Editorial November 16, 1992 Issue

"This is a family too"

Russ Gerber

Single-parent households continue to receive attention from the media. One recent story in the The New York Times focused on this statistic: in the United States, one quarter of all families with children are headed by single mothers. The reasons given were varied—separation, divorce, widowhood.

There is something important that these households have in common, however, and one mother summed it up this way: "... you have to work harder at making sure they have what they need and at keeping the family together. This is a family too."

That's worth repeating. The statistics and opinions we hear about single-parent families seem much less worthy of the attention they get when we think about the significance of that mother's simple, heartfelt comment: This is a family too. Not almost a family. Numbers don't begin to tell us about the strength, care, and unity that can be found from one day to the next in families of all types and sizes.

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