© British Association of Social Workers
Characteristics of Motherless Families
After graduating in Sociology from the University of Leeds, Elsa Ferri worked on several research projects at the National Foundation for Educational Research, including an investigation of streaming and non-streaming in junior schools. For the past two years she has been in charge of the study of children living in one-parent families, being carried out by the National Children's Bureau. Publications include Streaming: Two Years Later (1971), NFER, Slough
Summary
This article looks at the prevalence of motherlessness among 11-year old children in the National Child Development Study, a long-term investigation of the educational, social and physical development of all children born in Britain in one week of 1958.
The present findings show that half of the 237 cases of motherlessness were caused by marital breakdown and half by the mother's death. Families in which the mother was missing tended to be smaller than intact families and to contain a higher proportion from lower social class backgrounds.
Two-fifths of the children concerned were being cared for by their father alone at the age of 11. One child in three had a stepmother, with remarriage being more common among younger fathers.
Children who had lost their mother by the age of 11 were less likely to be living in a one-parent family than those who had lost their father