Perceiving Loneliness Among Single and both Parent Children

Perceiving Loneliness Among Single and both Parent Children

Dr. Chandrakant Jamadar

Assistant Professor P.G Studies in Psychology, Maharaini Arts & Commerce College for Women’s Mysore

ABSTRACT

The present study was conducted in Mysore. The purpose of the study was to assess the parenting and perceiving loneliness among single and both parent children. In this study one hundred eighty children are involved (60 sing parent (mother) 60 single parent (father) and 60 both parent (mother and father) of age (10-16, boys and girls) comprised the sample of the study. Perceiving loneliness and parenting scale was administered to each child. Data was analyzed in terms of mean, SD, t-value and co-efficient of correlation. Statistical analysis revealed that there exist significant relationships between single and both parent children. The children with single parent had more unsatisfactory than both parent children.

Key Words: Loneliness, Parent, Personality, Perception, Psychological Wellbeing

Introduction

Loneliness as an important personality variable in current psychological literature is of particular interest to social psychologists. Probably most people experience painful feeling of isolation and loneliness at some time in their lives. Because life if filled with social transitions that disrupt personal relationships and set the stage for loneliness. Being unloved and lonely has been called “the biggest and greatest poverty”. Perhaps for more people than we ever realize, the world is a lonely place. As Becker (1962) pointed out, “Let it be stressed emphatically that the most difficult realization for man in the possible that life has no meaning”. Without meaning life is wasted, futile and empty. Therefore, freedom from loneliness is important for one’s physical and psychological wellbeing.

Loneliness refers to an individual’s subjective perception that person lacks close interpersonal relationships. An individual is lonely if he/she desire close interpersonal relationships but is unable to establish them. According to peplau and Perlam (1982) “loneliness is the unpleasant experience that occurs when a person’s network of social relations is deficient in some way”. There are three approaches which describe loneliness. The first approach emphasizes inherent human needs for intimacy. The second emphasizes people’s perception and evaluation of their social relation and the third approach to loneliness identifies insufficient social enforcement as the main deficiency experienced by lonely people. Also we are classifying the loneliness in the term of “situational loneliness, chronic loneliness, emotional and social loneliness.

Personality Correlated and Loneliness

Lonely people tend to be more introverted and shy, more self-conscious, and less assertive (Jones, Briggs and Smith, 1986). Jones, Carpenter and Quitana (1985) in a study revealed that lonely people often have low self-esteem and in some cases, have poor social skills.

Loneliness is also associated with anxiety and depression. A lonely individual experiences a feeling of profound sadness and the whole world becomes joyless and gray. Nothing seems worthwhile any more; emptiness prevails, and only bad things are expected.

The self – disclosures of those who are lonely tend to be inappropriate. They are intimate with those of same sex and too unrevealing to members of the opposite sex. Among the effects of these interpersonal deficits is the tendency to be cynical about other people, to feel pessimistic about life and to express an external locus of control ( Jones, 1982). Their views of the opposite sex seem designed to maximize failure. Lonely individuals are less likely to believe in love as a basis for marriage and more likely to expect that their own marriage will end in divorce (Jones, Hausson and Smith, 1980). Several of these personality factors can be both a cause and a consequence of loneliness. For example, people with low self-esteem may be less willing to take risks in social settings. This could make it harder for them to form friendships and thereby increase their chances of loneliness on the other hand, the experience of being lonely for a long time may lead a person to see him or herself as a social failure and so cause a drop in the person’s self-esteem.

Apart from the above personality correlates, investigators have demonstrated a kind of link between loneliness and physical and psychological illness. Loneliness has been linked to poor health (Berg et al., 1981), alienation and suicide (Deaton et al., 1977); negative self-concept (Goswick and Jones, 1981), feeling of hopelessness, vacuum and defeat (Russell et a., 1978) and with anxiety depression and hostility and with psycho-somatie disease like heart – attack and hypertension (Thiel, Parker and Bruee, 1973)  Single – parent families are often economically less well off, diminishing children’s opportunities.  Many single parents are unable to find good child care, and they feel psychological stress and sometimes guild over the child-care arrangements they must make for economic reasons.  Time is always at a premium in single-parent families (Hetherington,1999). Furthermore, for children of divorce, the parent’s separation is often a painful experience that can make it difficult for the children to establish close relationship later in more.   Children might blame themselves for the breakup or feel pressure to take sides.  Most evidence, however, suggests that children from single-parent families are no less well adjusted than those from two-parent families.  In fact, children can be more successful growing up in a harmonious single-parent family than in a two-parent family in which the parents are engaged in continuous conflict with one another ( Harold et al., 1997; Kelly,1999: Clarke-Steward  et al., 2000)

