help wanted and help received by israeli divorced custodial fathers

Help Wanted and Help Received by Israeli Divorced Custodial Fathers

ORNA COHENl AND RIVKA SAVAYA The Bob Shape11 School of Social Work

Tel Aviv Universip Tel Aviv. Israel

Comparing the help wanted and sought and the help received by 42 divorced custodial fathers with that wanted and sought and received by a matched group of 32 divorced custodial mothers. this paper investigates whether men who have assumed the traditionally female gender task of child care continue to adhere lo the traditional male help-seeking and help-receiving patterns. Findings show that they do. Single custodial fathers both want and receive less help from own kin, friends, and ex-spouse’s kin than do single custodial mothers. and are less prone to seek professional help. On the other hand, both groups seek and receive the most help from a new partner, followed by own kin, friends. and ex-spouse’s kin.

In the last 20 years or so, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of single-parent families of all kinds, but especially in the number of such families headed by men. Indeed, while only about 4% of United States families with children are father-only families, their proportion has been growing at a rate exceed- ing that of mother-only families. Father-only families now constitute more than 15% of all single-parent families in the United States (Meyer & Garasky, 1993). In Israel, similar patterns seem to be developing, although at a slower pace. In the early 199Os, about 5% of divorced Israeli men had custody of their children (Cohen, 1992, 1996).

Although the increase in number has been accompanied by augmented research interest, relatively little is known about divorced custodial fathers. Cer- tain sociodemographic information is available, namely that custodial fathers in the United States are more likely to be White, older, more highly educated, and higher earning than custodial mothers (Ambert, 1982; Grief, 1986; Mendes, 1976; Meyer & Garasky, 1993; Risman, 1986). There is also some literature deal- ing with the problems they face (Bowen, 1987; Coney & Mackey, 1989), how they cope with those problems (Bowen, 1987), and factors that predict their adjustment and satisfaction in their new role (Clarke-Stewart & Bailey. 1989;

‘Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Orna Cohen. School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv. Israel 69978. e-mail: [email protected].

1440

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2000, 30. 7, pp. 1440-1456. Copyright 0 2000 by V. H. Winston 8 Son, Inc. All rights reserved.

ISRAELI CUSTODIAL FATHERS 1441

Mendes, 1976, 1979; Risman, 1986). But most of the studies are descriptive, using small samples; only a handful examine matched custodial fathers and custodial mothers; and there are vastly fewer studies of custodial fathers than of custodial mothers.

Among the issues about which little is known are their patterns of help seeking and help receiving. These patterns are important because of the great stresses inherent in both the divorce process (Cohen, 1995; Garvin, Kalter, & Hansell, 1993; Kaslow & Schwartz, 1987; Pledge, 1992) and in single parenting (Cohen, Dattner, & Luxenburg, 1996; Curtner-Smith, 1995) and the evidence that social support plays a positive role in buffering stress in general (Clarke-Stewart & Bailey, 1989; Cohen & Loewenberg, 1994; Henderson & Argyle, 1985) and in postdivorce adjustment in particular. To be sure, there is extensive literature on social support for divorcing and divorced individuals. The focus of most of this literature, however, is either the custodial mother or the divorced person, irre- spective of whether or not they have children. In fact, most of the literature that makes comparisons compares divorced custodial mothers with divorced noncustodial fathers.

Gender Roles and Nongender Tasks

It is difficult to predict the help that divorced custodial fathers will seek and receive. Much of the literature on help seeking and social support indicates that men generally seek and receive less help than do women, whether from formal or informal sources (Bland, Newman, & Om, 1990; Lu & Argyle, 1992), and have fewer sources of support (Dunkel-Schetter, Folkman, & Lazarus, 1987). Other literature on help seeking, however, has found either no gender differences (Halgin, Weaver, Edell, & Spencer, 1987; Leaf & Bruce, 1987) or that the differences were complex. It was found, for example, that while women asked for and received more emotional support than did men, men were more ready to ask for and to accept instrumental or physical help (Ashton & Fuehrer, 1993; Kaufmann & Vali, 1986; Vaux, 1988). It was also found that personal and situational factors might affect a person’s help seeking (Ashton & Fuehrer, 1993).

