Does growing up in a single-parent family necessarily mean less love and happiness?

Not necessarily. Even in a single-parent family, a child receiving abundant care from their father or mother and not feeling emotionally deprived can grow up stable and happy. We need to consider the love the child actually receives, not simply count family members.

Through my services, I have met other friends whose parents were busy working, divorced, or deceased, leaving them to face many things alone in childhood. They carried a sense of loss from not being cared for. Some particularly wanted someone to rely on and understand them as adults. I am discussing situations where people genuinely feel an inner lack of care.

To understand someone’s upbringing, we still need to hear how they actually lived. Some received abundant love within their family, while others grew up with a sense of loss. Families that look similar in form may feel very different. We need not see “single parent” and assume future unhappiness.

Yun Xi is a single mother. She spoke about having felt lonely inwardly and later noticing how she expressed love with her daughter. Change began with recognizing her own situation. This does not allow us to infer the form of her childhood family from her being a single mother, nor apply her and her daughter’s experiences to every single-parent family.