated to understanding the impact of single parenthood on children—and trying to minimize the damage.  About 41 percent of births in the United States now occur outside the context of marriage.  That’s up from 17 percent three decades ago.

I don’t think that trend is going to change.  I believe it will accelerate.  For lots of reasons, including the fact that we haven’t come up with a structure for marriage that pays heed to each spouse’s need for independence (never mind sexual fulfillment), divorce rates will continue to rise, and marriage will continue to fall out of favor.

While the economic toll of living with one parent—far more frequently a mother than a father—is known to be negative (with childhood poverty much more likely), too little is known and even less published about the psychological effects.  Depression and behavioral disturbances occur at higher rates, but that may be the tip of the iceberg.

Having talked to children and adults in my practice of psychiatry over the past twenty years, I know that there are unresolved and, often, unaddressed concerns that children harbor when they are raised largely by one parent, and even when parenting is shared by divorced spouses.  These include:

• Core psychological questions (which are, of course, not rational) about whether, as the product of a sexual union that did not lead to a clear family architecture, they are not truly “good” or “worthwhile” and may represent living remnants of a storyline gone awry.

• Often unspoken, sometimes unconscious, fear for the wellbeing of the parent with whom they are not living.  Children not only need protection, but feel the need to keep their parents safe, too.  Without seeing them going to sleep at home and waking up safe, they can have trouble believing they are not exposed to unseen, untold dangers.

• Fear about what will happen (in terms of living arrangements and economic needs and needs for nurturance) if their primary caretaker should die—or an inability to cope with the notion of such a tragedy, with resulting exaggerated fear of the loss of loved ones.  Even in divorced families, there is an underlying question, rarely raised by the children or overtly addressed by the parents, about whether either parent would willingly step in to parent full-time, in the event of a tragedy.

• Deep concerns about whether expressing loving and positive feelings about one parent to the other (particularly in cases of acrimony between the two) will be unwelcome, potentially leading to the child developing a manipulative personality style or a reticence to share loving feelings, in general, even later in life.

I am not saying that forcing couples to marry would be a solution, nor that forcing unhappy couples to stay married would be a solution.  Unhappy cohabitation may be more damaging than single parenting.  However, with the trend toward single parenting accelerating, it is absolutely time to decipher what messages and reassurances children should receive, in order to feel safe and loved as they grow up.  It may be that the issues listed above, for example, should be directly raised and addressed at appropriate moments and ages in children’s lives.  I suspect this is the case.

I also suspect that our children would be well-served were we to create an architecture—short of marriage—that allows two adults to express and to codify their complete intention to love and care for their children as life partners in parenting, even if they are no longer partners in any other way.  Traditional marriage—the one-size-fits-all approach to family—isn’t working.  Millions and millions of Americans need another choice that would allow them to parent effectively and predictably, while living alone.

Forgiveness: Food for Health & Happiness

Sara, from Institute of HeartMath, July 15, 2012

My common sense says that the anger, resentment and blame that many people hold on to, often for years, account for a lot of health problems, and learning how to forgive could prove to be curative and preventative.

“Forgiving and releasing old hurts from your system is like taking a mental and emotional bath,” says HeartMath founder and stress researcher Doc Childre. “Notice how people bathe their bodies on a regular basis, yet they will store negative, toxic junk in their mental and emotional natures for years without a cleanup.”

Negative emotions, such as anger, resentment and blame, can cause stress to build up in the body; where there is excessive stress, there is the potential for all sorts of physical, mental and emotional problems. Most notably, elevated stress levels can impair the body’s immune system, putting you at risk for heart disease, chronic pain and depression, among many other debilitating conditions.

A Philadelphia-based nonprofit believes the failure to forgive, what it calls “unforgiveness,” is a major problem in the world today. “We believe that unforgiveness is one of the most destructive problems of our day,” the organization, Release! states on its website, www.releasenow.org. “Unforgiveness can ruin our relationships, rob us of our happiness, and even impact our physical health. Unfortunately, unforgiveness is also one of the problems that is most likely to be ignored and dismissed.

“It is a problem, however, that people have the power to solve, by learning to forgive,” Doc Childre said, stressing that, “it is not something you can learn overnight.”

I have found in my life that to forgive, people need to dislodge their judgments, even before they fully understand why things happened. But most people want to understand why someone “wronged” them before they forgive. It’s a Catch-22 situation. This is what makes forgiveness so difficult and why people so often fail at it. After a while it seems easier to live in a state of pout, disdain, or resentment than to try the forgiveness process again.

But we can’t approach forgiveness as some sort of obligation. Forgiveness as an act of duty is not effective. It can leave you feeling as if you’ve done some good, but can mask over the resentment, rather than release it. Telling yourself, “I know I should forgive,” is not the same as forgiving. If there is no genuine feeling behind it, then your forgiveness lacks the sincere heart intent and commitment to release someone cleanly at mental, emotional, and cellular levels.

Nor can we approach forgiveness with the attitude of doing someone a favor. It’s important to remember that you’re the one who comes out the most by releasing the emotional baggage. Forgiveness upgrades your mental, emotional and physical well-being by reducing the neurochemicals that drain and debilitate your system.

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” ~ Mark Twain

The following exercise created by Doc Childre can help you discover a deeper level of your heart power, where feelings such as compassion, tolerance, understanding and forgiveness reside.

Forgiveness Exercise

• Think of a person or situation you have resented and want to forgive completely.
• Send all of the thoughts and emotions that come up in your head about the person or situation – “this includes past associations, memories, anger, hurt, resentments, etc.” – gently to the heart. As often as these thoughts or feelings pop up in your head again, simply send them to your heart, which is the clearinghouse for your emotions.
• At the same time, try to feel and send heart energy, love, compassion and forgiveness to the person or situation.

Special Notes about the Exercise:

• You may have to practice this exercise a few times to bring the old head thoughts under heart management. With heart management, you are actually contacting a different level of intelligence within, known as heart intelligence. Heart intelligence has the power to quickly release old resentments and hurts, change your perceptions and bring you to a satisfying understanding of the situation.
• Forgiving yourself can be the hardest thing to do. Often people feel that they must remember their wrongdoings and beat themselves up for it, or they will not learn from it. The opposite is true.
• Often people feel that they are doing “good” by sustaining self-guilt. This is not true and creates a steady running stress deficit within their system. As you practice forgiveness from the heart, not just the mind, you clear the energy drains and reset your system for a fresh start. Sustaining guilt translates into increased aging which moves fast enough on its own.

It’s understandable that it’s hard to forgive yourself or others at times, yet practicing this exercise and making a genuine effort to do so from the heart really can help things work out better for all concerned. I’ve found this to be true in my life and would love to hear your stories of forgiveness.

Sara, from Institute of HeartMath

Sara Childre is President and CEO of the non-profit Institute of HeartMath. Since 1991, Sara has helped oversee and develop HeartMath trainings, educational products and scientific programs. She was appointed vice president and CFO of the institute in 1992, then president and CEO in 1998.

Have you watched this Mormon Message titled

Saving Your Marriage?