You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Breakdown of the family, as several indicators attest, has been increasing in the United States for a number of years. The divorce rate according to Conger (1973) for 1970 was 70% higher than for 1940, and 12% higher than it had been just a year before (p. 84). The 1969 report of the Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children noted that for 1967 13% of households with children were single-parent families (p. 169). At least six million children were growing up in homes without fathers. In a comprehensive review, Herzog and Sudia (1968) sought to assess whether previous generalizations about paternal absence could be corroborated by the available data. Out of 59 studies that permitted statistical analysis, they found 29 in support of the classical view that fatherless homes are associated with abnormal development, while 17 challenged this contention. These authors criticized most of the material they reviewed as demonstrating a “startling lack of replication.” The existing data, they concluded, did not reveal dramatic differences