One personal factor that has been found to have an impact on men’s readiness to seek help is the closeness of their adherence to traditional concepts of masculinity. As Spence (1985) notes, few men and women in our society conform entirely to our society’s prescriptive and descriptive stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. Androgynous men have been found to be more likely to seek help (especially emotional help) than men who identify with the traditional definitions of masculinity (Ashton & Fuehrer, 1993; Burda, Vaux, & Schill, 1984; Nadler, Maler, & Friedman, 1984). They were also found to be more likely to seek psychological help (Good & Mintz, 1990; Nadler et al., 1984; Robertson & Fitzgerald, 1992; Wisch, Mahalik, Hayes, & Nutt, 1995; Zeldow & Greenberg,

1442 COHEN AND SAVAYA

1979, 1980). These findings are relevant because of the possibility that custodial fathers, who voluntarily assume a traditionally female function, may be more androgynous than other men (Cohen, 1992).

The relevant situational factor is the traditionally feminine nature of the role that the custodial father has taken upon himself. Indeed, being the prime child raiser is almost dramatically antithetical to the stereotypical male role. According to Fisher, Nadler, and Whitcher-Alagna (1982), the amount of perceived threat is a direct determinant of help seeking. I t may be argued that custodial fathers will be ready to seek and obtain help with their new “feminine” duties because society does not expect them to have been prepared to perform them on their own, so their confession to needing help would not threaten their masculinity. This possibility is supported by Wallston’s (1976) laboratory findings that even men who strongly adhered to the cultural gender-role norms made more requests for help on tasks defined as feminine than on those defined as masculine, and that more androgynous males were more ready to seek help on both types of tasks.

The literature on divorced custodial fathers to date is not entirely helpful in resolving the issue. For the most part, it tends to confirm men’s traditional, gender-based reluctance to ask for assistance. Bowen (1987) found that custodial fathers at a U.S. Air Force base did not turn to anyone for intimate emotional support or for help with parenting. He notes that most fathers of preschoolers had a friend, relative, or neighbor take care of their children while they were at work, rather than making use of the child-care facilities provided by the Air Force. However, Bowen does not make it clear whether the assistance of these people was voluntary or for pay. Mendes (1976) attributes men’s reluctance to ask for help to the inconsistency of help seeking with their notion of masculinity. Others suggest that it derives from their efforts to prove that they can cope with the new situation on their own (Berman & Turk, 198 1 ; Grief, 1986). Nieto ( 1982) draws a picture of single custodial fathers who face a complex of special problems because of the lack of institutionalization of their role and society’s lack of understanding of their situation. But many of these studies date back to the 1970s, and attitudes may have changed, even since the 1980s, as single-father- headed families became more common. Moreover, these studies are largely descriptive. There are few empirical studies of single custodial fathers (for exceptions, see Clarke-Stewart & Bailey, 1989; Grief, 1986; Mendes, 1976, 1979; Orthner, Brown, & Ferguson, 1976), and they do not deal with their help seeking or social support.

Custody Awards in Israel and the Custodial Father

Custody in Israel is awarded by the court that hears the divorce proceedings. This may be either a rabbinical court or a civil court, depending on where the divorcing parties choose to bring their case. The Israeli law entitled “Custody of


Very Young Children, 1962” (Paragraph 25 of the Law of Legal Capacity and Custody, 1962) stipulates that custody of children up to the age of 6 years be awarded to the mother, unless she has been proven to be an unfit parent (e.g., she is mentally ill or an addict). For children older than 6 years, the law designates that custody be determined by the best-interests-of-the-child standard. While in Jewish religious law, custody of boys older than 6 years is awarded to their fathers and custody of girls older than 6 years is awarded to their mothers, in practice, the best-interests-of-the-child standard is used by both the civil courts and the rabbinical courts in Israel. For children older than 6 years, both parents ostensibly enjoy equal chances of getting custody. However, in 90% of the cases in Israel, the children remain with their mothers (Cohen, 1992; Katz & Peres, 1995).

In Israel, as elsewhere, the best-interests-of-the-child standard is notoriously ambiguous and is open to multiple interpretations (Fox-Harding, 199 1 ; Goldstein, Freud, & Solnit, 1973, 1979; Hall, Pulver, & Cooly, 1996; Sales, Manber, & Rohman, 1992). In the experience of the author (as a supervisor of state-employed social workers who provide the courts with recommendations on custody and visiting rights), custody may be awarded to the father on any of several grounds. These include the agreement of the two parents, major emotional problems in the mother, the children’s strong desire to be with the father, the likelihood that the father will permit the children’s contact with the mother while the mother will not permit it with the father, a major life change undertaken by the mother that would upset the continuity of the children’s lives (e.g., revert- ing to religious fundamentalism when the family had formerly been nonobser- vant, or becoming secular when the family had previously been orthodox), and others.

