We like to blame a lot of our adulthood problems on our parents and why not? They are, in fact, our first role models, sculpting and molding what we are likely to become. They’re our biggest influence, good or bad – the very roots of our moral tree. So, is it unreasonable to think that being raised in a single parent home may be, at least partially, the reason why so many people are in failed romantic relationships as adults? That’s my theory based, in part, on the daily Facebook status updates of friends from single parent homes about their relationship misadventures.

Now before you boo me off my soapbox, let’s clear some things up. I know that bad relationships are not exclusive to the offspring of single parents. There are plenty of two parent homes where relations between parents is toxic for all involved. There is certainly no rule stating that you HAVE to be raised by both parents in order to turn out as a “normal” socially functional adult. Also, reasons as to “WHY” some homes become single parent homes varies from death to divorce. In either case, and all of those in between, I think it’s safe to assume that not many people set out to raise a child on their own.

Let me also concede that there are a lot of single parents out there that are friggin’ super-heroes. Raising a family by yourself is no easy task. Often work/life balance is grotesquely unbalanced, leaving no time for dating between working multiple jobs, cooking, cleaning, being a teacher/tutor/mentor and all other responsibilities of being a parent.

Credit: Kids Count Data Center

While research by the U.S. Census Bureau supports that women (82.8% of single parent homes) are more likely to be single parents than men (17.2% of single parent homes) my theory has nothing to do with gender, race or economic status, though I do find the numbers interesting. Instead, it has to do with the psychological effects of a child having no point of reference as to what a healthy functioning relationship with a romantic partner is supposed to look like.

For example, let’s say a single father is raising a son, and that the father has no romantic involvement with a woman. His son is most likely going to be influenced by things outside of the home… friends, porn and video games. All good things, but you’ve never seen a man hold the door open for a lady in a porno. Does his son grow up thinking that becoming a pizza delivery boy is the most effective way to meet women and engage in casual sex? A recent study from Stanford University Professor Phillip Zimbardo has even concluded that at least two of those things (video games and porn) are responsible for a “Masculinity Crisis.”

The same example can be given about a single mother raising a daughter. Whereas the daughter’s influences do not come from seeing Mom in a healthy relationship with a man, but instead from romance novels and Twilight movies, leaving her to believe, unrealistically, that somewhere out in the world, there is a sparkling vampire and a werewolf that are willing to fight for her love.

Obviously there are a ton of different variables. A father raising a daughter, a mother raising a son, or either raising multiple kids of different sexes. The point being that single parents may be unknowingly raising children who will eventually have unrealistic expectations from their romantic partners as adults.

I’ve always heard it said that men tend to commit to women who remind them of their mother in some way (I’m hoping not sexually) and women tend to seek men that have characteristics of their father (again). But when one of these are absentee or a negative influence, what then? It leaves me to wonder; how many people out there think they would have made better choices in partners had they seen their parents in a healthy relationship?