| dc.description.abstract | This is an investigation of the effects of single motherhood on child welfare and development. It discusses and analyses the various aspects of single motherhood which hold significant and ramifying consequences to child development. The general objective of this study was to establish how single-mother families affect the development of the child, with special reference to: Child academic performance; child achievement motivation; child behaviour; child basic needs; and the sociability of the child. The study was guided by five hypotheses which were related to the assumption that: Children from single-mother families display certain unique characteristics which comprise deviance in the society, and which affect their sociability among other children; that children of single mothers perform poorly in school and overall have low achievement motivation; and that single mother-families are poor, thus, their children are deprived of basic needs and other essential life requirements.
The study has been conceptualized using four theoretical perspectives: The Modernization paradigm; the theory of Anomie; the psychoanalytic theory; and the Social Class theory. The theory of Anomie has been treated as an adjunct to the Modernization paradigm.
We had a study sample of 162 respondents broken down as
follows; 81 single mothers and 81 children of the single mothers. The children were primary school going and it is through them that the mothers were reached and studied. Beside this, a small sample of 42 children from the two parent families was interviewed. However this was specifically to serve as a control in the analysis of academic performance, achievement motivation and the acceptability of children from
the single-mother families. They were also observed for the
sake of eliciting supplementary data. Simple random,
systematic and stratified methods
populate ion which was composed of
were used to sample the
women and children from
different social classes in Kibera division.
The most important method of data collect ion was the questionnaire but direct observation and key respondents were also used. Qualitative and Quantitative met hods of data analysis have been utilized with special emphasis on the chi square eX2) which has been used to test the hypotheses that were guiding the study. Four of the hypotheses have been confirmed while one has been rejected.
The study found that there are various ways in which single motherhood affects the welfare and development of the child. One of the most important areas is in the provision of basic needs of the child. Financial insufficiency does not allow most of the mothers to meet the basic needs of their children. This has negative implications for child welfare and
development. Children of sing 1e mot he rs it was observed , perform poorly educationally, have lower needs to achieve and they are not wholly acceptable among their play-mates or peers. However, meeting of basic needs of children has emerged to be an issues of social class. It was observed contrary to our assumption that child delinquency is not widespread in single-mother families and that what matters is the atmosphere
in which the child is brought up.
The study concludes that single motherhood affects children in as far as their abilities to achieve or perform well, and socialize with other children are concerned. Unlike children from the two-parent families, their educational performance and need to achieve are lower. The general poverty situation in most of these families is reflected in the inadequate provision of their children's needs. Thus, their general welfare is at stake. In view of the problems some children from single-mother families face, the the study recommends that society should support them in a 11 ways possible rather than reject and call them names. Only then can they grow normally like any other children free from condemnation. | en |
