Introduction
The number of women raising children on their own is steadily growing in the world. For some, this is the result of their own initiative, for others — an unfavorable combination of circumstances: divorce, unplanned pregnancy. Most often, this is a forced choice of a woman, because most of them are focused on creating a full, friendly and loving family (Tavakol & Dennick, 2011). The peculiarities of the interaction of single mothers with a child and the impact on the future life of their daughters are an important topic in the works of family psychologists.
First of all, experts note the influence of the specifics of the conservative mentality, which assumes that a child must necessarily have both a mother and a father (Cohen, 1992). If the father is absent for some reason, the public considers the child unhappy which affects the psychological state of a single mother (Saldana, 2009). Stereotypical statements are frequent that children from single-parent families cannot become happy, and the boy needs a father, otherwise they will not grow to a real man (Manczak, Donenberg, & Emerson, 2018). If the initiative to raise a child independently comes from the woman herself, others begin to resent it. Negative attitudes are widespread in society that for the sake of children it is necessary to tolerate the disrespectful attitude of her husband, and a divorced woman with children will not arrange a personal life.
A woman finds herself one-on-one with the pressure of others, which makes her justify herself and feel flawed. According to psychologists, this forces her to close herself in and avoid contact with the outside world (The National Health, 2018). Pressure drives a woman into distress, a negative form of stress, and further aggravates her psychological state (Kinney, Stearns, & Szkody, 2018). It can have a negative impact on the relationship with the daughter, and traumatize the child’s psyche (Sağkal, Özdemir, & Koruklu, 2018). Thus, the purpose of this paper is to identify the features of relationships and the impact on the life of the daughter of a single mother. The research question is formulated as follows: If a mother failed to create a strong relationship with a man, will she be able to raise a happy woman from her daughter?
Methods
Participants
The participant was a recently divorced woman, Gloria, who is the mother of a nine-year-old daughter.
Materials
Transcript of Gloria’s conversations with a psychiatrist, scientific reference literature.
Design
A thematic analysis design was a systematic method of separating and organizing rich data from transcript. It implied endowing individual observations and quotes from a conversation with a patient with certain codes, which would facilitate the search for important topics.
Procedure
The transcript was first coded immediately after the interview. The first stage in processing this qualitative interview was the transcription of the conversation recording. A written protocol was created, transferring all the remarks of the interviewer and respondent uttered during the interview into a text document. A coded system was developed for encoding; it listed all the codes used, their designations, formulated their contents, and gave examples of statements related to the corresponding code. This system of categories reflected concepts, topics, events, and processes that were important from the point of view of research.
The coding scheme was developed based on the analysis of the literature, borrowed from works that were conducted on similar topics. Coding was started with the development of very low-level categories and the assignment of the largest possible amount of interview text to them. The source codes were then generalized into higher-level categories. At the first steps of processing, dozens of specific codes were identified. In the future, they were generalized into more and more general categories, which eventually turned out to be much less. Thus, in the process of data analysis, there was a progress from specific fragments of respondents’ answers to generalized scientific categories.
Results
The coding process can be seen from Table 1. Two themes emerged around the central phenomenon, self-rejection and guilt.
Table 1. Codes
Theme Self-Rejection
The first theme was self-rejection which could be seen from the first part of the interview. In it, such codes as depreciation and low self-esteem were detected. Firstly, Gloria demonstrates the misunderstanding of herself, which is shown in C10: the client cannot decide which of her behaviors is “all sweet and motherly” and which relates to “shady sides”. One can also notice that a woman has a fear of being imperfect. For example, in T8, the specialist asks if both alternatives concern her, to which in C9 the patient answers in the affirmative. In addition, the patient revealed blurred personal boundaries, which can be seen in C11. In this segment of speech, the client’s reasoning is presented regarding the situation when she “has a man over” and the potential degrees of awareness of this child.
Gloria often shows excessive self-criticism in moments like C7. In this segment of the speech, the woman criticizes herself for not being able to make a choice that will better affect the relationship with her daughter. Even after making a choice, the patient experiences constant dissatisfaction with one’s actions. In C4, Gloria discusses alternative conversation options with her daughter, admitting that each of them is not good enough. The fear of making mistakes observed in the patient manifests itself in C5, where the woman admits that her parents made the wrong choice at the time, which affected Gloria’s psyche. Now she is afraid that this will happen through her own fault to her daughter.
Theme Guilt
The second theme was guilt which could be seen from the internal conflict aggravated by depressed state of the patient. First, the woman demonstrates a clash of opposing opinions, constantly observed throughout the dialogue. For example, in C8, Gloria on the one hand believes that talking to her daughter about sex will benefit her, and on the other – that he will harm the girl. From C15 it is obvious that a woman experiences psychological discomfort, turning to a specialist with a request to make her “can feel more comfortable”.
