SPECIAL TRAITS OF SELF-PERCEPTION AND TYPICAL PROBLEMS OF TODAY’S RUSSIAN MALE SINGLE PARENTS
The article is devoted to studying of some aspects of personal experience of male single-parent fatherhood and comparing it with similar motherhood experience of female single parents. Special features of visualization of self as a parent and typical problems of male and female single parents connected with it have been analysed. It has been established that visualisation of self as a parent («I as a parent») in single fathers differs to some extent from visualisation of self as a parent in single mothers; at the same time typical problems that male and female single parents face have both common and specific features many of which stem from public opinion derived from traditional gender stereotypes. The research has also shown that male single parents in general are in no way inferior to mothers either in the assessment of their own parental potential and qualities or in setting up aims of upbringing or in the degree of subjective importance of their parental function and of satisfaction from performing parental role.