Thus far, there is no empirical research that has examined the factors associ- ated with the award of paternal custody in Israel. About all that is known empiri- cally is that, as in the United States, most divorced custodial fathers in Israel are of middle-class or higher socioeconomic status; most have at least a high-school education and often more; and many are independent businessmen or are in pro- fessions that allow them to work from home (Cohen, 1992). We know little about their personalities or individual motives for seeking or accepting custody, or whether and how they differ as a group from divorced noncustodial fathers.

Aims of the Present Study

Custodial mothers and custodial fathers face very similar challenges. Both must cope with the demands of raising their children without a partner, of meet- ing the often conflicting responsibilities of child care and work, and of carving out a new life for themselves while fulfilling their obligations to their children and their jobs. These are tasks that are difficult to do on one’s own.


The present study investigates the help wanted and the help received in these tasks by Israeli divorced custodial fathers in comparison to the help wanted and received by a matched group of divorced custodial mothers. The study has two interrelated aims. The first is to identify the help wanted, sought, and received by custodial fathers. The second is to ascertain whether the help wanted and sought by custodial fathers reflects the traditional male reluctance to ask for assistance, especially in the form of emotional support and formal psychological help, or whether it reflects the new “feminine” situation in which they find themselves and the possibly greater androgyny of their personalities.

To answer these questions, the study looks at the help wanted, sought, and received from a variety of sources of help that are generally available to divorced persons. It also compares the fathers’ actual help seeking during the divorce process (before they received custody and the situational pressures for help seeking were not there) with that sought after the divorce and the receipt of custody.

Method

The study was conducted on 74 divorced heads of single-parent families (42 males, 32 females). This article reports only the findings about the heads of single-parent families. However, a striking similarity was found between the groups, particularly in terms of number of children, parents’ level of education, and age of the youngest child. All of the single-parent family heads participating in the study had to meet the following criteria: (a) live in Israel, (b) be divorced according to Jewish religious law and still be divorced at the time of the study, (c) have at least one live-in child over 4 years old, and (d) have custody of the children through a court-endorsed custody settlement.

The sample was collected from the social-services departments of municipalities throughout Israel, agencies that assist divorced persons, and self-help support groups. Several sources were used in order to reach as many custodial fathers as possible, given the relatively small number of divorced custodial fathers in the population.

To maintain the confidentiality of the subjects, contact with them was made by various professionals, rather than by the author. Selected professionals in the municipalities, agencies, and self-help groups conducted the preliminary search for subjects and asked those who met the criteria to participate in the study. Most of the fathers in the sample were located by municipal social workers. In Israel, the courts automatically assign a social worker to evaluate families where the father requests custody or there are indications that maternal custody may not be in the best interests of the child. Thus, the involvement of professionals in the search for custodial fathers does not mean that the fathers they located had any particular problems or consulted those professionals.


The questionnaire was sent only to those fathers and mothers who gave their informed consent to participate in the study. Hence, no biographical information is available on those who refused.

Because the focus of the study was on divorced custodial fathers, they were sought first, and only afterward were the matched control group of divorced custodial mothers formed. The groups were matched for education, number of live- in children, and youngest child.

A chi-square test performed on the sample characteristics, obtained by ques- tioning the participants, showed no significant differences in the profiles of the custodial mothers and fathers. The participants’ reported economic situations ranged from very bad ( n = 9, 12.6%) and mediocre ( n = 36,48.5%) to good or very good ( n = 29, 38.9%). Most were born in Israel ( n = 48, 66.0%); 14 (18.4%) were born in Asia or Africa; and 12 (1 5.5%) were born in the United States or Europe. Most defined themselves as nonreligious (n = 55, 74%); the rest as either traditional ( n = 15,2 1 %) or religious ( n = 4,5%). Most had postsecondary-school education ( M = 14 years of schooling, SD = 0.27). The two groups each averaged two children per family: 20 (27.0%) had one child; 38 (51.4%) had two children; and 16 (2 1.6%) had three children. The mean age of the children was 10.97 years (SD = 4.04). The mean age of the youngest child in both groups was 4 years. Approximately one third of the subjects were newly divorced (i.e., within the last 2 years). Another one third had been divorced for 3 to 5 years, and the remaining one third has been divorced for 6 to 10 years.

