This study of one hundred and two fatherless families in a Florida mental health clinic cogently demonstrates the need to avoid oversimplification. Poverty was found to be far more destructive than fatherlessness per se. The authors point out that these two factors are often found together and then not separately evaluated. Fatherlessness due to death must be distinguished from fatherlessness due to desertion or divorce as its impact on the mother and the children is quite different. The adaptive capacities of these households is often underrated. Facile lumping together and discussion of 'fatherless families' is rightly decried.