Makeup 5

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES VOLUME 35, NUMBER 4, 1979

Growing Up a Little Faster: The Experience of Growing Up in a Single-Parent Household

Robert S. Weiss

University of Massachusetts and Harvard Medical School

On the basis of interviews with single parents, and with adolescent children living with single parents, a theory of the structure and functioning of single-parent households is proposed. The premise of this theoi^ is that the two-parent household maintains a hierarchy—an echelon structure—that the one-parent household can forgo. The absence of hierarchy permits the single parent who works full time to share managerial responsibility for the household with the children. The consequences for the children may be a fostering of an early maturity.

A recent review of research on the impact on children of parental divorce points out that most attention has been given to the consequences for the children of the absence from their homes of their fathers, (Longfellow, 1979). Cenerally father-ab- sence was thought important because it implied that the children's home was without a source of discipline and a model for the development of appropriate sex roles (Biller, 1974). The impact on children of loss of a parent who was for them an attachment figure has also received attention (Bowlby, 1973; Wallerstein & Kelly 1974). The effects on children of changed relationships with custodial parents have been noted primarily by investigators working in a psychiatric or clinical tradition (Wallerstein & Kelly, 1974; also Klebanow, 1976). The effect on children of their changed responsibilities in their new households, and of their

Work on this paper was supported by NIMH Grant 1 RO 1 MH 31716-01 "Single parent influences on transitions to adulthood." The author is deeply indebted to Dr. Teresa Levitin for her suggestions for revision of earlier drafts.

Correspondence regarding this article may be addressed to Robert S. Weiss, Laboratory of Community Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, 58 Fenwood Road, Boston, MA 02115.

97

98 ROBERT S. WEISS

participation in households that are now differently organized has been less often considered. Cardner, a child psychiatrist, does observe: "When parents separate, the children are generally required to assume new responsibilities and obligations." (1976, p. 169). And Ceorge and Wilding in a discussion of motherless households say: "The mother's absence inevitably resulted in the children having to take on more responsibility in looking after themselves and helping the father to run the house." (1972, p. 73). But these writers are exceptional in recognizing that the organization of a one-parent household differs from that of a two-parent household.

It is surprising that so little attention has thus far been given to the effects on children's development produced by the modi- fication of their household roles. Changes in the children's roles and responsibilities are among the aspects most often noted by single parents themselves when commenting on how the single parent situation is different. Parents sometimes say their children "have had to grow up a little bit faster." Single parents may also comment that as a result of their having had to grow up a little faster, their children appear to them to be more mature than children of the same age living in two-parent households.

This earlier maturity may display itself as an unusual ability to understand adults' perspectives and to relate to adults, or a.s a sense of self-reliance more appropriate to an older child, or as unusual responsibleness. To be sure, early maturity is not necessarily displayed throughout a child's functioning. The same child who is precociously capable of sympathy for the parent may also be more needful of approval, more dependent, or more diffident with peers than other children. Yet a general impression from talking with single parents and with children who live in single-parent households is that the children have developed capabilities for independent functioning and for the assumption of responsibility, as well as some specific skills, unusual among their peers from two-parent households. How this early maturity comes about, the forms it takes, and some of its possible conse- quences are the subject of this paper.

The paper is based on data collected in a series of studies conducted within the research program of The Laboratory of Community Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. In the course of these studies, well over two hundred single parents from a wide range of educational and occupational backgrounds have been interviewed, many of them several times over intervals of six months to a year. For comparison purposes, extensive inter-

GROWING UP A LITTLE FASTER 99

views have also been held with a small number of married couples. In addition, individual interviews have been held with children ranging in age from six to young adult, from about twenty families, and group interviews have been held with another twenty or more adolescent children.

