Broken Home: Implications on the Psychological, Emotional and Social Spheres of Select Intermediate Pupils in Bawi Elementary School

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

High parental involvement, including the active interest in children's homework, school activities, emotional well-being, and future aspirations, may lead to children's positive attitude toward school and better career decision making. Based on the Pupils’ Personal Inventory Sheets, there is a number of pupils from the Intermediate level in Bawi ES who belong to broken families. This poses a big challenge to teachers in BES since numerous studies revealed that children who belong to broken homes or families are prone to various behavioral problems. With this regard, this action research is designed to address the problems brought by a broken family/ home.

METHODS

Since the pupils themselves are the direct clienteles for the intervention program, they are the target of the study; hence, purposive sampling is deemed necessary. Only 24 pupils from the intermediate level approved with their parent's/ guardian's consent responded to a set of three-part questionnaires. Descriptive method is the procedure employed in studies with a chief purpose of describing phenomena to ascertain their values and significance. The data collected went through quantitative-qualitative analysis and enabled the researchers to identify problems encountered by students with a broken family.

RESULTS

Data from this study shows the problems encountered by children whose parents are separated. Developmental stages of the respondents are hampered due to the trauma brought by the separation. As answered by pupils through the questionnaire, the top two problems are getting into fights and arguments (67%) and failure to discuss problems with other family members due to mistrust (46%). Gaining self-confidence and self-retrospect, which has a weighted mean of 3.33, marked the highest percentage among the indicators for effects of broken homes on the psychological sphere of pupils. The data also clearly reveals that most of the children who belonged to broken homes are afraid of losing another loved one.

DISCUSSIONS

The results demonstrated that children from broken homes are twice as likely to develop serious behavioral problems. Promoting intervention programs and assessment strategies that focus on the inter-parental relationship may, therefore, pay significant dividends in rectifying the negative consequences of family stress, family conflict, and family breakdown on children.