The nuclear family has been held out as the "ideal" family structure, and many have been opining in recent years that the nuclear family seems to be disappearing in a world where divorce and unwed motherhood are occurring at high rates. Many families today are single-parent families with only a mother in the household. There may be different reasons why this is so. Unwed mothers represent one type of single-parent families where the mother is forced to be the sole parent and has always been the sole parent as far as the child is concerned. Widows represent another type of single-parent household, and divorced women represent still another. These last two types can be combined as what might be called single by circumstance. The single-parent household where the mother is the sole parent by circumstance may be a difficult family structure, depending on various economic and social factors pertaining to a given family, but it is clearly a viable family structure even if it does not match the ideal of the nuclear family. Such a family unit is viable because it is nothing new and has had the potential to be effective throughout human history, the loss of one parent can draw the family that remains even closer together than they were before, and the single-parent household can develop new and stronger ways of remaining a family unit and of being effective.
Before considering how viable the single-parent household may be, we should consider how viable the nuclear family is today. Many presume it is stable and, as noted, ideal. The trends show it is not that stable and may not be ideal. The American family has changed in a number of ways in this century and has adapted to new environmental factors and social trends. These trends were especially pronounced in the 1960s and into the 1970s as the so-called baby-boom generation of children born immediately after World War II came of age. The last quarter of a century has been mark...