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Essay on Single Mothers Life after Divorce
The purpose of this article is to analyze the economic and mental situation of a mother who is divorced and single now and plans to return to school and enhance her academic qualifications in order to provide her child with a better future.
American family structure has changed in the past four decades due to a rise in the divorce rate and a rise in never married women with children. Mother-only families have become increasingly common. In 1960, non-married women headed about 9 percent of families with children; by 1999 the number was over 20 percent (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1961, 2000). In the meantime, female-headed households consistently comprised a large proportion of poor households. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, female-headed families with children were five times more likely to be poor than two-parent families with children (Furstenberg, 1990; Garfinkel & McLanahan, 1986; Nichols-Casebolt & Krysik, 1997; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001). In 2000, 35.1 percent of female-headed families with children under 18 lived in poverty, compared with 6.9 percent of married-couples with children under 18. In the same year, female-headed households with children under 18 comprised 52 percent of all poor households with children under 18.
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology conducted a study analyzing the difference between single and married mothers in terms of depressive state. The study stated that Previous studies suggest that single mothers are at a higher risk of major depression and more likely to use mental health services than are married mothers. The objectives of this analysis were to provide estimates of the prevalence of major depressive syndrome among single and married mothers, to investigate the factors which may affect the difference in the prevalence of major depressive syndrome among single and married mothers and to estimate the health care service utilization by single and married mothers......
