Abstract:
The objectives of this research are to study and analyze the following; 1) Conditions and roles of single mothers in Thai society. 2) Relationship and communication patterns of single mothers in Thai society. 3) Factors influencing their communication and success perceived by single mothers in raising their children. Online questionnaires are collected from 100 single mothers, together with in-depth interviews with 30 single mothers, exploratory interviews with 3 psychologists and documentary research. The research results are as follow; 1.) Most of the single mothers from the online survey are 31-40 years old, divorced, have a single child, graduated with bachelors degree, earn a monthly income of 15,001-30,000 Baht, and work in the state enterprise and private sector, their most predominant role found in this research is a family leader and sole decision maker in the house. Also, most of the fathers tend to not have any involvement in raising the child/children. From the sources found in researches state that families with proper marriage registration tends to have a lower percentage of becoming a single parent family. 2.) High degree of intimacy is the relationship pattern between single mothers and their children, found the most in this study , while democracy family communication style is also found the most. 3.) Factors which are found the most influential on single mothers communication and success in raising children perceived by single mothers are family size, the single mothers education level and income rate and the roles and relationship of the fathers with the mother and their child/children respectively.