The consequences for children of living in a single – parent household are not invariably negative or positive.  Certainingly, the large number of single- parent house-holds has largely reduced the stigma of such family situations.  How children fare, then, depend on a variety of factors including the family’s economic status, the amount of time the parent can devote to the children and the overall amount of household stress.

At present, more than half of all marriages in the United States and many other countries end in divorce.  This means that a large proportion of children and adolescents will spend at least part of their lives in a one-parent family – typically, with their mothers (Norton & Moorman 1987).  Adolescents react to divorce with fear, anxiety and guilt.  They become angry at the remaining parent, wondering, “What did she/ he do to make my father / mother leave and sometimes they blame themselves.  “Why doesn’t he love me anymore”.

The effect of divorce adolescents emotional well being depend on many different  factors, including the quality of the care they received before the divorce(Raphael et al.,1990) and the nature of the divorce itself whether amicable or filled with anger and resentment.  The more negative the feelings of parents toward each other, the more likely is emotional harm to the adolescent (e.g., Mc call, 1994).  One lasting effect of divorce that has emerged in recent years is this child who’s divorced seems to be significantly less likely to marry than those whose parents did not (Lemme, 1999).

Adolescents living in parent-absent families face another set of problems.  A growing percentage of children are being born to unmarried mothers, and many of these youngsters never even know their fathers.   What are the risks of growing up in a parent – absent (typically, father- absent) family.  Research findings suggest that they include the following, increased risk for delinquent behaviors and for depression and anxiety, impaired cognitive and school performance and difficulties in forming meaningful relationships, including stable romantic ones (e.g.,Sommers et al.,1993).  As you might expect, the magnitude of such effects is even greater when the mothers of the children are themselves little more than children.  This is a serious problem, because in the United States alone, several hundred thousand babies are born each year to mothers seventeen years old or younger, the effects having an unmarried teenage mother. Certainly they are negative but just how negative seems to depend to an important extent on the degree to which adolescent mothers are ready, emotionally and cognitively, for the burdens of motherhood, the less ready they are in these respects, the poorer the outlook for their babies.

Review of Literature

Childhood experiences may predispose individuals to loneliness. Shaver (1986) has used infant – parent attachment theory to predict that adults will be less vulnerable to loneliness if they happened to be securely attached to their parents during childhood.

Perry and Nalasi (1987) suggest that children who lose a parental attachment, relationship because of death or divorce may be at greater risk for loneliness as adults than are children from intact families. Taking a slightly different approach to this issue, Lobdell and Perlman (1988) gave a questionnaire to college- aged women and also to their mothers and fathers. One of their most striking findings was that lonely parents tended to have lonely daughters. There was a significant correlation between the grown daughter’s current level of loneliness and the current loneliness of her mother and father. In addition the daughter’s perception of her parent’s child rearing practices was also linked to her loneliness. Women who were least lonely described their parents as having been positively involved during their childhood, as being reliable and trustworthy, and as having a happy marriage. These results are consistent with the notion that childhood experiences predispose adults to loneliness. Langer et al. (1974) found parental coldness or parental rejection a causal factor of loneliness.

Materials and Methods

The study was conducted in Mysore city in Karnataka. The objectives of the study were to assess the parenting and perceiving loneliness among single and both parent children. In this study 180 samples are selected from single parent having mother only (N-60), having father (N-60) and both parent (N-60) age group is 10 to 16 years sample were selected by simple random method. Manual of perceived loneliness scale (Dr. Praveen Kumar Jha 1999) was administered to each child to assess and measure the perceived loneliness. This scale has 36 items, this scale possess fairly high reliability. Two indices of reliability of L-scale were determined. Firstly, it was determined by Kuder – Richardson formula and the obtained value was to be .65 and validity is .001 levels on a sample of 100 undergraduate students.

