ABSTRACT
AT ANY POINT within the cycle of family life the nuclear family may be broken: by death, divorce, desertion, or separation of the parents. 1 The cycle itself is not fractured, but two consequences do obtain from the change in the family’s structure. One is that the tasks appropriate to the family life cycle’s several stages may be altered or their achievement impaired or retarded. The other is that responsibility for major family functions, otherwise shared by the parents, now rests largely with the one parent who remains with the children.
