Uses a Granger-Sims statistical causality test applied to survey and social security data from 1955 to 1980 to examine the attractiveness of welfare as an inducement for Black women to stay single. Refutes this economic motivation theory and suggests a decline in available Black males as a determinant. (JAC)

Examined income and food and housing expenditures for the last married year for couples and then five years after marital dissolution in female (N=5,000) respondents to the University of Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Results showed that incomes and expenditures for food, but not for housing, dropped after marital dissolution. (LLL)

It is proposed that a high degree of psychological father presence, when incongruent with reality and if persistent over time, is negatively related to family functionality. Correlational analysis reveals significant covariance between family functionality and psychological father presence, operating in a negative direction, as proposed. (Author)

Summarizes data from 1990 Current Population Survey supporting three general conclusions: (1) parental employment and children's poverty are linked in married-couple and female-headed families; (2) child poverty rates are insensitive to parental employment; (3) black-white differences in child poverty are not result of racial differences in…

This article attempts to evaluate, critically, the scattered findings on divorced women as single parents and on the family units they head, and to re-examine effects of stigma on these families. (Author)

Explores effects of husbands/ career pressures upon role structures within a section of middle-class families at the childrearing stage of the family life cycle. It examines the process through which instrumental relationships between women gave rise to a distinctive subculture which offered support to women in domestic affairs and child rearing.…

Investigated attitudes and sexual activity of young unmarried women from different family structures. Intact family respondents reported most positive attitudes toward marriage; reconstituted family respondents reported most accepting attitudes toward divorce. Divorced and reconstituted family subjects reported significantly more sexual experience…

Despite contradictions in their own family experience to the customary adult division of labor, neither father absent nor lower class Ss displayed consistent differences from father present or middle class Ss in their perceptions. The discussion presents implications for programs with low income, preschool children. (Author)

Examined effects of parental separation on academic achievement and academic self-concept of 1,682 seventh and ninth graders. Academic self-concepts were lower among adolescents in mother-only families whose fathers departed since child entered third grade than among those living with both biological parents; adolescents whose fathers left earlier…

Identifies three network types in single-parent families: family of origin network, extended network, and conjugal network. Findings indicate that network structure is associated with type of support, and that effects of structure and support on psychological well-being are mediated by a third variable, role orientation of the mother. (Author)

In a family with a physically absent father, a high degree of psychological father presence relates to wife dysfunction and family dysfunction. The wife's instrumental personal qualities may be even more important in closing-out the father role and reorganizing her family. (Author)

Data from 2,033 mainland Puerto Rican women revealed that growing proportion of Puerto Rican children were born outside of formal/informal coresidential unions. Among children born into intact unions, increasing proportion are offspring of informal unions. Puerto Rican children face high risks of family disruption during childhood. (Author/NB)

According to data from national survey of 17,110 children under age 18, children living with single mothers or with mothers and stepfathers were more likely than those living with both biological parents to have repeated a grade, been expelled, been treated for emotional or behavioral problems, and to have elevated scores for behavioral problems…

Examined the relationship between family headship and stress. Data from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics conclude that single female heads with children experience more stress than their married male counterparts. Higher incidence of major life events experienced by female heads is primarily a function of marital disruption. (Author/JAC)

Examines aspects of mother-only families. Finds high economic insecurity in mother-only families because of low earnings, lack of child support and meager public benefits. Argues that struggle of mother-only families reflects societal struggles around changes in women's roles, relationship between state and family, and class and racial inequality.…