The importance of research

There was once a time when I would not have thought about child development and research, but then I became a parent. When my daughter was born she had many allergies, asthma and would always contract pneumonia and I was always frustrated with her illnesses. Before we knew she had allergies we could not figure out why she was getting sick but through various research studies regarding asthma and other illness we learned that it was allergies causing her health problems. When my son was born and suffered most of the same illnesses we went back to the research that we retrieved when my daughter was born and learned that he had the same allergies and illnesses as her. Without the research that was done I may not have been able to determine what was wrong with either one of my children and we would have spent even more time than we already had dealing with hospital stays for pneumonia and discomfort for my children. Past research studies were a great help to my children medically and while I do not believe that studies should be harmful or dangerous to children I do believe that research is important so as long as organizations are following a standard and code of ethics research should continue. 

Simulation Project

         The topic that I chose for the simulation project deals with social emotional development. I have always been fascinated with how family dynamics affect children. I grew up in a home with a drug addict father and a very weak willed mother who let him push her around. Growing up I had my share of emotional issues but it wasn't until I was faced with a very similar situation in my adult life that I looked at why I had those emotional issues. Becoming a single mother and working my way through college has broadened my horizons in such a way that I am now able to research this topic. Another reason why I chose this topic is because my ex-step children have some social emotional problems but unlike me their parents did not stay together so he did not have a dysfunctional father in the home. He did however have a lot of contact with his father during some of his most dysfunctional times. My son, on the other hand, has had little to no contact with his father and still exhibits some of the same emotional problems that his brother has displayed over the years. It is for this reason that my narrowed topic is to try and determine if it makes a difference to the child’s social emotional development if the dysfunctional parent is in the home or out of the child’s life. From looking at these three scenarios it would seem that having a dysfunctional father in the home affected me in similar ways to my son not having a father in his life at all so I would like to research the issue and see what studies have found.
            One problem that I am having in regards to research is that I am finding very little about fathers. Most of the research that I am finding talks about intact families or single mothers. I have not seen anything about fathers and their impact on children unless it is in the context of a full family unit.