ABSTRACT
Separations are part of everyone’s life experience. A child enters life with the ultimate separation from the mother’s body, in which it has spent almost a year of protection and nourishment. A person exits life with an even more final separation, death. Young children are most threatened by separation from beloved people in their lives - their father, mother or closest reference figures - because they are both materially and psychologically dependent upon these people, and experience the relationship to them as a unique emotional bond. To further complicate matters, young children have no influence on the circumstances that culminate in the separation, which may occur abruptly, without warning, and overwhelm the child. Evidence that children are increasingly being forced to deal with separation is provided by the rising divorce rates and ever-growing number of single parents in Western nations. Single parents or care-givers have greater burdens than larger families.
