This paper will review the literature related to the effect of single parent families on personality development. The paper will present a discussion of the important variables which need to be controlled in studies investigating the effect of single parent families, followed by issues of creativity and single parenting, and a summary.
Every single parent family has sustained some loss to the system - one of the spouses is not present. In 89 percent of the single parent families in the U.S. (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1981a) it is the husband/father who has been lost. The incidence of single parent child rearing has increased markedly from 11.9 percent in 1970 to 20.1 percent in 1981, and most of these cases are headed by women. Single parent families resulting from divorce or separation have increased by 111 percent since 1970. However, the percentage of father headed households has not increased in the past decade (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1981b).
The magnitude of this change in child rearing environments has produced research into the effects of single parent families on children. However, much of this research consists of the following: inadequate data gathering procedures, biased sample selection, and inadequate controls. Only a small percentage of studies have used appropriate methods. Studies often fail to control for: race, socioeconomic status, type of single parent family (father absent vs mother absent), length of time living with a single parent, age of the child at time of the father absence, and number of siblings. Each of these variables could contribute to a child's functioning irrespective of the family composition.
Socioeconomic status is a factor that has been shown to affect personal progress. Deutsch (1960) reported differential indices of scholastic achievement for white children and black children even when social class was controlled. However, Burns (1970) analyzed the WISC scores o...