Impact of Father Loss on the Family

In this study, 421 undergraduate students evaluated their natural mothers, natural fathers, and stepfathers (where applicable) by rating them on the Personal Attribute Inventory. The findings from this study indicated that parents from families broken by divorce were consistently more negatively evaluated than were parents from either intact families or families where the father had died. These findings held regardless of whether or not the mother had remarried and regardless of the sex of the students doing the evaluations.