The dramatic change in the typical family unit is now having a largely undocumented negative effect on an entire generation of Irish children, and according to school guidance counsellors, is one of the main factors behind self-harm and suicide.

Brian Mooney, a guidance counsellor and former president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors in Ireland, told the Sunday Tribune:

"Every guidance counsellor will have children for career guidance, and then kids for personal counselling issues. Invariably the vast majority are from single parent families. It's a given. In the pool of clients you will have, there are issues of alcohol abuse, sexual identity and so on, but if a child comes into you, you're just waiting for them to say, 'it's just mum and myself.' That's almost invariably the case. You just come to accept it."

Mooney, who offers counselling to teenage boys, believes the emotional toll on young Irish men who are living with lone mothers is a complex one, but ultimately, they end up bearing the emotional load in the family home.

"A woman becomes a mother in an unmarried situation. Quite often the mother will rear that child, may not get married, and then the whole emotional focus is on that particular male. When the boy gets to 12, 13 and having been the sole attention of the mother, there are all kinds of problems.

"Ultimately if your total emotional focus is this kid and you don't have a partner, the way you treat the child in an emotional sense is different.

I've often found 13- or 14-yearold kids deal with the normal stuff that happens between man and woman, not in a sexual sense at all, but mothers dump stuff on them. The mother isn't aware she's doing it. Sometimes she just lets loose, then compensates, spoiling them in an emotional way.

"At 13, 14, the kid is going through puberty and they're all f***ed up in the head. It causes behavioural problems, inappropriate behaviour. We have this image of happy families . . . it ain't like that. In the scenario where mammy and daddy are there, the kids have a particular place in the home and they get the opportunity in that environment to be treated as kids.

"But in real life, where the kid is one minute consoling the mother in an emotional sense and the next trying to be a child, they are role-playing, but they are not emotionally mature enough to deal with it.

"Then the kid appears in class, you put them at a desk and expect them to behave, and they can't. An awful lot of kids who end up in the discipline structures in schools, they are all kids where there is only a single parent."

Last year, 2,800 Irish parents divorced, the highest figure since divorce was legislated for in the state.

But it's not just behavioural problems in school that arise from the changing family unit . . . the breakdown of the socalled 'nuclear family' is affecting young men in a more dramatic way as boys, in particular, suffer from not having the emotional support of a male in the home. "Behavioural problems are symptoms of emotional confusion.

They're redefining their own role, trying to establish their identity.

"If they haven't had a male presence in the home, sometimes they're searching for role models and that can often cause problems as well as they latch on to inappropriate ones, " said Mooney. "It is socially acceptable for women to have children on their own, but if you take a child living with a single mother going to school in a situation where most of the teachers are women, where are they getting male role models?"

Such emotional confusion leads to self-harm in girls, who use it as a method of crying out for help, but boys tend to bypass self-harm in favour of more dramatic actions, Mooney said.

"Girls talk. They talk incessantly and it's just part of being a girl. They'll chat for hours on various issues. Boys don't talk.

They'll discuss sport, but they won't say 'I'm feeling down.' If girls are feeling depressed, there's a self-harm issue, they'll call for help. They'll cut themselves. Guys don't talk and it's like a pressure cooker . . . when they self-harm, they do it violently and next thing you know, they're swinging in the garage."