ABSTRACT
Solo parents are individuals who raise their children alone. Being solely responsible for the role that supposed to be made by two parent, solo parents may face many difficulties from different factors in upbringing a child. In this study, the researchers observed that solo parents are subjected to distress. Distress pertains to emotional pain that can be felt under a completely negative situation. On the other hand, distress tolerance is the capacity to withstand this emotional pain. This study used a comparative research design to determine how solo father and solo mother respond to distress using five facet model of distress tolerance composed of tolerance of uncertainty, ambiguity, frustration, negative emotion, and physical discomfort. The study was conducted within the municipality of Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro and participated by 62 solo parents’ representative from 62 barangays. This study found a significant difference between solo fathers and solo mothers’ tolerance of frustration. Results also shows that solo fathers and solo mothers have high distress tolerance, which both scored higher at tolerance of uncertainty and lower at ambiguity.
Keywords: distress tolerance, solo parents, uncertainty, ambiguity, frustration, negative emotion, physical discomfort
1. INTRODUCTION
Solo parents are those who raise their children alone or who are solely responsible for all of the child's upbringing. Being solely fulfilling the role that should be made by two, solo parents must be self-sufficient and have a strong emotional foundation. In the current situation of the society today, solo parents face diverse challenges when it comes to emotional and financial support and the same time, the need for them to look closely after their children. Due to overwhelming demand of providing their child’s necessities, solo parent has a greater risk of experiencing distress.
Globally, the U.S have rated 23% or 18.5 million children living with single parent families and also the country with highest number of solo parents. The 15.3 million of those children live with solo mothers and 3.2 million of those lived with solo fathers. It is followed by New Zealand with 21% and Soe Tome and Principre with 19% (Andre, 2023). In the 2016 statistics of solo parents in the Philippines, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) reported that there are 2, 573, 992 total population of individuals that claimed to be solo parents. In MIMAROPA Region, there are 69, 646 solo parents reported or 2.7 % of the total population in that which was comprised of 19, 722 (28.3%) males and 49, 924 (71.7%) (Alcayde, 2016). However, as soon as the years pass the number of solo parents rises. In the most recent data from World Health Organization (2023), there are 15 million reported solo parents in the whole country, of which 95% or 14 million of those are females (Manila Bulletin, 2023).
The Philippine Government had addresses solo parents’ difficulties and provide the aid to lessen their burdens. As part of this assistance, the government had implemented the Republic Act (RA) 8972, known as the Solo Parents' Welfare Act of 2000. It provides a complete package of social welfare benefits from several government organizations. The law strives to provide particular advantages to ensure that solo parents have equal chances, as well as legal rights and privileges. On the 4th day of June 2023, the Republic Act No. 11861, or the Expanded Solo Parents Welfare Act had finally become a law amended for Republic Act No. 8972. This law grants added and expanded benefits for solo parents such as monthly allowance depending on one's income, discounts for some goods such as child's necessities, and exemption from value-added tax for specific needs.
Solo parents seem to have fewer resources in terms of family, time, and finance compared to a two-parent. In different manners, solo fathers and solo mothers have their own ways and capabilities to provide the demands of their families. Several studies claimed that solo fathers tend to provide higher standards of living than solo mothers do (GillespieShields, 2020). On the other hand, some studies suggest that solo mothers have more structured relationships than solo fathers (Brown, 2023). Contrastingly, both parties have different privileges in terms of diverse factors of environmental opportunity and way of living. Solo parents may come in different categories, they might be widowed, separated, unmarried, or someone who just chose to be a single parent. Despite of these differences in situation, solo parents could be similar in problems to deal with. One of the common challenges that solo parents experienced was their problems in finances. Due to insufficient or low income, they are having a hard time to meet the budget for the needs and necessities of their family. They might also experience being too much busy with their works that they might spend a little of their time watching over their children that commonly results to difficulty in disciplining their children. Furthermore, most of solo parents felt loneliness from being not just physically alone but being just the one to carry all the responsibility and decision to make all alone.
Negative experiences produce negative feelings and emotions, which might be felt in the presence of situations that can evoke these emotions. People can encounter many difficulties in their lives that cause them pain and emotional suffering. In many cases, solo parents experience loneliness and isolation resulting to more emotional struggles. Therefore, solo parents are subjected to high levels of emotional distress. However, they also tend to have higher distress tolerance than those couple-parents by just imagining how they survive each day trying to meet an overwhelming demand in the hope of providing the needs of their children. Distress tolerance may be associated in solo parents with several factors affecting them in terms of: number of children, years of being a solo parent, employment status, and monthly income.
Distress pertains to the emotional pain that anyone can feel when they are in a negative situation. This might include extreme feeling of stress over a completely negative situation. However, distress tolerance is the ability to deal with this strong emotional pain. Additionally, distress tolerance includes the ability to get through an emotional situation without complicating it. In this manner, people with high distress tolerance tend to overcome difficult situation without being negative about it. In a 2010 study of Michael Zvolensky, he developed a five-factor model of distress tolerance which is the Global Hierarchical Experiential Distress Tolerance Construct. It is a five-facet model composed of tolerance of uncertainty, tolerance of ambiguity, tolerance of frustration, tolerance of negative emotion, and tolerance of physical discomfort.
In the global scale, vast studies support the connection between solo parents and distress tolerance. According to Im (2020), parents with low distress tolerance tend to intrigue avoidance behavior in negative situations. Thus, these parents might not get into adaptive parenting practices because they perceived distress as aversive. However, other studies suggest that low distress tolerance might be associated with maladaptive parenting behaviors, on the other hand, higher distress tolerance might be associated with positive parenting behaviors. There is none of the actual studies that say who have a higher or lower distress tolerance between solo fathers and solo mothers, however, Turchi (2018) claimed that both solo father and solo mother have experienced equal level of stress and distress yet they take counterpart in advantages and disadvantages they possess in upbringing their children.
In the Philippines studies, there are limited resources to be found regarding the distress tolerance of solo parents. However, the researchers believe that solo parents here in the Philippines face higher demand and double pressure due to low economic growth causing inflation and resulting in poverty. In that manner, it causes another source of distress.
In local scale, there is a lack of study to support this research. Distress Tolerance is not well-studied here in MIMAROPA and its locality. Though it is assumed that there is an existing connection between solo parents and distress tolerance, the researchers believe that there is a need for evidence to support the claim that solo fathers and solo mothers have greater and lesser distress tolerance. The researchers have observed solo parent families that urged them to conduct this study as a way to deeply understand their distress and the factors that causes this emotion. By means of this study, the researcher aims to provide an output or program that will be beneficial for the solo parents in according with the result of the study. The researchers also believe that it is essential to conduct this study to be able to understand the struggles of solo parents as well as to generate and suggest a solution in favor of them. The unavailability of resources pushes this study to fill that gap and determine the difference between solo fathers and solo mothers' distress tolerance.
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