Children's & mothers' experiences of parenting & parent-child relationships in lone-mother households

Abstract

This qualitative study of children's and mothers' experiences of living in a one-parent household set out to investigate how parenting practices and family relationships are negotiated, understood and experienced by children and their mothers in these family contexts. Underpinning the conceptual focus on parenting and family relationships is a substantial body of previous research, which has highlighted the significance of family processes in mediating the impact of family structure on the adjustment and developmental outcomes of single parent family children. The focus in the present study is on families where the child has grown up in a one-parent family from infancy, without the transition from a two-parent to a one-parent family. This represents a departure from the majority of research in the area, which has focused on children in single parent families following parental separation.