Despite the fact that the majority of American children born today are likely to find themselves in a single-parent household at some point (Wagonseller etal, 1997, p. 14), the ideal of a perfect family in most peopleÆs minds is still made up of a mother, a father and two or three children. The stereotype of this perfect family for most people may still also include a mother who stays at home full time. But the ideal of the typical family has shifted to some extent in the post-World War II years to catch up with the realities of the late 20th century to reflect the fact that most women now work. However, most peopleÆs ideal of a perfect American family includes only one parent who puts in long hours at work (and this is usually the father) with another parentÆs working part time to help make ends meet but who has enough time left over to be there for teacher-parent conferences, to bake cookies and to shuffle kids back and forth to soccer games (Brown and Simmons, 1998, p. 33).
Any family that differs from this basic structure is seen as being somehow not only different but wrong. This is true even if the family in question has more than two adults rather than fewer than two: Families with grandparents living at home as well as parents (and so that might be considered as being four-parent families rather than two) are also considered odd and to some extent share the same problems as single-parent families. Anyone who is different is always subject to being criticized, even if they are doing a better job than a parent in a ônormalö family. And single-parent families probably receive the most criticism of any of the common American family forms (Hunter, 1997, p. 45). This is due to several different factors.
The first of these is that people are concerned that a single-parent family cannot provide enough emotional support for a child, and because this is such a widespread and serious concern it deserves some significant amount ...