CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
In Nigeria today, most children are from a family of lone parent; this might be as a result of untimely death of one’s husband or one’s wife; it could be as a result of birth out of wedlock.
Bring up a child under the guidance of their parents become a problem especially the child that is with just his or her mother. Because mothers are not as authoritative as the fathers. Children with lone parents tends to be of a bad behavior compared to those with both parents.
Financially, morally and psychologically the children with lone parents are affected.
Now on the financial aspect of it, the lone parent might be just the mother; she might not be doing very well in business and can not provide all the needs of their children, this might lead the children to look for financial assistance by all means and they might end up stealling, meeting with bad friends as this will affect their behaviour. Mother will be struggling to meet up with the demand of her children and will not have the time to always advice them on what to do and what not to do.
On the area of children with just the father as a parent, will not have the guidiance from the mother; father will be out always to provide food for the family, no emotional attention will be given to their children.
The father can only provide money for their feeding, but will not prepare the food for the children. The worst of it all is when a child falls in the hand of a drunk father who is always out of the house, the children will suffer the absence of their father.
Some might take up to the father’s drinking habit and this have a very bad influence on the children.
Most children with a single parent find a way to survive because of lack of proper parental support, some become hard just to fit in the society.
On the area of academic performance, most children with lone parent tends to become drop out of school, some peform badly at school because of financial challenges, either to pay their school fees or to buy their textbooks and other learning materials.
So many research work has been done concerning the effect of single parenting on the behavioural pattern of children. Consider some cases in Nigeria, we found out that single-parent families to those raised in families with two biological parents consistently find that those raised in two-parent families with biological parents do better on educational achievement and adjustment in school (Carlson and Corcoran 2001; Hetherington and Clingempeel 1992; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994; Pryor and Rodgers 2001). A part of this difference may be due to single mothers’ lower educational attainment, less social support, fewer economic resources, and more stressful environments (Carlson and Corcoran 2001; Dunn et al. 1998; McLoyd 1990; O’Connor et al.2001). However, children in mostly white, middle-class stepfamilies also do less well on a range of outcomes than their counterparts in two-parent families with biological parents (Amato and Gilbreth 1999; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994). This suggests that biological fathers are important for children’s well-being and development.