Single-Parent Family as a Factor of Using Psychoactive Substances by Senior Pupils

Abstract

 The purpose of this article is to outline the negative side of a single-parent family’s affect on parents-children relationships; to describe the psychological types of parents-children relationships; to highlight the psychological factors of maladaptive relationships between one parent and senior pupil in a sigle-parent family.

Methods of the research. The following theoretical methods of the research were used to solve the tasks formulated in the article: a categorical method, structural and functional methods, the methods of the analysis, systematization, modeling, generalization. Method of interviewing was used as empirical one.

The results of the research. It is noted that a single-parent family is often the result of a change of the child’s attitude towards his / her mother. Sometimes he / she has a rather heightened sense of pity and tenderness for his / her mother; in other cases, the child accuses the mother in caring for his / her father, especially if the child sees and appreciates such qualities of father’s character that the mother does not notice. On the contrary, the child cannot notice those aspects of parental character that have become a source of frustration for his / her mother. As a result, the child begins to be quite critical to his / her mother and, thus, gradually «loses» to himself / herself the other parent (who lives in another family). Such increasing in the distance between a child and a parent takes place even when the mother, depressed by her grief and new additional worries, does not find enough time to practice with her child. It is often in such cases the child is regarded by the abandoned mother as the unnecessary burden, which significantly complicates her further life perspectives. As a result, there is a rather crude, sometimes – completely unjust attitude of the mother to her child, which, in turn, is extremely detrimental to the child’s moral development, however, as a frantic maternal love, or love-victim, which often takes a special place in such situations and it doesn’t have reasonable boundaries.

It is proved that in a new family it isn’t also quite common for children to adapt to new living conditions. A senior pupil has a psyche that is still incompletely formed and easily destroyed. As a rule, it is not easy for the child to get used to a stepfather or a stepmother, and this process of psychological adaptation sometimes takes a long and painful character. A suspicious, alert, and sometimes even hostile attitude towards a new father or a mother quite often disappears over a long period of time, even if one parent is paying the special attention to the child. In many cases, family relationships remain destructive.

Conclusions. The psychological factors of maladaptive relationships of one parent and a senior pupil in the single-parent family were identified: unhealthy, conflict situation in the family; the situation of divorce, which significantly exacerbates all negative characteristics of the spouse, actualizes the atmosphere of mutual hostility, hatred, abuse and mutual accusations, which in a great degree affect the child’s worldview, his / her ethical and moral beliefs, attitudes, wishes; poor mental and (or) physical condition of a wife-mother; negative family experience of a mother; negative conditions for co-existence (or the existence of slight degree) of the influence of the man in the family (including the male authority); the use of psychoactive substances by senior pupils.