The Single Parent Family and the A bsence of an Echelon Structure In most well-functioning two-parent households, there is not

much opportunity for children to enter into household decision- making. Young children and even adolescents generally have little influence on familial matters. The children may decide on the decorating scheme for their rooms, select their own clothes, choose their friends and their hobbies. But household issues, such as when mealtimes are scheduled and which household jobs are assigned to the children, and familial issues, such as where the family will go on the parents' vacation, tend to be decided by the parents, perhaps after limited consultation with the children. The maintenance and direction of the family unit is a parental responsibility.

Because the parents are jointly responsible, each parent feels pledged to support the other. Should there be no prior agreement on a particular issue, each parent is expected to respect the position assumed by the other, at least while the parents are in the presence of the children. In reality, one parent may countermand the other's directives or may collude with the children to frustrate the other's wishes, but behavior of this sort is understood as irresponsible and, perhaps, hostile in intent. In a well-functioning two-parent household, each parent can count on the other to support that parent's rulings.

Goffman (1961) has given the name "echelon structure" to an authority structure in which a partnership agreement, not necessarily explicit, exists among those on a superordinate level which has the effect of giving anyone on that level authority in relation to anyone on a subordinate level. The army maintains this sort of authority structure; so do hospitals; so do two-parent families. One-parent families do not. The parent in the one-parent family need not check with the second parent before acceding to the children's wishes in an area in which the second parent is known to have strong commitments. The parent in the one- parent family need not avoid alliances with the children which might prove embarrassing should it become necessary to back up the second parent. No longer is there a structure in which the parent is unable to make common cause with the children

100 ROBERT S. WEISS

for fear of betraying a prior understanding with the other parent. Without a second parent in the household, the echelon structure of the two-parent family dissolves.

Although the collapse of the echelon structure does not require that a parent's relationship to the children undergo change, it makes certain types of change possible. In particular, it makes possible the development of a new relationship in which the children are defined as having responsibilities and rights in the household not very different from the parent's own. Children now can be asked not only to perform additional chores—this would have been possible within an echelon structure as well—but also to participate in deciding what is to be done.

If a single parent is working full-time, and, especially, if the parent has more than one child to care for, then the parent is likely to find that sharing responsibility with the children is very nearly necessary to maintain the functioning of the household. Some single parents report having called their children into a family council at which they announced to the children that now, with only one parent in the household, the family would have to be run in a new way, with every member of the family assuming a full share of responsibility. The following is from an interview with a mother of four children who ranged in age from about ten or eleven to about sixteen:

As soon as I was on my own, I sat down with the children—I always had a good rapport with the children—and I told them, "Now things are different. Instead of, more or less, it being a family of mother and four children, we're all one family with all equal responsibility, and we all have a say, and we're all very important. And If it is going to work right, we all have to be able to cooperate with each other."

In this new definition of the household structure, the children are expected to do their share, just as is the parent. Children, though they may not at first be as reliable as they later become, usually prove equal to this expectation. Children of only three are able to keep their toys in order; children of four or five can make their own beds, although they may complain that the beds will only have to be unmade in the evening; eight-year-olds can vacuum f'loors and clean up a kitchen; ten-year-olds can cook; adolescents are capable of looking after themselves and younger children through much of a weekend. A man with three daughters aged four to nine described how they helped during their breakfast rush:

It is a matter of survival. Each of the kids has a chore. Patsy makes her bed in the morning when she gets up. That is one less job that

GROWING UP A LITTLE FASTER 101

I have to do. Shirley gets the cereal down if we are having cereal. Lenore clears the table and puts the dishes in the dishwasher. While one is in the bathroom the other has something to do. By the time we leave the house in the morning, the beds are made, the table is cleared, and the dishes are put away in the dishwasher.

But the single-parent household is different from the two- parent household not simply because children are likely to be asked to do more household tasks. It is different because children are held responsible, not only for the chores themselves, but also for the continued functioning of the household. They are asked to accept that the functioning of the household is as much dependent on their contributions as on the contributions of the parent. They are asked, in a way, to assume some of the concerns of management, to move from the role of subordinate member of the household to that of junior partner.

