Children in single parent households: the psychological well-being of Filipino college students

• Main Authors: Alday, Krystle Marteen E., De Rivera, Jhunell R., Hilaria, Ronald Daniel L., Villanueva, Margaret Colleen U.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2017
• Subjects: Children of single parents > Phillippines; Children of divorced parents > Philippines; Children of single parents > Psychology; Children of divorced parents > Psychology; Psychology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/5854
• Institution: De La Salle University

The psychological well-being of a child is an important aspect of their development whilst growing up. The purpose of this paper is to identify psychological well-being of children in single-parent households as well as the challenges associated with that kind of family setup. A semi-structured interview was prepared to answer questions about their significant experiences that had a great impact on them while growing up, such as how their situation influenced their view on their growth as a person, the challenges they experienced and the relationships with other people. There were ten Filipino college students, all of which lived in a single-parent household, that were interviewed to gather data for the study. The collected data were transcribed verbatim and were subject to thematic analysis. Eighteen themes were generated altogether. Themes transpired for challenges were economic difficulties, limited parental quality time, discontentment to current situation and daughter's difficulty with trust towards males. Themes for psychological well-being also emerged, for positive relations with others: appreciation for other people, freindship, and empathy for personal growth: religiousity as a source of self-esteem for autonomy: development of self-reliance at a young age for environmental mastery ability to adapt at a young age and for purpose in life: need for achievement. Themes under negative impacts on psychological well-being were jealousy, fear of abandonment and resentment, and low self-esteem and lack of self-satisfaction arising from absence of same gender parent. The study found that living under a single-parent household has both negative and positive impacts on the psychological well-being of the children.