Single-Parent Fatherhood: An Emerging Family Life Style

Abstract

This paper examines the growing phenomenon offathers being primary parents due to widowhood, divorce, separation, or adoption. Changes in mortality rates, legal custody arrangements, and adoption procedures are analyzed as primaryfactors in altering the composition of single-parent fathers in the population. Interviews with 20 single-parent fathers consider the successes and strains they experience in childrearing, in using compensatory services, and in their own adult life style. Recommendations for supportive services and programs needed by these fathers are presented. Fatherhood is receiving increased attention in the popular and professional literature. This seemingly new discovery that