The Importance Of Family and Broken Ones

Introduction

Family is the basic unit of society. This is the most important component of a country. ”The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.” (Santayana) 2012. Governance will only be effective if the citizens are properly oriented with good values and virtues, which is commonly taught by the family. ”Marriage is the agreement to let a family happen.” (Wylie) 2012.A home is where a family lives. It may be alternated to the word ‘house’ but a house is more appropriately referring to the material structure, whereas ‘home’ refers to the intangible things that bind together the family members.

It is the immeasurable love and care that keeps together the mother, father and their offspring, or the family.

A home where good values and virtues are commonly taught by the family. Aside from providing an environment conducive to physical growth and health, the family must also create an atmosphere that would influence the cognitive and psychological growth of its member. If the needs of the individual family members are met, the other members are able to reach out to others in the family, the community, and society as a whole.

But usually, misunderstanding starts from simple domestic quarrel that grows impertinently damaging the long-forged relationship between the family members. When a couple split up, it is the children that are greatly affected scarring them physically, emotionally and socially.

The most common dispute between a husband and a wife is the financial matter. This is rooted when the father, which should be the provider for the family, can’t give enough money for the sustenance of the whole family. A vice that cannot be given up may be associated with this.

Single parenting or broken family is a very important social issue that can have significant effects on a child’s academic performance. Children who are raised in a single family home are at risk of not reaching their full potential.

Broken homes are experienced by some of the students not only with those in poverty line families but same goes to middle and higher class families. Parents chose to live separately regardless how their children feel and its impact to their lives, however, there are still parents in spite of the situation still supports and care of their children in their studies, and others.

The academic performance of children from broken home is often adversely affected, as well as the stress of inadequate financial resources. Children from broken home household are disadvantaged. Some of them do not go to school; those who do may attend low quality schools, with low academic performance. Some of them may drop out of school prematurely. The caring power of single parent may determine the length of schooling of child in the broken home family. The girls are more likely to become teen mothers while still in school.

In most broken homes, the children are generally disadvantaged because they are generally regarded as being deprived academically, economically, socially and culturally. Their environment is not conducive to learning and in which education is not adequate. Most of the affected individuals are persons from low income areas in which unskilled employment, poor living conditions prevails. All these have negative impact in the academic performance of the pupils. Pupils in broken home families always have deficit. As a result of loss one parent, these children suffer psychological problems.

Background of the study

The family is the child’s first place of contact with the world. The child as a result, acquires initial education and socialization from parents and other significant persons in the family. Agulana (1999) pointed out that the family lays the psychological, moral, and spiritual foundation in the overall development of the child. Structurally, family/homes is either broken or intact. A broken home in this context, is one that is not structurally intact, as a result of divorce, separation, death of one parent and illegitimacy. According to Frazer (2001), psychological home conditions arise mainly from illegitimacy of children, the label of adopted child, broken home, divorce and parental deprivation. Such abnormal conditions of the home, are likely to have a detrimental effect on school performance of the child he asserts.

Life, in a single parent family or broken home can be stressful for both the child and the parent. Such families are faced with challenges of inadequate financial resources (children defense fund, 1994). Schultz (2006) noted that if adolescents from unstable homes are to be compared with those from stable homes, it would be seen that the former have more social, academic and emotional problems. Scales and Roehlkepartain (2003), are of the opinion that the family and its structure play a great role in children’s academic performance. Levin (2001), also states that parents are probably the actors with the clearest undimentional interest in a high level of their children’s academic performance.

To some extent, there is simple evidence to show that marital instability brings about stress, tension, lack of motivation and frustration. Obviously, these manifestations act negatively on a child’s academic performance. Johnson (2005) asserts that children of unmarried parents/separated families often fail and are at risk emotionally. However, this may not be completely applicable in all instances of broken homes. Some children irrespective of home background or structure may work hard and become successful in life. Moreover, Ayodele (2006) stated that the environment where a child finds himself/herself goes a long way in determining his learning ability and ultimately his academic performance.

It is worthy to note that majority of high school students in the country who got poor or failing grades in their academic subjects came from broken homes. Some of them as we saw were not just having poor academic performance but instead they let themselves be retained at their year level after dropping-out their respective subjects. It is timely to identify or to determine if students in high school who came from broken homes are greatly affected in their academic classes.

Difficult start: Children raised by a single parent are more likely to suffer distress. The research adds to a wealth of data that shows children suffer badly from divorce or parental break-up, and that those brought up by a single parent are more likely to do badly at school, suffer poor health, and fall into crime, addiction and poverty as adults. The report, funded by the Department of Health and published by the Office for National Statistics, investigated emotional disorders – ranked as those which cause considerable distress and interference with the way in which children perform at school and during play. It also looked at conduct disorders which result in aggressive, violent or anti-social behavior. The researchers studied nearly 8,000 children aged between five and 16 in 2004 and found almost one in ten had disorders.

The children were checked again last year. The report said that a child whose parents had split during this time was more than four and a half times more likely to have developed an emotional disorder than one whose parents stayed together. They were nearly three times more likely to exhibit a conduct disorder. Eleven per cent of those children whose families broke up had emotional disorders, against 3 per cent among those whose families were still together. Nearly a third of children found to have mental disorders in 2004 still suffered from them three years later. The Department of Health said: ‘The Government is committed to helping children and young people experiencing mental health problems.’ ‘Broken families and serial fathers produce homes full of conflict and chaos and they are terrible for children.’

Llano High School as one of the public schools in Caloocan City is a school where many students are products of broken homes. As to what extent the effect of their family condition to their academic performance and what adjustment strategies they employ is the premise of this study. Thus the researcher aims that the result of this study may become basis for crafting a guidance program to promote better adjustment strategies for students from broken homes.

Statement of the Problem

This study aims to determine the correlation between the academic performance and adjustment strategies of students from broken homes in Llano High School, Division of City Schools, Caloocan City.

Specifically, it seeks to answer the following questions:

1.What is the demographic profile of the respondents in terms of:

1. gender,
2. age
3. size of the family
4. guardian whom he/she stays with, and
5. cause/s of parents’ separation?

2.To what extent do the student respondents encounter difficulties in the following areas:

1. academic performance,
2. interpersonal relationship,
3. socio-economic status, and
4. personality development?

3.What adjustment strategies do the respondents employ in addressing the difficulties they encounter in the aforementioned areas?

4.What is the level of academic performance of the student respondents based on their previous G.W.A.?

5.Is there a significant relationship between the level of academic performance and the identified adjustment strategies of the respondents?

6.What guidance program may be proposed to promote better adjustment strategies of the students from broken homes?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Marquardt, Elizabeth. “Between Two Worlds “The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce 2005

Journals/Magazines

Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, Year 2010/ Volume 7 / Issue 3 / Page no. 240-243

Unpublished Materials

1. Ijeoma, Alika Henrietta and Samson Edosa Ogboro, Relationship between Broken Homes and Academic Achievement of Secondary School Students in Oredo Local Government Area of Edo State, Nigeria June 2012
2. Sawadjaan, Glaiza M. Broken Family: Its Effect in the Academic Performance of
   the Selected College Students of Laguna State Polytechnic University

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