Research Instruments

Help wanted and help received. The purpose of this questionnaire is to examine how much help the participants currently wanted and received from various persons in their environment and with various needs. The questionnaire, written specifically for the present study, contains 20 items tapping the desired level of support and another 20 items tapping the perceived level of support received. Four sources of support were examined: family of origin, family of ex-spouse, friends, and a new partner (but not a new spouse) among those who had one. For each, the respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they wanted support and how much support they receive in five areas: help with household chores, help with child care, financial help, emotional help, and advice, on a 4- point scale ranging from 1 (do not wanf at aff/do not receive) to 4 (want very much/receive a great deal). Cronbach’s alphas ranged from .67 to .93. Eight sta- tistical measures were derived from this questionnaire (one for each of the four wanted support sources and one for each of the four received support sources) by calculating the average amount of wanted help and received help in the five areas.

Past andpresent help seeking. The purpose of this questionnaire is to compare respondents’ current help seeking when they decided to divorce. The


Table 1

Means and Standard Deviations of Wanted Support and Received Support Among Custodial Fathers and Custodial Mothers

Ex-spouse’s Family of origin family Friends

Wanted ceived Wanted ceived Wanted ceived Re- Re- Re-

Fathers M 2.09 1.84 1.16 1.18 1.78 1.42 N = 4 2 SD 0.91 0.80 0.51 0.35 0.98 0.48

Mothers M 2.55 2.30 1.42 1.52 2.55 1.91 N = 3 2 SD 0.95 0.92 0.74 0.80 0.97 0.65

questionnaire consists of two questions: “Did you consult with anyone on your decision to divorce?’ and “When you have a problem today, whom do you ask for help?’ Both questions were followed by a choice of seven possible answers, of which the respondent could check as many as were applicable: parents, rela- tives, friends, lawyer, psychologist, social worker, or self-reliance.

Demographic questionnaire. This questionnaire queried the sociodemographic and divorce-related data reported on the sample. Questions included information concerning economic situation, ethnicity, religion, education, and number of children.

Procedure

The questionnaires were sent to each participant in a closed envelope contain- ing a stamped, self-addressed return envelope. The participants completed the questionnaires anonymously, giving no identifying details. An explanatory sheet was attached to the general questionnaire, and written instructions were provided at the beginning of the questionnaire.

Results

The results are discussed in three parts: (a) help wanted and received from the family of origin, ex-spouse’s family, and friends; (b) help wanted and received from the new partner; and (c) help sought during the divorce and at the time of the study. All of the custodial fathers and custodial mothers reported the amount of help they wanted and the amount of help they received from three sources of support: family of origin, ex-spouse’s family, and friends. Table 1 presents the


means and standard deviations of the support wanted and support received by all of the paternal and maternal family heads from these sources.

On the whole, custodial fathers and custodial mothers seem to want little help (less than the midpoint on the 4-point scale). Nonetheless, a 2 x 2 x 3 ANOVA (Custodial Groups: FathedMothers x Type of Support: Wanted/Received x Support Sources: Family of Origin/Ex-Spouse’s Family/Friends) with repeated measures shows significant differences in all three support sources, F(2, 144) = 56.79, p < .001. Newman-Keuls post hoc tests reveal significant differences (p < .05) among all three sources. Fathers and mothers both wanted and received the most support from family of origin, followed by friends, and finally the ex- spouse’s family. However, the ANOVA reveals that custodial mothers expressed a significantly greater desire for support and reported receiving significantly more support from all support sources than did custodial fathers, F( I , 7 2 ) = 1 7 . 5 8 , ~ < .001.

The ANOVA also reveals a significant interaction effect of support sources (family of origin/ex-spouse’s family/friends) and type of support (wanted/ received), F(2, 144) = 10.98, p < .001. A test for simple main effects shows that there were significant differences between support wanted and support received from friends, F( I , 72) = 23.9 I , p < .OO 1 ; and from family of origin, F( I , 72) = 4.32, p < .05; with more support wanted than received from both, and especially from the friends of the custodial mothers. No difference was found between the support wanted and support received from the family of the ex-spouse, F( I , 72) = 0.33, ns. The ANOVA reveals no other simple main effects or interactions.

