SINGLE-PARENT FAMILIES

An overview of three types of families and their particular stresses and challenges, prefaced by a statistical look at the recent dramatic changes in family structure resulting from the growing rates of divorce and teenage pregnancy. In the book's three main sections, treatment varies: the chapters on divorce focus on the effects on children; life changes experienced by single teenage mothers are discussed with little mention of the effects on their children (or, for that matter, on the teenagers' parents); and, though Worth frequently mentions the adjustments faced by a child whose parent has died, he returns in much greater detail to the grief and economic struggles of the widow (there's little mention of widowers here). The book could be more comprehensive in other ways: the examples, both the bland generic prototypes that introduce the sections and the cases used to illustrate the author's points tend to be from the middle class; social issues like the need for day care are scanted, while fathers' delinquency on child support is presented, but not as a wrong that needs urgently to be addressed. Still, as far as it goes, a useful, nonjudgmental survey of how many of us live. Notes; bibliography; index. (Nonfiction. 12+)