Divorced mothers evaluate their lifestyle: Personal attitudes and social perceptions

The paper addresses two subjective dimensions of divorced mothers in Israel: how they evaluate their lifestyle and how they perceive society's evaluation of the same lifestyle. One hundred divorced mothers were randomly sampled from 1,000 members of the center for single parent families in Haifa. Main findings indicate personal attih∼dcs toward oneparent lifestyle were more positive than perceived social evaluations. Three types of resources facilitated positive evaluations: economic well-being, employment, and self-esteem. The findings imply that not only the divorced mothers but the Israeli public at large secms to be in a state of transition with reference to unconventional family patterns. On the one hand, oneparent families are no longer seen as deviant yet this lifestyle has not gained full recognition as a long-term family pattern.