The difference between the child's role in the one-parent and the two-parent household is made manifest when the child fails to perform an expected task. In the two-parent household, the parents may decide that the chore is beyond the child's capacity, or that getting the child to help is more trouble than it is worth, or that the child requires discipline or a lecture on household citizenship. In any event, a decision will usually be made on the parental level regarding how the issue is to be handled. In the one-parent household the child will be directly confronted by the parent. The child is failing to meet a partnership responsibility. One mother insisted that her children inspect her work-roughened hands so that they would realize that she was doing her part. Several single parents reported exploding, "I can't do it all myself. I must have your help!" In the two-parent family a chore undone may mean more work for the parents. In the one-parent family it means this and more: the same chore represents a threat to the partnership understandings the parent has attempted to establish with the children in order to keep the household going.

The definition of the children as junior partners in the management of the household permits the children new rights and authority as well as requiring new responsibilities of them. Civen that the children are affected by the decisions and will be expected to cooperate in their realization, to consult them seems only sensible. One woman, mother of two girls aged seven and five said:

We all make decisions together as far as making plans on where we're going, what we're going to eat, or, if they go with me to the store, they help make decisions as far as things that I buy for the house. They make decisions on their own clothes, of course.

102 ROBERT S. WEISS

One way in which a single parent may share managerial responsibility with a child is by making the child responsible for younger children in the family. This delegation of parental responsibility may happen even though the older child is still quite young. Another way in which a single parent may share managerial responsibility is by asking a child to assume responsi- bilities that might, in a marriage, have been assumed by the spouse. Thus, a single father may rely on an elder daughter to act as hostess and housekeeper as well as to keep an eye on the other children; and a single mother may rely on an elder son to do the heavy work around the house. One mother said:

I expect my seventeen-year-old son to understand that even if his friends don't explain to the plumber what happened, that in his particular situation he should do it, because a plumber will pay more attention to another male.

Parents are sometimes brought up short when others remark on the shift that has taken place in their relationships with one or more of the children. One woman found it entirely natural to consult her six-year-old son, her only child, about when they would have supper, until a friend remarked that few other six-year-olds were treated by their parents as though they were peers. Occasionally parents are forced by a sudden sense of incongruity to recognize the shift themselves. One woman de- scribed wondering, on being criticized by her fifteen-year-old son for being late with dinner, whether she had encouraged her son to assume the prerogatives of man of the house.

Single parents sometimes report that one of their children competes with them for the leadership role within the family. The child may intrude, challenging the parent's authority, when the parent is talking with one of the other children. Or a child may attempt to play the role of parent in a helpful fashion, just as might the second parent in a two-parent household. One mother said:

My oldest son has taken on that role of being a parent, telling the others what they should do and what they shouldn't do and how he will send so-and-so to bed if so-and-so doesn't do this or that. And he'll take on all kinds of responsibilities. And I don't think it's good for him, because he's only eleven.

Parents react in quite different ways to these developments. Some are concerned; others are more complacent. Some assume that it is only to be expected that if there is a vacant parental role one or another of the children will want to fill it. One mother of four children spoke of her eldest son as being piqued because

GROWING UP A LITTLE FASTER 103

ber second son, apparently a more attractive boy, had become the one the youngest two children looked to for direction. Sometimes the issue of the vacant parental role becomes a matter for family discussion. One mother reported that after she and her husband separated, her oldest son said that he was not about to become man of the family for her. She said she replied, "I just got rid of one. Why should I want another?"

If single parents work or have evening activities that take them out of the home, their children sooner or later are required to assume a great deal of responsibility for themselves in addition to their other familial responsibilities. The children are likely to be required to look after themselves, for intervals of varying lengths of time, beginning when the children are quite young. One woman said:

I leave for work at seven-thirty and my son doesn't leave for school until eight-thirty. Five years ago if you had said, "What do you think about leaving an eight-year-old," I'd have looked at you in horror.

