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In the biblical story of the first nonintact family — Hagar and Ishmael — divine intervention saved mother and child from death (Genesis XXI). Hagar provided the necessary physical and emotional nurturance only with miraculous assistance. Ishmael, Abraham's first-born, and his concubine mother were abandoned because of Sarah's jealousy. Without a father's support, Ishmael grew into “a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him” (Genesis XVI).
Recent statistics indicate that between one-third to one-half of marriages in America now end in divorce. The number of children under eighteen living in single parent homes has been estimated at 7,000,000. The special problems and difficulties of nonintact families, although always with us, are likely to become more common. In two New York City public schools where I have direct contact, and whose districting encompasses a predominantly white, middle-class population, the principals and guidance counselors estimate that between 50% to 60% of their students live in single parent homes.
Although there is considerable popular, psychiatric, and psychoanalytic writing which deals with the effects of divorce and desertion upon children and adults, and of early parental loss upon children and adolescents, the professional literature has paid little attention to single parent families.