["Men only make dirt!"--A study of single mothers in a mother-child program]

This paper deals with social case work of single-parent mothers participating in a 'mother and child' programme in Ulm. The social workers realized that these mothers frequently leave the childrens' fathers immediately after the birth of the baby or soon after. The relationships of the mothers with their partners and their families of origin were studied by questionnaires. The authors find that those women who broke the relationships to the childrens' fathers judge their families of origin as significantly more dysfunctional as those mothers who have been relating to their partners. It is assumed that the single parent mothers suffer from insufficient internalizations with their own fathers in regard to attachment behaviour. Tragically these women repeat the instability of their parents' marriages in their own partnerships.