Many parents who work, like the parent above, must leave home before their children leave for school and then use the telephone to keep in touch with their children when the children have returned home. And so children may be required to make their own breakfasts and fix their own lunches, get themselves off to school, and then look after themselves on returning home from school, perhaps at that point remaining within their homes so their parents can be assured tbat they are staying out of trouble.

In a single-parent household, there may be no one other than the children for the parent to confide in or to turn to for advice or company, especially about household and family problems. In a well-functioning two-parent household, parents bring to each other their tensions and uncertainties. Even in a badly functioning two-parent household, the echelon structure of the household encourages parents to discuss central family- related issues with each other. Certainly it acts as a deterrent to either parent confiding in the children. In a one-parent household the children easily become friends and confidants. Thus there is often greater closeness between the single parent and the children than there was when the parent was married. (George and Wilding, 1972, also comment on this point.) In addition, the parent can justify sharing worries with the children because the children are understood as having some responsibility for the household. Said one parent: "You're hit with these bills and who can you talk to about it but the kids? It's the only other people that you can really talk to. You have to have someone

104 ROBERT S. WEISS

to share it with and so you share it with the people that you're doing it for. And, every so often, if they're bugging me for something that costs too much money, that's out of proportion to what I can afford, I take the bills out and show them the bills, show them what we get in monthly and say, 'Now you make sense of it'."

The ending of the echelon structure permits children to de- fine themselves as peers of the parent—younger peers, but still peers—and the sharing of responsibility together with the devel- opment of companionship between parents and children en- courages the children in this definition. But parents may go beyond simply being open and companionate with their children. Espe- cially during the troubled months immediately following the ending of their marriages, single parents may rely on their children for comfort, reassurance, and the sort of nur turant caring that might be called parental. One mother of two boys, aged four and six at the time of her divorce, said:

At the time of my emotional instability I stayed with the kids and I really did draw from them a lot of strength. I'm not sure that was good for them or for me, but that was what I did.

We might, in these instances, characterize the parent-child relationship as in a state of role reversal. Role reversals seem usually to be of brief duration. The inappropriateness of the reversed roles appears to be recognized by both parent and child, and to create discomfort for both. The parent's discomfort may be especially strong should a child assume the role of admonitory adult. T h e child in the following report was about ten:

I called my house and Mark said, "When are you coming home?" And I said, "Pretty soon." And he said, "Ma, it's a quarter of eight. Now you had better get home here quick." And I said, "Okay, Mark. I'm just having drinks with a few friends." And he said, "Well, don't drink too much and be home soon." And I said, "All right, give me about an hour." And he said, "Are you sure?" And I said, "Yes, about an hour." And I got off the phone, and I said, "I did this with my mother when I was a kid! I'd call up and have to give these excuses! And I'm still doing it and I'm twenty-nine years old!"

The Effects on the Child of Changed Household Roles There are many reasons why children in single-parent house-

holds become more responsible, more independent, and more alert to adult values and concerns than other children of the same age. They are likely to be required to make greater contribu- tions to the functioning of their families than are other children, to be more actively involved in family decision-making, to play

GROWING UP A LITTLE FASTER 105

the roles of junior partners to their parents in the management of their households and, often, to serve as quasi-parents to younger siblings. Also, they may be encouraged to develop relationships with their parents that are more like the relationship of friend and confidant than like that ordinarily understood as holding between child and parent. The changes in the child are functional for the parent and for the family unit. Are they of value to the child?

Those observers who have noted the changed roles of children in single-parent families have been cautious in assessing their meaning for the children. Gardner writes, "Some regress in response to the new demands and others rise to the occasion and attain a new salutary maturity. There are others, however, whose new maturity is spurious" (1976, p. 169). And George and Wilding report that the single fathers in their study were divided about the value of the additional responsibility their children were required to assume: "Some felt it made children more independent and they thought it would stand the children in good stead one day. Others felt that their children suffered as they had less time to play, to do school work or other things they wanted to" (1972, p. 73).

