RESILIENCE OF A CHILD FROM BROKEN HOME FAMILY: PHENOMENOLOGY STUDY

Tria Widyastuti
Master Program in Psychology, Universitas Gadjah Mada, INDONESIA, email: triawidya06@gmail.com

Abstract
A parental divorce is a stressful event for children. Several studies show that children from broken homes have complex problems. However, some children from broken homes are found to be able to have a good achievement and able to grow to be positive. They are able to build resilience in facing their family problems. This study aimed to understand how a child from broken homes builds resilience. A phenomenological study was used as the method in this study. Interviews and observations were used to collect data.
The participant in this study was a 25-year-old female graduate student. Her parents divorced when she was 4 years old. Her mother got married four times. The subject had a traumatic experience during her mother’s second marriage according to the domestic violence of her step father to her mother. At school, she was bullied by her friends. She also broke up with her boyfriend because he could not accept her family condition. In order to understand how the participant becomes resilience, the resilience framework which focuses on socio ecological context was used. In this case, the resilience process begins when the participant realized that something was wrong with her. After had therapy, she realized that the problem was that she had terrible anger management. It was revealed that such problem arose because she always repressed her feelings related to her family conflicts. Then she had the initiative to open and talked to her mother. She started to tell her mother about her boyfriend. After that, her mother also started to be open and strengthen her when facing problems. Although her mother was someone who caused the stressful situation to her, her mother was also the person who strengthened her the most. There are four factors that support the subject in building resilience: (1) the participant’s acceptance that she has problems, (2) social supports, (2) religiosity, and (4) concern for someone around her.

Keywords:
resilience, parental divorce, broken home




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CITATION: Abstracts & Proceedings of ADVED 2017 - 3rd International Conference on Advances in Education and Social Sciences, 9-11 October 2017- Istanbul, Turkey

ISBN: 978-605-82433-0-9