Better Off Alone

From Aimee’s interview I was given an inside look at the struggles as well as the triumphs of a single mother. In her situation, she decided to separate from her husband for the benefit of her children. She wrote about trying to work through her husband’s alcohol abuse and make their marriage work, but his “disease” became too much for the family to handle. The father wouldn’t attend parent teacher, and was never involved in the girl’s life even when he was still living with them. She says she feels as though she has always been a single parent in a way.

She writes, “I think some unfair assumptions people make is that if a child has problems it must be because their parents are divorced. Whereas I think my children are much better off without their dad in the house.” This relates back to the Personal Responsibility Act and the other quotes stating that children in single parent homes are more likely to commit crimes, have behavioral problems etc. It seems that in this particular circumstance, the children would have been more likely to develop these problems had their father continue to live with them. These are things people don’t take into account when they assume a child in a single parent home is damaged. It seems like a lot of the time the damage comes before a husband and wife get divorced. Here, the culprit behind the unhappiness in the home was alcoholism, and once that was removed the home became more functional. This single mother states it perfectly when she says, “in the long run the house was happier and more serene once it became a single parent household.”