Our respondents generally saw the changes produced in their children by the children's new responsibilities to have been largely beneficial, although they sometimes regretted that their children had not had a more carefree childhood and adolescence. With the exception of a few parents who worried that they had lost control of their children, parents were pleased that their children had proven so capable of rising to the challenge of increased responsibility.

Adolescents living within single-parent families, although they tended to agree with their parents that they had been required to move toward early maturity in a number of ways, seemed to see the experience as of mixed value. It meant less security; they learned to share their parents' worries. Several adolescents whose parents were separated or divorced said that they were constantly aware that their parents were financially pressed. Their fathers complained to them of their mothers' financial demands, and their mothers complained of their fathers' unwillingness to help. Or their mothers asked them to tell their fathers that they needed clothes or school books or money for orthodonture, while the fathers told them to tell their mothers to be more reasonable. A few children had shifted their residence from mothers' homes to fathers' homes and had then been made aware of disputes

106 ROBERT S. WEISS

between the parents over whether their fathers remained liable for support payments. One adolescent girl, reviewing her child- hood, said:

You don't have, not necessarily the childhood, but you don't have the freedom of not worrying about things, about money.

Some adolescents report having been made quite insecure by their parents' concern about money. One girl told of checking her downstairs food pantry to reassure herself that it was filled with canned goods.

Awareness of their parents' problems and uncertainties led adolescents to recognize that their parents were people like themselves, with frailties as well as strengths. Further impetus to seeing their parents as vulnerable came from adolescents' observations of the parents' attempts to establish new cross-sex relationships. They learned that their parents could be elated when things went well in the parents' dating life, and depressed when they went badly, just as was true for them. They may also have been led to recognize their parents' uncertainty in sexual matters, and to see their parents as beset by some of the same conflicts that troubled them. This more realistic view of their parents was strengthened when the parents turned to them, as junior partners in the household or as confidants, for understand- ing and support. Recognizing the parents' frailties reduced the adolescents' ability to rely unquestioningly on them and led to feelings of insecurity as well as to resolutions to be self-reliant: indeed, adolescents implied that they had become self-reliant just because there seemed no one else on whom they could rely. Here is a comment by a sixteen-year-old girl that expressed this feeling:

I have become very independent. I am an independent person. I can probably get along by myself if I have to. Not completely. If my mother died, I'd be crying. But I'd get along. I think it's because I already do a lot of things by myself that, I suppose, if I had both parents, I wouldn't have to.

These children sometimes describe themselves as "loners": not isolated, but not deeply enmeshed in the peer culture either. Other children sometimes see them as unusually serious and mature. One girl spoke of being used as "Dear Abby" by her friends. But most prominent in the self-description of these children is their sense of unusual competence. In contrast to children in two-parent homes, these children may regularly cook or clean the house, be responsible for their clothes, be responsible for younger children. They are likely to take pride in being able

GROWING UP A LITTLE FASTER 107

to carry more responsibility than their friends from two-parent households who, in their view, have been pampered. Here is a comment by a sixteen-year-old girl:

I get very angry at times, like when I hear this girl, she said, "My mother yelled at me this morning because I didn't make my bed, and I am so upset today." And, I just think, "You little twerp! I have to make my bed, my mother's bed, I have to clean the whole house, I have to cook the dinner, I have to take trash out!" And I was just so angry.

These children, on recognizing how much more capable they are in certain respects than other children, may feel enhanced esteem for themselves. But they may also feel some envy of children who have had fewer responsibilities. One girl said:

If there were two parents, it might be better. It would be kind of like when my grandmother comes. You come home and there is Grandmother. You know she's going to be there, you know she's going to have the house cleaned up and the table set. I don't know, just silly little things, that you don't have to come home and worry about it and do it yourself or try to get your sisters help to do it, because Mother isn't there.

