Family Stability

Most societies punish children for acting out in a bad way. What they do not think of is why they are acting out. It could be just to get attention, but most of the time, it is something deeper. Their attitude comes from an emotional attachment to an unstable family. An unstable family is a family that has an absentee parent, is inconsistent, or yields a child with behavioral issues. An unstable family is a family that often times has an absentee parent. “Over the course of the twentieth century, however, as divorce became more common, an increasing share of children experienced a breakup in their families of origin and went on to spend at least some portion of their childhood or adolescence living with just one parent or with a parent and stepparent” (Waldfogel 88). Divorce is growing rapidly. It is causing many issues with families, new and old. Recent studies observe that children score just as well academically and have less behavior problems when they come from a thriving, single-parented, stable family than those that come from a married household (Family para. 2). It is not the single parent aspect that causes instability. It is the removal of a parent part of the way through the child’s life that causes it. It is really upsetting to watch a child suffer from an absent parent. All the child wants is attention and love. An unstable family is typically a family that is inconsistent. Inconsistency can be anything, whether it is work or a parent having a new significant other every week. Statistics explain “[a]n astonishing 40 percent of all children born in the United States in 2007 were born to unwed parents” (Waldfogel 88). A child being born into a family with unwed parents could result in his or her parents not actually getting married. The child could then go through many years without having a consistent stepparent. In this case, if the household is stable, whether with one parent or both, a child can grow up to be happy and healthy.