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Broken house to big house?
Single-parent families receiving unfair stereotyping
sy pauia Lavigne
Senior Reporter
Nine years ago, in the middle of the night, 5-year
old Karrie Carmen became part of the growing popu
lation of children from single-parent families.
Karrie said she didn’t remember many happy mo
ments from her childhood.
"I remember three things — when I had surgery on
my knee, when I had my tonsils out and the night my
dad left."
After her father left, Karrie, her mother, her brother
and her two sisters started a new life in Las Vegas.
They eventually moved back to Lincoln, and now
14-year old Karrie is a freshman in high school with
dreams of attending the University of Nevada-Las Ve
gas with a major in interior design.
Because her dad doesn’t pay child support, her
mom works days and nights at the local Wal-Mart to
support the family. To keep the family going, Karrie’s
days are filled with chores. She cooks, cleans and takes
care of her younger sister.
“My friends will say 'come up and party with us this
weekend.’ I used to be able to do that. But now, I have
to come home and make my little sister dinner, because
my mom doesn’t have a regular 9-to-5 job."
In the early day?, Karrie said she would do any
thing to bring her parents back together. She said she
thought if she got into trouble, her parents would have
to talk to each other to discipline her.
“I didn’t get enough attention. I’d go out and get
totally wasted some nights. I skipped school. I left and
didn’t come back for a few days."
As the years went by, and she realized she couldn’t
bring her parents back together, Karrie said she didn’t
even have time to get into trouble anymore. She’s too
busy being responsible.
That is why she was upset when she heard an FBI.
Often the case is reversed. Because of their situa
tions, children from single-parent families often learn
more responsibility and mature more quickly than their
counterparts, Amato said.
That fact still fails to account for the statistic pre
sented in the FBI statement. Amato said there were a
variety of circumstances accounting for that statistic.
“I remember three things —
when I had surgery on my
knee, when I had my tonsils
out and the night my dad
left-”
— Karrie Carmen
Child from a single-parent family
In a single-parent family, there isn’t the financial
support that exists in a two-parent family, Amato said.
He said with so many single-parent families headed
by divorced women, delinquent child support payments
from the father might also drive the families into pov
erty.
“Single mothers have a very high risk of being in
poverty," Amato said.
He said low income might force mothers into pov
erty-stricken areas which are more conducive to crime
and violence.
Another factor that may lead to a high crime rate
among children from single-parent families is the su
pervision one parent can provide.
What tends to
the problem is that(
children and'
adoles
cents
I think we do nave a low opinion or single-parent
families, and that’s unfortunate," he said. “We have a
lot of single-parent families in our society, and that’s
just the way things are.”
He said society’s negative image of single-parent
families must cease.
"(Single-parent families) are becoming pretty main
stream now,” he said. “If we do hold a negative atti
tude, we make it harder for the kids and the parents
who are doing the best they can."
Dave Shanahan, director of home campus pro
grams at the Boys Town facility in Omaha, agreed that
the negative image and misleading statistics were un
fair to single-parent families. He said calling single
parent families “broken homes" also was an unfair ste
reotype.
"I don’t think there is such a thing as a broken
home,” he said. “There are many wonderful single-par
ent families that are much healed.
“I see so many people trying very hard, and the
label ‘broken home’ is one of the most unfair societal
labels we use," he said.
He said supposing that a single-parent family was
broken meant that a two-parent family was “fixed.”
“There are just as many families with both parents
that are more broken in terms of how they’re working
with their children,” Shanahan said.
He said pure statistics, such as those generated
by the government, should pay more attention to race,
age, sex, demographic location and geographic loca
tion.
“What you currently have to look at is misleading,"
he said, “to say that single-parent families are the
cause. They are not a cause."
He said single-parent families should be outraged
by the image they were receiving.
“They should be just wild with anger
and resentment for that kind of image,” he
said. “Don’t qive in. It’s a struggle.”
statistic stating an estimated 70 percent of juvenile
offenders came from single-parent families.
Although Karrie's brother has been in
and out of jail for several years, she
said ii naa noming to ao
with coming from a
single-parent family.
“He’s just one of
those people who likes to
fight. My brother did it be
cause he wanted to fit in
with his friends.
i Know a ioi ot people
whose parents are still
married, and they still break the law."
She said singling out single-parent families
was unfair.
Several professional child-welfare experts
agreed with Karrie.
They said the initial statistic cast a dark
shadow on single-parent families — one they
didn’t deserve.
Paul Amato, an associate professor ot soci
ology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, spe
cializes in extensive research on children from
single-parent families. He said statistics like
those that came from the FBI could be mis
leading.
“It’s difficult to generalize so many difr
ferent factors involved on the average if you
compare children in single-parent fami-.
lies with children in a more intact two
parent family," he said.
Shanahan said a whole list of factors
contributed to the bad image single
in
parent families had. Because of so
cioeconomic status, education
and location, a percentage of
children from single-parent
families receives a negative
image.
“Being a single parent
changes a lot of things," he
said, “especially the time you
can devote to each child.”
The absence of a father figure,
manv cases, mav lead to the child find
ing another alternative, he said. Often this alterna
tive can take the shape of a gang — which is syn
onymous with crime.
“Gang membership alone fills a need, a vacancy,”
he said. “If they don’t have a teacher role model,
they will turn to a gang or club."
He said turning to a club instead of a gang would
be a positive move.
“If it’s a productive club, we say all right,” Shanahan
said. “If it’s a nonproductive club, society says no."
He said this gang haven had led to the
increase in violence.
“Kids aren’t angrier now, one-on-one,"
he said. “Gangs just have a more violent nature
7 than they used to."
Y Even with these opportunities to be in
volved with crime and violence, an amazing num
ber of children from single-parent families remain
crime-free. Shanahan said the parents were the pre
vention and solution for any possible problems.
He said the simple answer was for parents to spend
more time with their children and teach them to respect
discipline.
“Learning how to say no to a child is about as great
a skill a parent can learn," Shanahan said. "You have
to be able to teach your children to accept criticism."
He said these standards applied to all types of fami
lies.
"If parents can teach their children how to accept
no, we would have one-tenth the amount of crime we
have today."
Problems that occur among chil
dren dealing with behavior, health,
physical development and delin
quency can appear in any type of family, Amato said.
He cited a recent study of children with physical
problems. In the study, 10 percent of the children in
two-parent families exhibited signs of physical prob
lems, compared to 20 percent of children from single
parent families. To make a conclusion based on that
evidence was inaccurate, he said.
"Children from single parents are disproportionately
misrepresented," he said. “Children from single-par
ent families don’t grow up to be delinquent."
have less supervision," Amato said. “Single-parent fami
lies are more limited."
He said that, combined with living in a low-income
neighborhood, was an invitation to violence.
“Children are found associating with adolescent
subcultures," he said. “They live in areas of high crime."
Amato said the majority of children from single
parent families were not on the road to becoming juve
nile offenders.
Illustration by James Mahsllng