It would seem accurate to say that most children of single- parent families, though they may be pleased that they proved able to meet the challenges of new expectations, also regret having had to do so.

Possible Long Run Effects on Children of Growing Up a Little Faster What difference does it make in the long run for a child

to have "grown up a little faster?" The loss of a parent from a household is, for most children, a serious reverse which may for some time affect their development. And, if parents remain in conflict with each other after the ending of their marriages, their children may well be victimized in the process: no matter whether the children identify with one parent, attempt to maintain loyalty to both, or refuse to ally themselves with either, the children may find the parents' quarrel drains their energy, leaving them with too few resources for their own concerns. The changed role of the children in the household and the new responsibilities, rights, and obligations engendered by the end of the parental echelon structure, however, appear not in themselves to be injurious, at least not for adolescent children.

Adolescents appear capable of managing both greater re- sponsibility and greater independence than they are ordinarily permitted. This is not to say that adolescents can forego parental support and investment, but rather that, so long as there has

108 ROBERT S. WEISS

been no earlier deprivation of nurturance, and so long as some degree of parental support and investment remains available, adolescents can, in general, assume additional responsibility for their households and themselves without sustaining harm to their development. It seems well within adolescents' capabilities for them to assume genuine responsibility for the functioning of their households, to get through much of the day without adult supervision or control, to act as surrogate parents to siblings, and to act as junior partners, companions, and confidants to their parents, and, on occasion, as their parents' parents. Of course, should there be a withdrawal of parental emotional investment in an adolescent's well-being as an accompaniment to the change in the structure of the adolescent's family, the adolescent's trust in the reliability of apparently committed others may well be diminished, with some risk to the course taken by the adolescent's future life. But so long as both parents display continued concern and support, adolescents seem able to take in stride the new responsibilities of living in a single-parent family. Indeed, they may find their feelings of self-worth enhanced by the realization that the maintenance of the household depends on their contribu- tions.

It seems to be a different matter with younger children. Children not yet adolescent may be needful of more parental accessibility than is made available by the schedule of most working single parents. Those children whose despairing and sometimes depressed parents have turned to them for understanding (thus communicating to the children that the parents are not bulwarks against insecurity), who not only have had to help out at home but also, from an early age, have had to look after themselves through much of the day, may be most at risk.

These young children whose parents have not been accessible to them are the most likely to become precocious and oddly self-reliant. Sometimes these children seem socially more capable than their age-mates and are looked up to by them; it can be attractive to age-mates who feel less self-assured to be with someone who appears entirely self-sufficient.

But many of these children have had to learn to suppress their need for a parent, to prevent their yearning for a parent's nurturance from reaching expression because they know the parent cannot respond. At those infrequent moments when the parent is emotionally accessible the child may be unwilling to continue to appear entirely self-sufficient. The child may never- theless not express its need for nurturance directly, but only

GROWING UP A LITTLE FASTER 109

in a disguised fashion. Neither the child nor the parent may then be able to identify quite what it is that the child really wants. Interchanges between child and parent become frustrating, and degenerate into quarrels whose origins are baffling to both child and parent. Or the child may despair of ever gaining the parent's attention, may learn that the parent is simply incapable of providing the investment the child wants, and then the child may withdraw, or act out, or may, in a startling denial of the child's own needs, become a helper to the parent or a substitute for the parent. These children may soon learn that their need for parental care can only be realized partially, and then only by acting as their parents' helpers and companions; by acting, in effect, in ways that deny their very needs for dependency and nurturance. And this may be another reason why some of these young people describe themselves, later, as having become loners. They have learned not to express certain needs, and so they are less spontaneous than their age-mates, less capable of unselfconscious play.

