If you’re a couple having difficulty in parenting, single parenting is probably more difficult. Single parents sometimes choose their role but, more often, they are single parents because the other parent has divorced them, left them or is in jail. As a single parent, the individual must make all the family decisions unilaterally. If the child gets in trouble, it is the single parent who must take time off from work to deal with the problem.

Despite the best skills in parenting, single parents often have difficulty staying steady with difficult discipline problems. The single parent is often worn down and worn out by difficult children or teens and just can’t maintain the same sense of discipline as a two parent family can do. Children of single parents often get into greater trouble and have less parental supervision that children who live with two parents.

Because of the demands of parenting, single parents have a harder time dating others. Childcare must be arranged and there simply is less time to spend dating and hanging out with friends if time must be devoted to the child or children. This causes the single parent to be angry and to feel left out of the “adult world” due to the constraints of parenthood. Often the time is spent between work and taking care of the children rather than going out with friends or dates.

While dealing with parenting, single parents must have a great deal of stamina and self reliance. They must juggle the demands of work, homework, house cleaning and dealing with the financial aspects of running a family. There may be just one child to deal with or several–all of which have issues they need to have dealt with. When it is a single parent household, the single parent must wear several hats and do a great deal of tasks to keep the family together.

Not naturally skilled in parenting, single parents can be fathers as well as mothers. When a dad runs a household, he must be just as sensitive to girls’ issues as he his to boys’ issues if he has a daughter. Dads are often thought of as the one who brings home the money and not much else. In single parenting, the dad must do a little bit of everything and take the place of a missing mom in the household.

Even with two parents parenting, single parents who trade children back and forth during the week must try to put up a unified front for the children no matter how they feel about each other. Each parent is, in fact, a single parent but is one who must stay within certain parameters so the child doesn’t feel like he or she can “pull one over” on one parent or the other. Discipline styles must be similar and the children must not be allowed to polarize the parents against one another just because they aren’t together as a couple anymore.