Single-Parent Families -- In the United States of the late nineteenth century, immigration and urbanization made it increasingly difficult to maintain Gemeinschaft communities where everyone knew one another and shared responsibility for unwed mothers and their children. In 1883, the Florence Crittenton Houses were founded in New York City-and subsequently established around the nation as refuges for prostitutes(then stigmatized as"fallen women"). Within a few years, the Crittenton homes began accepting unwed mothers as residents. By the early 1900s, sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois(1911) had noted that the institutionalization of unwed mothers was occurring in segregated facilities. At the time that he was writing, there were seven homes of various types nationwide for unwed Black mothers as well as one Crittenton home reserved for that purpose. In recent decades, the stigma attached to"unwed mothers" and other single parents has significantly diminished. Single-parent families, in which the is only one parent present to care for the children, can hardly be viewed as a rarity in the United States. In 1998, a single parent headed about 19 percent of White families with