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An investigation of a random sample of adults who had lost a parent in childhood showed that in the well-adjusted group the home had been kept intact. In these cases the father was the parent lost in childhood and the mother had served a dual role. Masculine personality components in the mother predominated because of the need to work outside the home; this engendered a strong ego in her children, both through her example to them and through her expectations of their performance. Use of community resources were relatively free of conflict over dependency. 'Separation tolerance' apparently is an antidote to separation anxiety, the process of achieving independence and psychosexual development involving a whole series of separations in normal upbringing. The way in which these earlier separations are accomplished affect the resolution of the separation trauma produced by parental death. Continued dependency of the surviving parent, who becomes emotionally dependent upon the children, makes it difficult for the child to normally separate from that parent when he himself becomes an adult. Ego strength in a widow who faces the world as a substitute father helps make the daughter a satisfactory woman.