Single Parenting
Tweens and teens need us more than ever.
Barry G. Ginsberg, Ph.D.
PARENTGUIDE News December 2005
When I was growing up, families of divorce
were referred to as “broken.”
Obviously, something that’s broken can’t
be good. Growing up in a single-parent family,
I absorbed society’s attitudes toward
families like mine. To compensate for feeling
disadvantaged, I’d create wonderful
fantasies about how rich and powerful my father
was, and brag about him to my friends.
Today, there are many more single-parent families
than there were when I was a child—
it’s been estimated that 50 percent
of American children will live in a single-parent
family at one time in their lives. Fortunately,
though, we no longer worry about “fixing”
broken families. We know that whether a parent
has died or there has been a separation or
divorce, single-parent families are wonderfully
diverse.
Single parents, however, often face special
challenges, especially when their children
reach the tween years. During this time when
kids are changing rapidly in all spheres of
their development— physical, emotional,
social and sexual, they need their parents
more than ever. Yet at the same time, they’re
also beginning to break away from the family.
How can single parents accommodate both these
needs, while maintaining balance in their
own lives?
The answer lies in learning to collaborate.
In my way of thinking, the most important
task facing single parents of tweens and teens
is to create open, collaborative relationships
with their kids, and maintain this collaboration
throughout all the significant changes that
a family and its individual members undergo.
Learning to collaborate takes time, but it’s
well worth the effort. The developmental and
psychological literature has found that parents
who collaborate— who take the time to
listen to their children, considering the
validity of what kids have to say while at
the same time expecting the same respectful
attitude from their kids— are in the
best position to foster individuality, self-control
and self-assertion in their children. You
can model this skill by working hard when
you listen to your children, no matter the
subject, and taking their feelings into consideration
when making family decisions.
Mutual respect is rooted in good communication
skills. Single parents can affect the quality
of communication within the family in many
ways. First, ask everyone to agree to not
be critical of each other. Instead advise
everyone to share their feelings. Second,
always emphasize how important it is for all
family members to understand their own feelings
and those of others. Explain that good listeners
do two things: they listen before expressing
their own perspective; then, they acknowledge
the other person’s feelings, such as
what the other person said, before speaking
themselves. Finally, parents need to own their
own feelings and not project them onto others.
When conversations adhere to these tenets,
family members can respect each other even
when they disagree.
Along with maintaining respect and good communication,
it’s important that single parents exercise
the following practices.
As a single parent, it’s important for
you to be able to cope with transition and
change. You may already be in the midst of
this process, dealing with the circumstances
that have led you to become a single parent.
To best handle this transition and master
new ones, develop and maintain a can-do attitude.
Keep positives in mind, recognize your strengths
and be realistic about what you can do. It’s
also helpful to develop a resource system—
composed of family, friends, neighbors, church
members, community groups, support groups—
that enhances your family’s security
and stability. Feel confident that you can
count on your resources when you need them.
Recognize reality: you can’t do everything
single-handedly. Learn to share the load with
your family. To accomplish this, communicate
to your children that your family is a team.
Hold weekly family meetings during which everyone
gets to speak and consider other points of
view. This will not only enhance the family’s
decision-making process, but also increase
children’s capacity and willingness
to cooperate. If you involve your children
in the process of deciding family rules, your
family life will run more smoothly.
You can’t work all the time. Scheduling
time to play together, without letting chores
or responsibilities interfere, is a crucial
part of family life. Create time for the family
as a whole to play together, and also for
all family members to pursue their interests
on their own. Make sure you take time for
yourself as well. If it’s hard for you
to relax, learn some relaxation techniques
to help you cope with stress, and share what
you learn with your children. Your modeling
is the best teacher.
Though you may have problems relating to your
ex-partner, encourage your children to honor
their relationship with him or her and be
supportive when the children are under the
other parent’s care. The better you
can communicate with the other parent, the
happier your children will be and the better
they will cope.
Continuing to celebrate the rituals you observed
as a two-parent family enhances everyone’s
sense of continuity and stability. At the
same time, develop new rituals that are unique
to your present-day family.
Although it may seem as if tweens care more
about their friends and peer group than they
do about their parents, a nationwide survey
indicates that the opposite is true. Among
kids between the ages of 9 and 14, 57 percent
would rather spend time doing something fun
with their Mom or Dad than go to the mall
to go shopping. However, only 32 percent of
these kids say they spend a lot of time with
their parents— that’s less than
one in three kids. Nearly one in four kids
(23 percent) attribute this to the fact that
their parents are busy at work. Asked what
they’d most want to change about their
parents’ jobs, 63 percent of kids said
that they wished their parents had a job that
left them more time to do fun things together.
Almost one in five kids believe that they
themselves are over scheduled, which cuts
into the time they get to spend with their
parents.
This eye-opening survey reveals what many
of us long suspected: that during the formative
tween and teen years, kids need us more than
ever. No matter what shape your family may
take, you can grow together to develop strong,
positive, constructive, emotionally-connected
lives.
Barry G. Ginsberg, Ph.D., author of 50
Wonderful Ways to Be a Single-Parent Family
(New Harbinger Publications, Inc.) and Relationship
Enhancement Family Therapy (John Wiley &
Sons, Inc.; Relationship Enhancement Press),
has been a practicing child and family psychologist
for more than 30 years. He is the executive
director of the Center of Relationship Enhancement
(www.relationshipenhancement.com) and Ginsberg
Associates, a child and family psychology
practice in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Ginsberg
has hosted a twice-weekly television program
on parenting, contributed to a column on parenting
in the local newspaper, and has been interviewed
and quoted in many magazine and newspaper
articles and radio and TV shows.
