ith their domestic and child care responsibilities. Social tensions producing more and more divorce contributed to the growing number of families with women as head of household. Many of these women are under-educated and under-trained and cannot get good enough jobs to support their families, and in addition they must continue in their role as mother (and now father) at the same time. This is an unintended consequence of liberalized divorce laws on the one hand and economic problems for certain communities on the other.
Women thus emerge from a marriage on the average in worse financial shape than do males. Economic roles within the family have shifted significantly in the post World War II years, and regardless of the presence of children, including infants, wives now are more likely to work outside the home than to work solely as homemakers (Wetzel 4-5). The single-parent family that is left after divorce is growing in number, and the statistics now show that 50 percent of couples married since 1970 and 33 percent of those married since 1950 are divorced and that one out of every six children under 18 lives with only one parents. The number of children in families headed by a woman more than doubled between 1954 and 1975 (Lindsey 159). Researchers find that typically, the husband retains two thirds of his income after divorce for himself, while the wife and children (usually a total of three people) received only one third. A similar unequal division occurs when the community property is "equally divided" so that the husband, one person, gets one half, and the wife and children, usually three persons, get one half. The main for
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