Raising children: single parents’ parenting styles with children living with attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder

ABSTRACT

This article reports on the perceptions of single parents on their parenting styles in raising their children living with attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD). Purposive sampling was used to collect the sample group. The study comprised 10 female participants of white, Indian, and coloured descent with a mean age of 35.6 years. The participants were single parents of a child formally diagnosed with ADHD and living in South Africa. Qualitative data were gathered using semi-structured interviews and subsequently thematically analyzed. The study found that the single parents of children with ADHD perceived their parenting styles as unique from their parents’ traditional methods. The results also revealed shortcomings in the theoretical framework used to guide this study, especially in regard to non-traditional parenting structures. Future research could explore a proposed conceptual framework, the Pan-African Millennial Parenting conceptual framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• single parenting
• parenting styles
• parenting theory
• South African parenting
• ADHD interventions

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully thank the participants without whom this study would not have been possible. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Responses of the participants are verbatim with only very light editing in order to preserve the authenticity of the responses.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Razeenah Mahomed

Razeenah Mahomed is a Wits trained educational psychologist practicing in the private and government sector within South Africa. She graduated with her Masters in Educational Psychology with a research focus on ADHD and parenting methods, leading to a keen interest in attachment, neurodevelopmental disorders, and assisting individuals regain a sense of self and the ability to re-integrate into their communities. Razeenah also presented her research at the University of the Witwatersrand Faculty’s Cross-Disciplinary symposium in 2019 and won the faculty award for outstanding research. Alongside research and therapy, Razeenah has 7 years of broad experience in psychological assessment and working with a board range of developmental disorders through her work as a Psychometrist.

Daleen Alexander

Daleen Alexander has been a practicing psychologist since 1994 and has been a lecturer since 2002 at the University of the Witwatersrand and is currently an Associate Professor. She obtained a Doctorate in Career Psychology in 2000 at the University of Johannesburg. Her research interests centre on the pervasive developmental disorders of childhood, focusing specifically on ADD, ADHD, Autism spectrum disorders and attachment; as well as career-related constructs. She has supervised post graduate students successfully and published extensively on career development, attachment and constructs related to early child development. She has participated in conferences; of note one at Oxford at the family-based symposium.

Jacobus Maree

Jacobus G. Maree is an educational psychologist and a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Pretoria. He holds doctoral degrees in Education (Career counselling), Mathematics Education, and Psychology. A regular keynote speaker at national and international conferences, he has received multiple awards for his work and he has a B1 rating from the National Research Foundation. Prof. Maree has authored or co-authored 100+ peer-reviewed articles and 60 books/book chapters on career counselling, research, and related topics since 2011. In the same period, he supervised 44 doctoral theses and Master’s dissertations and read keynote papers at 35+ international and at 28+ national conferences.