of attention in this paper.
The emotional needs of a child vary substantially from one individual to another and from one set of circumstances to another. Everything from birth-order to physical health to economic class to age can substantially affect the emotional needs of a child (Noel, Klein and Klein, 1998, p. 31). It is therefore not possible to make general statements about what all children need, nor to make general statements about how a sort of hypothetical childÆs emotional needs might or might not be served by a single parent.
However, it is true that children in general thrive on consistency and the feeling that they can trust the adults who are their caretakers (Brown and Simmons, 1998, p. 112). The most important aspect of raising a child into a healthy adulthood may well be that consistency of care, which means that a child is assured that he or she is loved and that there will always be someone there to take care of him or her.
This is no doubt one of the reasons that people think that a two-parent household is ideal. There is simply no way that a single parent can always be there for a child. Sometimes that single parent will have to be at work, or will be sick, or will be caring for another child, or will simply be too tired themselves to care for anyone else. Sometimes a single parent has to say to a child that they cannot read to them or go to a school picnic or bake cookies at the last minute. Of course, this also happens in two-parent households, especially when both parents work outside the home (Hunter, 1997, p. 44). But it tends to happen more often in single-parent households simply because there is one fewer person to do all of the work that must be done. The result of this is that children in single-parent households hear ônoö more often than those in two-parent households.
The question to be answered then is whether this has any har
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