Single-mothers are very common in our society now. More and more western single-mothers can more easily face their situations. However, in some Asian counties, because of the traditional culture, most single-mothers have to go through a quite hard time. There are three sources of psychological stress: themselves, their relationships with their family, and our society.

The first source is themselves. It doesn't matter the single-mothers were divorced, have lost spouses or have children without marriages; they all take the stress that from living without their partners. Those single- mothers who lost their spouses even face more serious situations because they are taking the cruel experience of the death of family members. This is a rather serious stress. Due to the traditional thinking, some Asian single-mothers think that their actions were not good enough so that their husbands abandoned them. As a result, they always blame themselves. The future plans about their lives may also be stressful. They are concerned about whether or not remarry, or whether or not they will raise their children by themselves.

The second source is their relationships with their families. When single-mothers are facing problems, they think the first people who can provide help are their parents. However, the opinions and expectations of their parents to their marriages will also cause some stress to those single-mothers; especially,when their parents didn't agree about their marriages at the very beginning. In this case, the conflicts may happen in these families. Due to the responsibilities for the children, single-mothers have to be mothers and fathers at the same time. It has caused many single-mothers not have enough time and energy to take care of their children. Therefore, they may overprotect their children, or may not pay enough attention to their children. Some single-mothers do not like their children to keep in touch with their fathers but they are not able to control it. This also causes stress.

The last source of stress is society. Most Asian single-mothers don't like other people know their situations since they don’t want people to think negatively about them and their situations. Consequently, they will lie or avoid close contact with their co- workers and friends. After a long time, their social lives will become terrible. On the other hand, the social lives of their children is also the one of the causes. The parents' divorce will impact children very much; even their waysof thinking and their behaviours will change. As a result, most of children who did crimes come from single-families.

Families are the original social units that fulfill the needs of people's psychology. I sincerely hope everybody has a happy family. However, single-families are an unavoidable social phenomenon. Those single-mothers are taking a great amount of stress. To help them, the society, the people, and all the single- mothers have to work together. Their stress is not only caused by themselves but also made by our whole society. Therefore, everybody in the society should provide more understanding and help to those unfortunate people.

August 2002