An Adult Child Who Grew up Without a Father - Research Paper

Introduction

A complete family structure is very important in a child's growth. Family helps in shaping a child's world point view and helps in portraying love and showing them the way forward or the way to life. The family attachment makes a child feel safe. Fathers in a family always make a child feel protected because it is the perspective the world has given them. In all faiths, the father is the head of a family which is very important in children mentorship (Lamb, M. E. (2010). A father in a family mostly sets the rules and provides for the family which is important for children to learn in order to be able to organize their future families better in future when a child gets to the age.

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Mark, an African American male who is of twenty-seven years of age, grew up without a father. His father was never around though alive. His mother never talked about his father because he refused to man up and take responsibility for the situation and instead ran away when she got pregnant. He learned that his father was alive when he got to the legal age. It is very hurtful to him, he says to learn that his father has been alive all those years when it was too late, but was glad to finally meet him. He was the only child to his mother and they struggled financially to make ends meet. Mark helps in explaining how it is to grow up without a father, the ups and downs that come with it and mostly how the society views them.

Reasons for Growing up Without a Father

Reasons leading to the absence of a father have become very many in the 21st century. Currently, according to research conducted through census and data from the hospital's, many modern families have no father figure. Culturally in Africa and according to the holy books it was a taboo to have a child outside wedlock.in this modern time, women have risen to be on the same level as men as they refer to themselves as "independent women" who are financially stable, they don't want to get married as they want to call the shots and be their own bosses (Coall, D. A. (2019). Statistics have also proven that the current status of the population is that women are more than men in the ratio of 108,000 to 100,000, this has led to more single women and mothers. Technology has also led to single mothers due to the introduction of sperm bank fertilization. The rise of the LGBT community has also led to the rise of these cases. Other are natural cases such as death which is unavoidable.

Struggles of Growing up Without a Father

Question 1. How growing up without a father affected the adult during childhood

The father is supposed to give emotional support to grow up kids and help in the development of their behavior. Children mostly get through many stages in life that need the guidance of the father. At the adolescence stage, it gets even harder mostly to the male children who have to encounter mental and physical changes in their own. Fathers should be around to give advice and show the way to the growing kids. Some situations get tricky and affect the children mentally which makes them suffer emotionally. Seeing other children get love from their fathers also affects the fatherless child and he sometimes they become introverts. A child is also affected very much when others start to talk about their fathers. Mothers try to provide for all the basic needs and even shower their kids with all the love but they still feel the urge of the fatherly love which has been triggered in a big way by the internet and television shows. The society didn't view them as a strong woman and was left out in most cases where the father was needed to participate and this was very hurtful.

Question 2. How adult life has been affected by growing up without a father

Fathers guide their children on how to live in this life. They help prepare children for adult life. Children learn and copy from their fathers, mostly male children. They give a perspective on how a family should be and how one should treat his family as a head.to the women children they teach them about how to hold the family tight and how they should be treated by their husbands. Growing up without a father gave the interviewee a hard time acting like a father because he had no fatherly traits in him (Barnes, J. C. (2019). He had to learn the hard way. He saw his mother do everything and this makes it hard for him to know what to expect from his wife though this made him have great respect for women, more so strong women. It is hard to think manly and give the male aspects of thinking because he got no inspiration while growing up.

Insights

• Growing up without a father affects the kid mentally in a bad way.
• A father figure is very crucial in a child's upbringing for many purposes like protection, guidance, and mentorship.
• To have a father in your life is a privilege and one should embrace it.
• Growing up with a father leads to strong, courageous and upright adults.
• Fathers are very important in a child's upbringing.

Conclusion

The interviewee gave a clear picture of how a father is very important in a child's upbringing as it affects them even to their adult life in one way or another. The interview was a success.

References

Lamb, M. E. (2010). How do father's influence children's development? Let me count the ways. The role of the father in child development, 1-27.

Sear, R., Sheppard, P., & Coall, D. A. (2019). Cross-cultural evidence does not support the universal acceleration of puberty in father-absent households. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 374(1770), 20180124.

TenEyck, M. F., El Sayed, S. A., & Barnes, J. C. (2019). The effect of the absent biological father on female biological maturity: Results from a nationally representative sample of adolescents. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 35(1), 36-51.