These younger children may have both special strengths and special vulnerabilities when they become adults. They may have greater ability to work creatively and autonomously than adults whose early lives linked them more securely with others. But, when they take the type of job which prizes their unusual ability to function autonomously, they may be vulnerable to dissatisfaction because no matter how well they do, no matter how much recognition they receive, they cannot find in the job rewards that would satisfy their persisting need for the care and investment of a nurturant figure. They may also have special strengths and vulnerabilities as parents. More than other parents, they might be able to respond to their children's needs for nurturance, and so might be unusually solicitous of their children. But might they also, perhaps without awareness of their feelings, sometimes be envious of their children for having more attentive parents than they had themselves? Might they not, then, tend to vacillate in their treatment of their children, being sometimes more intensely attentive and at other times somewhat more removed than parents who grew up in two-parent families? Might they not, even, find full-time parenting to be emotionally exhausting, because of the unusual intensity of their simultaneous positive and negative feelings, and adopt a parental style in which they are intensely caring, but only occasionally present?

There are many ways in which the experience of growing up in a single-parent family can affect later functioning of children

110 ROBERT S. WEISS

and adolescents. Yet it does seem likely that participation in the single-parent household has different meaning for children, depending on the children's ages. Children not yet adolescent, although often able successfully to adapt to many new responsi- bilities and requirements, may do so while harboring strong, largely unmet, needs for nurturance and protection. These needs, to- gether with defenses against their expression, seem likely to persist rather than to fade. And although these needs undoubtedly are, with time, integrated into personalities and lives that are as well functioning as any, they are likely to express themselves in particular styles of marital, parental and occupational bebavior, and in tensions in relation to tbe giving and receiving of care. Adolescents, on the other hand, appear better able to accept more responsibility for themselves and their families than is customary in two-parent families. Their needs for parental nur- turance and investment, though real, seem less to require the reassurance of immediate parental accessibility tbat is needed by younger children. Younger cbildren, only too aware of their limited ability to fend for themselves, are much more vulnerable to the distress of separation anxiety when parents are inaccessible.

Those whose experience with cbildren wbo bave grown up in single-parent families comes primarily from working witb tbose in trouble are likely to emphasize the pathogenic potential of tbe single-parent family. But for many children, both younger and older, the new demands on them for autonomy and responsi- bility may lead to growth. Although these youngsters may regret not having a more traditional family and a more care-free youth, they often respect themselves for having been able to respond to wbat they recognize as their family's genuine need for their contributions.

The single-parent family, insofar as it requires that the children within it behave responsibly, may, in this respect, be a better setting for growing up than the two-parent family. In many two-parent families genuine responsibility for the household is withheld from children. The children may be assigned a variety of cbores, but the partnership of the parents prevents them from participating as full members of the household. Children in single-parent households often have no option; they must par- ticipate in their households as full members, with the rights and responsibilities of full members. And tbis can be a useful experience which leads to self-esteem, independence, and a genuine sense of competence. The last word may be given to a seventeen-year-old boy, the youngest of four children, who

GROWING UP A LITTLE FASTER 111

had been in a single-parent household for five or six years. He said:

In the long run—I feel sort of like I shouldn't say it—but a lot of kids are better off if their parents do get divorced, because you grow up a lot quicker.

REFERENCES Biller, H. Paternal deprivation. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1974. Bowlby, J. Attachment and loss, II Separation: Anxiety and danger. New York:

Basic Books, 1973. Gardner, R. A. Psychotherapy with children of divorce. New York: Aronson,

1976. George, V. & Wilding, P. Motherless families. London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul, 1972. Goffman, E. Asylums. New York: Doubleday, 196L Klebanow, S. Parenting in the single-parent family. Journal of the American

Academy of Psychoanalysis, 1976, 4, 37-48. Longfellow, G. Divorce in context: Its impact on children. In G. Levinger

& O. Moles (Eds.) Divorce and separation. New York: Basic Books, 1979. Wallerstein, J. S. & Kelly, J. B. The effects on parental divorce: the adolescent

experience. In E. j . Anthony & G. Koupernik (Eds.) The child and his family—children at a psychiatric risk. III. New York: John Wiley, 1974.