ABSTRACT
"Even if men performed the caretaking duties of the mothering person," Joseph Rheingold tells us, "it is doubtful that they would exert comparable harmful influence, because very few men have the destructive drive toward children common to mothers. What appears from observation and from the memories of patients is that the father is often the tender parent, inverting the myth of the stern father and the succoring mothers". More significant and, as the pathogenic mother and the work-intoxicated father suggest, more maladaptive. A sex-role specialization that was adaptive for a certain economic stage of development in a given ecological environment is in process of becoming maladaptive for the world we are now moving toward. In terms of the amount of time and talent invested in research on mothers, research on female-headed families is by far the most salient, for, in the absence of a provider they tend to be poor. Nowhere is the effect of excessive role specialization seen in greater clarity than in the case of the "female-headed family."
