ABSTRACT
Divorce rates have increased considerably over the last few decades. The number of single parent families has increased because of this and for other reasons as well. Much work and speculation is devoted to finding why people commit adultery (e.g. Lawson, 1990) and why marriages break down. The present study is concerned with the relationships within the family in order to understand what it is that holds families together as opposed to what it is that drives them apart. The technique used is to study families where one of the adults works away from home for a large part of each year, either in a series of short periods such as two weeks at home followed by two weeks away, or for longer periods at a time, perhaps even being away for the complete year. These family separations are not caused by familial discord, but are due to working conditions. Because they are not caused by discord I call the separa tions Non-discordant Marital Separations or NMS for short. These separations occur for a variety of reasons. Some jobs involve travelling or working in faraway places or in places where, for example, women are forbidden or where the local culture is uncongenial to most western women. The separa tions are considered here, but of greater concern are not only the feelings of the parties involved and the inter-relationships which hold the families to gether, but also the way the parties involved see the changes in the relation ships and the relationships themselves. It is this intrafamilial environment and the reactions of the people involved which are the subject of the book.
