The younger minds would find it difficult to adapt to a new atmosphere, where the family will no longer share the love as earlier and enjoy the propinquity with the father. The outcome of this is that the child may undergo depression, the intensity of which might vary depending upon the support the child gets from the relatives and friends. The way the parents got separated and age and maturity of the child also determine the intensity of the depression.
As per the census of Office for National Statistics, 1, 47,000 children below 16 years have seen the parents’ divorce in 2001. Precisely, almost half of the children in the UK have experienced their parent’s divorce. It is considered to be the burning problem in the UK. As the number of divorces increased, many researchers are now paying attention to the ways by which the parents take care of their children and whether they fulfil all their responsibilities irrespective of their separation.
A research conducted on 80,000 adults, revealed that the children of the divorced parents had to undergo problems such as psychological disturbances, behavioural problems, low concentration, and a lower standard of living. When they grew up, they were also experiencing lower marital satisfaction, risk of getting divorce and also bad physical health with low resistance power.
When the parents have separated, very often mothers take revenge and lay restrictions on the children to contact their fathers. Whether the father is abusive or non-abusive, he has to leave home for various reasons after divorce. It is also assumed that men play less significant roles in the process of bringing up the children. The social professionals tend to widen the gap between the father and the child. Some fathers stay aloof from the children, citing the reasons that they would not want to be accused of causing harm to the children. Over a period of time, they would have lesser contacts with the child.
It is a fact that the non-offending fathers could play a major role in the recovery process of the child after divorce. If fathers show positive gestures and emotional and physical support to the child, then one can see a lot of changes in the behaviour of the child.
The absence of father leaves the children in a situation of growing up in a female-dominated household. They will be taken care of by the female child-caretakers. This is more damaging for boys, and girls would also be affected as they start seeing men as being from a different race. There is a high correlation between violence and absence of father in the household, among boys, especially violence against women.
Moreover, girls growing up without fathers are 164 per cent more prone to be included in the list of teenage pregnancies and 52 percent are likely to marry during their teenage years and 92 percent would dissolve their marriages. They are also nine times more likely to suffer from rape and sexual abuses.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, (NSPCC) has reported that the children are hardly representing their father when they were trying to figure out their source of support. The advocacy for a change in the approach to fathers in the child care system is also coming up. Though there is a higher perception that men are abusive and are also misusing the girl child, careful individual assessment should be conducted to analyse the importance of father in the lives of the children.
As a whole, it would be worth examining to assess how fathers of all kinds can play an active role in the development of the child and also in having a safer relationship. Many studies on the children have recommended that the children want their parents to be role models to provide love and affection, to spend time and also to pay attention even to minute issues pertaining to them. This applies to both the genders and the fathers are not an exception.
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