Modern-Day Family Structure

Modern-Day Family Structure Name Institutional Affiliation Modern-Day Family Structure Single-parent households have increased significantly over the recent decades, with studies showing that there has been a substantial rise in the percentage of children being brought up by single mothers. Currently, people put emphasis on the negative impacts of single parenting on children, ranging from abandonment issues to economic hardships (Amato, Patterson & Beattie, 2015). Working with a single-mother family would provide me with an opportunity of reflecting on the kind of livelihood I went through while growing up. Having been brought up by my mother and grandmother, I gained firsthand experience of the hardships, which single-parent families go through. Due to poverty, my father migrated to America to seek employment in order to support us in the Caribbean. However, the adversities I experienced while growing up influenced me to develop strong family values, and learn the importance of hard work and resilience. From a personal perspective, single-mother households have been associated with a lot of stigma. Most of these negative perceptions have often been incomplete and misinformed, and they have often been propagated to malign the names of these families (Schmuck, 2013). Therefore, working with single-parent households requires the ability to understand the intrinsic issues that they are going through. Personally, when growing up in the Caribbean, my mother was responsible for instilling strong values in our family. She emphasized on the significance of integrity and hard work, and she told us that one could not succeed without putting an effort. Growing up in a low-income family taught me the importance of resilience since I could see how my mother and grandmother struggled to ensure that we got something to eat. Working as a helper in the human services field has enabled me to exploit my strengths, particularly when it comes to the way I view single-parent households. Single mothers go through a lot of hardships before they can be able to care for their families. To bring up a united family, single mothers have to go an extra mile before they could develop strong bonds in their families (Amato, Patterson & Beattie, 2015). I have volunteered in different missions that have involved giving back to the community. For instance, visiting the sick in hospitals, children’s homes, and facilities that care for the elderly have given me the opportunity of understanding the predicament which poor people go through. Mos...