That children are best reared in a home with two loving and understanding parents is so obvious as to need no statement" Dorothy Barclay (1959) has commented, typifying current opinion. This viewpoint is so prevalent that it comes close to heresy to question it. Although William Goode (19S6), in his comprehensive study of divorce, points to the almost total lack of research on the effects of divorce on children, he concludes:At every developmental phase of childhood, the child needs the father (who is usually the absent parent) as an object of love, security, or identification, or even as a figure against whom to rebel safely. ... It would be surprising if the absence of the father had no effect on the child.

No abstract

No abstract