Single Parents Essay

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Research Paper Almost half of all children in the US by the age of 15 will have lived with a single parent (Anderson cited in Barajas 13). In fact, father absent homes have a greater effect on boys than on girls (Mandara, Murry; Sigle-Rushton &McLanahan, cited in Barajas 13). Those teenage boys that are raised in single mother households in low income areas are more likely to participate in criminal activity because they receive less supervision, are surrounded by crime in their neighborhoods, and receive low education levels. Teenage boys raised by single mothers in low-income neighborhoods are more inclined to be involved in criminal activity ranging from drug usage, gang involvement, burglary, and murder just to name a few (Alfrey 3). As stated in The National Healthy …show more content…

Since the other Wes’ mother left for work before he left for school in the morning, she had no way of knowing if he actually went to school or not. So rather than going to school, he would invite his friends over and they would do drugs (Moore 59). If Wes had more supervision after his mother left for work then he wouldn’t have been able to get away with skipping school. According to the article The Trouble With Boys, single mothers spend between 1.2 and 1.4 hours less per week with their sons than their daughters, so therefore boys are at a disadvantage because they receive lower levels of parental input than those kids who have both parents present (Bertrand and Pan 53). Not only does the lack of parental supervision cause teen-age boys to engage in criminal activity, but also being surrounded by crime in neighborhoods leads to criminal activity. Single mothers that are raising kids all by themselves are forced to financially support their kids all by themselves, which draws them to live in more affordable yet poor neighborhood (Alfrey 5). In The Other Wes Moore, both Wes’ lived in low-income neighborhoods where drugs were being sold and other criminal

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