Lone
parent
Some statistics show that children who were brought
up by only one parent are more likely to receive criminal convictions,
run away, get involved with drugs, commit suicide or leave school early.
A term associated with this view is ‘broken homes’, implying that these
homes don’t work as well as when both the parents are still together.
To question this negative view on single parents, I looked at the lives
of Heidi and Brody, a lone parent family in Cwmbran, South Wales. Heidi
is 32 and lives in a council house with her mother and her son Brody,
who is five. Brody’s father left when Brody was five months old. Since
then, Heidi and Brody have been living with Heidi’s mum. When the
project started, Heidi had been struggling to find work. And when
employers found out that she was a single parent with a young child,
others were picked for the jobs ahead of her. Happily, not long after
the start of the project, Heidi got a job in a shop in Cwmbran.
They are a loving, caring, lively family. Heidi and Brody have a very
close relationship, evident from the photographs, which give a glimpse
into a real single parent family and show that the negative views
surrounding ‘broken homes’ in many cases are not applicable. Single
parent families can be just as caring and devoted as families with both
parents, and in some cases, more so.
