Help Single Parents and Their Kids to Thrive

At a minimum, the parent is sad and disappointed, but she also can become depressed, anxious, and/or preoccupied with related concerns such as family finances. Pediatricians should have some ability to screen for adult depression. Ask a few questions about the parent’s mood, eating and sleeping patterns, and her ability to enjoy life or feel pleasure. Alternatively, some pediatricians use freely available questionnaires that screen for adult depression.

The impact of losing a parent, being raised by a single parent, and supporting the family unit is really a core part of pediatrics. Maternal depression can have a significant impact on an infant. Studies indicate such infants can experience more difficulties in school, more emotional problems, and other profound long-term effects such as low self-esteem.

The child going through some difficult emotions of grief and loss will likely need a more available and present parent at precisely the time the parent himself is becoming less emotionally available.

This neediness and sadness of parent and child can become a negative spiral. The child becomes needier and starts acting in a way that draws negative attention. At the same time, the mother becomes more preoccupied with her own sadness or her financial concerns. This takes her away from the child, who in turn feels even needier and more dysfunctional behavior results.

It’s important to ask about discipline techniques. In young children, especially, if this nonsupportive cycle continues and the parent is overwhelmed, there could be physical abuse and/or neglect. A father may feel he simply has no other outlet to stop the baby from crying or to control the situation.

Adolescents being raised by one parent will have other challenges. One is not having another parent to intervene when things get rough with the single parent. In two-parent families, usually one parent is more neutral or has a better relationship at the time and can rebalance the situation.

Some teens with single parents reexperience the earlier loss. They might long for a male relationship or a female relationship, and sometime those longings can get them into trouble. An adolescent girl may look to an older male for attention, for example. She could be a freshman or sophomore student pursing a senior boy. She may fall in love quickly and with an intensity that may be based on who wasn’t there when she was growing up.

Often, in happy two-parent families, there is an amalgam of the different ways each parent was raised. One may come from a very strict background and the other from an indulgent one. When the child raises a question such "Can I have an iPhone?" or "Can I have this toy?" there is a process of blending, in which the parents discuss how they should respond. It’s almost the same way genes blend – if you have two parents, there is a better chance of balancing the edges of one vs. the other. However, in single-parent homes, the child-rearing software built into that one parent becomes the only one available for decision making.

I often advise parents to get some help from the outside world to dilute the intensity of the single-parent relationship. A pediatrician might want to look to another adult for opportunities for close attachment, as appropriate. This can be a relative, a coach, a camp counselor, or a teacher. Look for relationships that match the gender of the missing parent.

Most children are able to recover from the loss of a parent if the caretaking parent is functioning well, there is a spirit of openness, and the loss is grieved within an understandable framework.

Dr. Jellinek is chief of child psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of psychiatry and of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston. He is also president of Newton (Mass.) Wellesley Hospital. He has no relevant disclosures.