Gloria also suffers greatly from guilty conscience: in C12 she admits that she “feels guilty so often”. Constant doubts make a woman experience pessimism: considering alternative options for talking to her daughter in C8, she is sure of a negative outcome of any of them. Dialogue fragments such as C8 or C4 indicate that Gloria has difficulties in making choices due to increased nervousness. The inability to determine the behavior strategy results in dissatisfaction with herself, which is clearly visible in C15. In this segment of the conversation, the client agrees with the statement T14, where the doctor asks if she feels bad “in relation to her feelings and desires.”
Discussion
The topic of feeling guilty in front of a child is largely caused by the influence factor of the conservative public discussed in introduction. A woman subconsciously blames herself according to the labels imposed by society, such as that she deprived the child of a father, could not save the family, or doomed the child to an inferior life (Steele & Kinney, 2019). Moreover, every day Gloria faces a variety of everyday situations that make her feel even more guilty.
The situation she discussed in an interview with a psychologist is just one of many that confirm the negative social attitudes in the perception of the single mother herself. The guilt accumulates, the woman becomes more and more nervous and nervous (Renfro-Michel et al., 2010). She worries more than she should about the child, constantly takes care of her daughter, tries to protect her from all adversity and tries to fulfill all her desires.
Guilt is one of the main problems that poison the life of a single mother both in the case of a forced divorce and in the case of a conscious decision to raise children without a husband. A single mother lacks moral and physical support, she regularly faces public condemnation (Morse, 2008). As a result, this can lead to the fact that the child grows up overly suspicious, independent and self-focused.
In addition, he very quickly recognizes the weak points of the mother and begins to unconsciously use them for his childish manipulations. In this regard, it is important for Gloria to realize the destructive power of guilt (Shawler et al., 2018). She does not understand that the problem is not the difficulty of choosing a strategy for talking about sex with her daughter (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). The problem lies in the psychological state of the patient, namely in the feeling of guilt and remorse that she experiences in this situation.
Trying to redeem herself, Gloria makes an attempt to sacrifice her personal life for her daughter. Subsequently, when her daughter grows up, these victims can be presented to her as a payment invoice. In this regard, the patient should rationalize her guilt (Tong, Sainsbury, & Craig, 2007). She should ask herself questions about what her fault is in this situation, and how she can fix it (Horstman, 2018). Next, it may be useful to write down and read your answers. Gloria should think about how her guilt is justified, realistic and proportionate to the current situation. Perhaps, under the feeling of guilt, she hides an unspoken resentment and aggression at the difficulties in arranging her own personal life (O’Hara et al., 2016). By rationalizing her guilt, Gloria will be able to realize and eliminate the root cause of her appearance.
The status of a single mother can provoke a woman to rash and hasty actions. In an effort to quickly get rid of the stigma of a single mother imposed by a conservative society, and suffering from a sense of guilt before the child, a woman often enters into relationships that she does not like or for which she is not ready yet (Braun & Clarke, 2006). It is vitally important to her that someone else is with her, and the child has a father. At the same time, the personal qualities of a new partner often fade into the background.
The other extreme is that a woman completely devotes herself to raising a child and puts an end to her personal life. The fear that the new man will not accept her child, will not love him as his own, or the child will think that the mother has exchanged him for a new uncle, can lead to the fact that the woman refuses to try to build a personal life at all (Lee, 2010). In both the first and second situations, a woman sacrifices herself without listening to her own desires, and as a result remains unhappy because of self-rejection.
In both the first and second situations, Gloria’s daughter will suffer. In the first case — because he will see the suffering of the mother next to the wrong person. In the second — because he will see the suffering of his mother alone and blame himself for it. To combat Gloria’s self-rejection, she needs to take a time-out (Walle, 2015). She should not urgently look for a new father for the girl or give up her personal life altogether. The patient needs to be attentive to herself, and analyze whether she is ready for a new relationship. Gloria should first find out why she wants a new relationship, and what drives her: guilt, loneliness or the desire to be happy.
If the patient, on the contrary, will be inclined to abandon attempts to arrange a personal life, she will need to reflect on what pushes her to this decision. At these moments, she may be guided by fears of causing jealousy of the child, fear of her own disappointment (Yamanaka & Kawata, 2020). In addition, previous negative experiences may force her to avoid repeating the situation by any means (Gillespie, 2020). Only making a fully informed and balanced decision can help overcome self-rejection.
To conclude, in order to overcome both identified problems, the patient should be honest with herself and be guided by the main rule when making a decision: a happy mother has a happy daughter. A single woman is able to raise a full-fledged member of society on her own, provided that she will monitor her psychological and emotional state. Then even if a mother failed to create a strong relationship with a man, she will be able to raise a happy woman from her daughter.
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