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This study mainly aimed at investigating the effects of single parenting on female adolescents’ self-esteem with particular reference to Belay Zeleke sub-city in Bahir Dar city. In so doing, it posed four research questions that sought to find out the major causes of single parenting, the level of self-esteem of single-parented female adolescents, and the nexus of parenting style with and its effect (as a predictor) on single-parented female adolescents’ self-esteem. In so doing, scale questionnaires (parenting style scale and Rosenberg self-esteem scale) were prepared to collect quantitative data from 132 female adolescents; interviews were held with five single mothers and four single fathers to gather qualitative data. Both descriptive (frequency and per-centage) and inferential (one-sample test, Pearson correlation and regression) analysis were accordingly used to analyze quantitative data, while thematic analysis was employed to analyze qualitative data. The results showed that divorce is the most common cause of single parenthood in Belay Zeleke sub-city. Moreover, single-parented female adolescents in the area were found to have low level of self-esteem. It was further established that single-parented female adolescents’ self-esteem has a significant positive relationship with authoritative parenting style, unlike au-thoritarian or permissive parenting styles. Authoritative parenting was also distinctively found to be a significant predictor of single-parented female adolescents’ self-esteem. It can be, therefore, concluded that the more authoritative single parents become, the more positively they influence their adolescent daughters’ self-esteem, and thus the more self-esteemed their daughters are likely to become. In view of that, forwarded recommendations included easy access to family (di-vorce) therapy, well- adapted professional counseling and training on ways of stimulating the formation of positive self-esteem among single-parented female adolescents, as well as encour-aging and helping single parents develop increased authoritative behaviors in parenting and in their relationships with their adolescent daughters through theory- and research-based interven-tions tailored with the specific context. |
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