Comparative Study of Children’s Adjustment in Intact and Single Parent Families

The present study was conducted to compare the behavioral problems in children from intact and single parent (mother- headed) families. purposive sampling and snowball sampling techniques were used to collect data. sample consisted of 60 children (30 = intact families, 30 = single headed families) with an age range of 8 to 10 years. strength and difficulty questionnaire (goodman, 1999) was used to assess the behavioral problems among children. teachers were requested to fill the english version and mothers were asked to fill the urdu version of the measure. it was hypothesized that children from single parent families would exhibit more behavioral problems as compared to the children from intact families. results indicated significant mean differences between the two groups in terms of behavioral problems as children from single parent families were perceived as high on behavioral problems by their parents and teachers. in addition, results indicated nonsignificant main effect of gender and nonsignificant gender and family structure interactions showing that gender does not moderate the impact of family structure on children’s adjustment. implications have been discussed.