It’s What’s Normal for Me: Children’s Experiences of Growing Up in a Continuously Single-Parent Household

Relative to research that has explored outcomes for children associated with living in a single parent family, less attention has been paid to how children interpret and make sense of their family situation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 38 children and adolescents, aged 7 to 17 years in Ireland, this study explores children’s experiences of growing up in a continuously single-parent family, without experiencing separation and transitions usually associated with single-parent families. Children drew on societal discourses and comparisons with their peer group to evaluate their own family situation. Continuity and a sense of normality represented a salient aspect of their experiences since living in a one-parent family was all they had ever known. Children’s agency emerged in how they negotiated family between two homes and how they weighed up the costs and benefits of potential new parental partnerships.