The parenting scale (Bharadwaj et al., 1998) was administered to each child to assess the parenting style. It has 40 items related to eight different modes of parenting and are spread in a meaningful manner except those related to the marital conflict Vs Marital adjustment. The reliability of this test co-efficient of reliability is .72 and validity co-efficient is .75.

An interview schedule was used to collect background information of the respondents. Data was analyzed in terms of Means, SD and Pearson correlation method.

Results and Discussion

During the 1950’s television shows in the United States painted a glowing picture of family life.  A caring loving mother a kind and wise father, considerate siblings even as a teenager I knew that there was a sizable gap between these images and reality.  For many today’s adolescents, however, it’s not so much a gap as a chasm.  Many teenagers find themselves in what are known as dysfunctional families that do not meet children needs and which, in fact, may do them serious harm (Amato,1990:Mckenry, Kotch & Browne,1991).   Some dysfunctional families are neglectful of or even mistreat children.  For example, consider what is like for adolescents growing up in homes where one or both parents abuse alcohol or other drugs.  And try to imagine what it is like for youngsters who must deal with parents who suffer from serious psychological problems that may cause them to act in unpredictable, abusive or even physically threatening ways (Ge et al., 1995).  Clearly such parents do not provide the kind of guidance, consistent control and support children need for successful development.  Research findings indicate that when these factors are lacking, children and adolescents are at increased risk for a wide range of problems, such as drug abuse and externalizing behaviors ( Stealing, disobedience at home and at school and over aggression) (Sticee & Barrera,1995).

Table.1 Pearson correlation score between Loneliness. Single-parent (Mother & father) and parenting.

	Loneliness	level of significance
	Co-efficient of correlation
Single-parent ( Mother)	.191	.148
Single – parent ( Father)	.426	.001
Two- parent (Parenting)	.089	.497

Table 1 shows the result of correlation between loneliness and single parent mother total scores (.191) are significant at 0.01 levels. Loneliness and single parent father total scores (.426) are significant at .001levels. Loneliness and parenting total scores (.089) are significant at .497 levels, but in the present study is evident that loneliness, single parent mother, father and parenting are positively correlated. Most evidence, however, suggests that children from single-parent families are no less well adjusted than those from two-parent families.  In fact, children can be more successful growing up in a harmonious single-parent family than in a two-parent family in which the parents are engaged in continuous conflict with one another (Harold et al., 1997; Kelly, 1999: Clarke-Steward et al., 2000)

Table.2 Difference in Loneliness among Single-parent (Mother & father) and parenting

Loneliness	N	Mean	SD	t-value	P value
Single-parent ( Mother)	60	41.71	29.83	10.82	.000
Single – parent ( Father)	60	43.75	30.53	11.09	.000
Two- parent (Parenting)	60	69.66	21.62	24.95	.000

Table 2 shows the loneliness and single parent mother there is a strong significant relationship (t=10.82,p=.000).   Rests of the scores are as follows in the loneliness and single parent father is (43.75±30.53) .There is a significant relationship between loneliness and single parent father scores ( t= 11.09, p=.000). In parenting the mean and SD is 69.66±21.62 (t= 24.95, p =.000). This result cannot be supported with other studies. Single – parent families are often economically less well off, diminishing children’s opportunities.  Many single parents are unable to find good child care, and they feel psychological stress and sometimes guild over the child-care arrangements they must make for economic reasons.  Time is always at a premium in single-parent families (Hetherington, 1999).

Conclusion

Above result it may be concluded that children with single parent have more loneliness than the both parent. Intervention programme may be planned to improve relationship and support the children parent-child give the kind guidance for their successful development.

References

·         Anitha Chandola and Suman Bhanot (2008) Role of parenting style in Adjustment of High School children Joham.Ecol., 24(1) : 27-30.

·         Bharadwaj, R.L., Sharma and Garg (1998) A parenting scale Pankaj Mapan, Agra, p. 3

·         Dr. Praveen Kumar Jha (1999) perceived loneliness scale (L- Scale) psycho Prasad, Delhi, p 3-7.

·         Larson et al., (1996) changes in adolescents daily interactions with their families, developmental psychology p 740-750.

·         Robert A. Baron (2001) ‘Psychology’ Fifth Edition

·         Robert s. Feldman (2002) “Understanding Psychology “Sixth Edition.