When you guys figure it out, let me in on it will ya?
The writeup below is what I've managed to figure out so far, LeAnne. While it maybe only a piece of the lemon-morass marange managerie, I consider it a significant portion of that pie.
Don't take offense if you are raising a kid alone because I'm adjusting my sights at only the negative aspect of 50% or so, to the class of people I'm about to describe. While there are many great parents out there, the response isn't to write about all the beautiful people out there, only about the beauts. Before you walk away with the flavor of leaning toward negativity toward women, read and reread what I wrote about casuals and live-ins for a balance of the scales for both sexes.
What makes it even worse is that
it's the chicken or egg predicament, , impossible to improve upon without exterior forces being applied to have one without the other.
I would venture a gander that at least 50% of the kids grow up in broken homes. I hate the whitewashed term "single-parent families" because that PC verbage hides the thought of what really is going on behind the scenes most of the time.
Now with that a given, a lot of kids are also brought into this world unwanted, are considered a burden, and just dragged up rather than properly reared, cared for, and loved. Furthermore, more and more dads are finding out through DNA testing that up to 1/3 of them are not the fathers they thought they were -- married dads included. This one's a real shocker. Reference
http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/ on this and look into their archives if you have an interest or a curiosity.
The high divorce rate often bumps 50%. Divorces, and many of the events which live up to such, deliver such a devastating blow to kids regardless of what age they are, that those kids are off-balance, often for the reset of their lives. On the lightest of the downside, those parents don't have the time or they don't want to spend the time these kids need and deserve, or are so involved in their own emotional difficulties that the kids needs and wants often take a back seat to the whole mess.
The custodial parent, more often than not the mother, breeds hate and contempt against against the ex-spouse which often translates directly and verbally to the rest of the members of the sex [gender, parden my PC crudeness], of the ex-spouse being bashed. And the kids hear it all the time because this hatred of the ex-mate transcends into all activities of daily life from simple phone conversations, to meal time, to visits by the ex. Kids often see an endless stream of numerous boyfriends interested only in skinny dipping. The young ones may thinnk "Which of you really is my daddy?"
What does that do to a little girl? Hate breeds hate and contempt breeds contempt. The girl learns to hate men because mom hates men and learns they are good for only money and for a good roll when the itch gets too great. The poor little boys think this is what women are all about? No wonder they grow up not wanting to give women anything except to satisfy their itch.
I went out with enough divorcees with kids to recognize those common traits which begin to reveal themselves after the first few dates and visits.
And many live-in boyfriends and second-timers look at the little girls with lustfulness as soon as the buds begin to blossom. I know this and did deep research on this one in particular because my own daugther was violated by her step father even before adolescense. Good for his life that I didn't know about those events until years after the fact when I found out where my daugher was [she was kidnapped from me by her mother when she was about 3 and we were finally reunited, my daughter and I that is, some years ago when she was 16 by the state who found her on the streets a few years earlier].
No wonder kids are confused -- it's hell out there. My two younger sons, while in upper classes of grade school but especially especially in high school, told me most of their classmates came from broken homes and most of them had
adjustment problems. There seems to be a strong undercurrent of kids with emotional difficulties, mis-direction or no drection at all, and bent for trouble. No wonder kids violently revolt against their parents when the glands kick in. And no wonder this translates into troubled and often violent relationships with the opposite gender as so evident starting in young adulthood and extending until much later in life where they have provided fertile ground to renew the damagage to their own offsprings, often as oblivious space cadets.
If you want references to the above, as some do, all that's required is to keep ypur eyes and ears open to the signals and read the newspapers. Young people often never get it, I surmise the mileage of the years and a few hard knocks in between are what's required to fuel the embers of enlightenment.
Chicken or egg? I gave what I know as one problem, one cause, and offer no solutions to any of it. You're on your own for that one.
How do you change it after the children have grown up?
I have two sets of children. The first set was destroyed by their mother. While my oldest remained with me and my wife of 23 years until he was 16, the uncorrectable damage was branded into his head from the time he was an infant. It took until he was in his late 20s to grow up and realize dad wasn't so bad after all, but he squandered his education and made so many mistakes in his younger life that he will never fully recover.
Development starts in the early days of life, and if you are hoping to break the chain, look toward your grandchildren because your children will always be already what they are and will be tempered only by age. You may succeed in holding a line with them but they are already who they are and who they will be. As a ray of hope, people can and do change, as my eldest did, but there's much that didn't.
Always with an even keel.
-- Allen
.........and many happy returns 
