In connection with the transformation of the social and economic situation in Russia, serious changes took place in the structure of the Russian family, in the relations of its members, that is, a crisis of our domestic family is clearly observed, incomplete families appear. We analyze objective circumstances and subjective reasons for the appearance and existence of single mothers and single fathers raising one child or several children. This category of single-parent families requires a special approach in the work of psychologists, teachers, doctors and social workers. As the analysis of sources on the problem of an incomplete family shows, it is theoretically poorly developed, so the subject of our study was the characteristics of the psychological and pedagogical activity of social specialists with single mothers and single fathers. It should be noted that, from a scientific point of view, interesting data regarding single mothers is given by researcher S.I. Golod, however, the indicators of the 90s of the last century are now clearly outdated and there is a need to make new research in this direction. A completely natural question arises: “Can we consider single mothers and single fathers raising children without the second half families?” We argue that such a community is a family, albeit incomplete. The theoretical and methodological foundations of our study were philosophical and psychological approaches (system and structural, personality-oriented, subject and subjective, value and motivational, relational, spiritual and moral. The following methods were used in the study: analysis of scientific sources, observation, interviews, mental operations (analysis, generalization, structuring). As a result of the study, we highlight the reasons for such single-parent families, the features and difficulties of communicating with children, in most cases, material shortage experienced by each mother and each father raising one or more children. Therefore teachers, psychologists, medical and social workers should take into account not only typical, but individual approaches in activities with this category of single-parent families.