Motivational Cues of Students with Single Parents Essay

Discussing school issues and attending school function has a positive effect on the children’s academic achievement(Jeynes, 2005) but the need to search for a greener pasture has become one of the main issues between family members. To provide quality life for the family, one or both parents fly abroad to work and leave their kids. On their resiliency on parental absence, children of overseas Filipino workers do understand that the idea of readily available work, amenities and bigger income offered in other countries pull certain group of parents to migrate. Thus children with migrant parents view this as an opportunity for better education and they have the means to enroll in private schools (Bielza-Valdez, 2011). Few researches have shown that students who live in one parent households are disadvantaged in many counts. In Asia, the Philippines is the major supplier of labor migrants to over 100 countries and the leading female migrant sending countries along with Indonesia. More than 8 million (10%) out of the 85 million Filipinos were working or living abroad, while over 72% of total migrants from Philippines were women workers. Many of these women work as domestic helpers, nurses, caregivers, and entertainers. With this huge number of Filipino migrants (and still more) living the country temporarily (or permanently), a more pressing concern is with regards to children left behind. Though there is no systematic data on the number of children left behind, it is estimated to be 9 million or 27% of the total youth. The perceived social costs of migration have been always been part of the reasons why various sectors of Filipino society are ambivalent about overseas employment. Aside from the myriad problems migrants encounter abroad, concerns over the stability of families have received much attention. In the 1970s, when male migrants dominated labor migration, the absence of fathers was seen as weakening Filipino families. In the 1980s, women became part of labor migration. As the feminization of migration persisted, the anxieties magnified because mothers, who are considered as the â€Å"light of the home,† are not around for their families. As the foundation of Philippine society, there are fears that threats to the family redound to threats to the nation’s social fabric as a whole. Our parents portray a very big role in our achievement-most especially in academics. Parental effort is consistently associated with higher levels of achievement, and the magnitude of the effect of parental effort is substantial (Conway, 2008). The children of single parent families are more likely to be impoverished, to break the law, to abuse drugs, to do poorly in school, to become pregnant before the age of twenty, and to have emotional and behavioural problems. A common desire for all parents is to see that their child is happy, healthy, and successful. School provides an array of opportunities for children to be successful starting at a young age. Academic success can lead to feelings of competency, self-worth, and high self-esteem (Slavin, 2000). In addition to its positive effects on a child’s emotions, early academic success is related to success throughout a child’s academic career (Turner & Johnson, 2003). However, students who do not perform well in early years may develop poor academic self-concepts and, as a result, perform poorly in later years (Marsh & Yeung, 1997).