The type of support (wantedreceived) was also examined separately for the 54 single-family heads who had relationships with new partners. These consti- tuted 78% of the custodial fathers and 65% of the custodial mothers in the sample.

In order to compare the amount of support wanted and received from the new partners with that wanted and received from the three other sources of support, a 2 x 2 x 4 ANOVA (Custodial Group: FathedMothers x Type of Support: Wantedmeceived x Support Sources: New PartnedFamily of Origin/Ex-Spouse’s Family/Friends) with repeated measures was carried out. Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations on each of the four support sources for fathers and mothers who had new partners. The ANOVA reveals a significant difference among sources of support, F(3, 156) = 3 1.69, p < .001.

Newman-Keuls paired-comparison tests indicate that support wanted and support received from the new partners were much greater than those from the other support sources. The ANOVA also reveals an interaction effect between custodial groups and support sources, F(3, 156) = 2.93, p < .05. Custodial mothers with new partners still wanted and received more support from all sources than did custodial fathers. No significant difference was found in the support from the custodial fathers and mothers received from the new partners,

Tabl

e 2

Mea

ns a

nd S

tand

ard

Dev

iatio

ns of W

ante

d Sup

port

and

Rec

eive

d Su

ppor

t Am

ong

Cus

todi

al F

athe

rs a

nd C

usto

dial

Mot

hers

W

ith N

ew P

artn

ers (N

= 5

4)

9 2 N

ew p

artn

er

Fam

ily o

f ori

gin

Ex-s

pous

e’s f

amily

Fr

iends

Wan

ted

Rec

eive

d W

ante

d R

ecei

ved

Wan

ted

Rec

eive

d W

ante

d R

ecei

ved

~ ~~

Fath

ers

M

2.67

2.

62

2.00

1.

70

1.18

1.

06

1.81

1.

29

N=

33

SD

1.14

1.

20

0.97

0.

85

0.69

0.

15

1.05

0.

45

Mot

hers

M

2.

48

2.48

2.

76

2.45

1.

32

1.38

2.

67

1.91

N

=21

SD

1.

14

1.14

0.

73

0.96

0.

64

0.44

1 .o

o 0.

56

Tabl

e 3

Heb

Soug

ht D

urin

g th

e D

ivor

ce T

rans

ition

(Pas

t) an

d C

urre

ntly

(Pre

sent

)

Past

Pres

ent

Fath

er

Mot

her

Fath

er

Mot

her

N YO

N YO

x2

N YO

N

%

x2

Fam

ily o

f ori

gin

9 21

.4

10

31.3

0.

34

10

23.8

8

25.0

0.

99

Frien

ds

9 21

.4

11

34.4

1.

54

10

23.8

10

31

.3

0.51

Prof

essio

nal h

elp

4 9.

5 9

28.1

4.

33**

11

26

.2

20

62.5

9.

84**

Self

relia

nce

22

52.4

14

43

.8

0.54

* 24

57

.1

9 28

.1

6.19

*

Not

e. “

Cur

rent

ly” r

efer

s to

the

time

of th

e pr

esen

t stu

dy. P

erce

ntag

es in

thi

s tab

le d

o no

t add

up

to 1

00%

sinc

e m

ultip

le an

swer

s wer

e ac

cept

ed.

*p<

.O5.

**p<

.Ol.


F( I, 52) = 0.94, ns, but from the other sources of support. ANOVA reveals a significant interaction of Support Sources x Type of Support among divorces with new partners, F(3, 156) = 6.1 1 , p < .OO 1.

The simple main effect does not reveal any difference stemming from the divorce of a new partner. The difference derived from other sources of support, F( 1, 52) = 0.08, us.

Two other items examined in the study involve actual help seeking in who the custodial parents asked for help during the divorce transition (past) and who they turned to currently at the time of study (present). Table 3 presents their responses.

As can be seen in Table 3, custodial fathers and mothers have different approaches to help seeking, both during the divorce transition and afterward. During the divorce process, a somewhat greater percentage of fathers than mothers dealt with the difficulties on their own (52.4% vs. 43.8%), and almost 3 times as many mothers (28.1%) as fathers (9.5%) sought professional help. After the divorce, more than twice as many fathers as mothers preferred coping on their own (57.0% vs. 28.l%), and over twice as many mothers (62.5%) as fathers (26.2%) sought professional help.

A McNemar test that was performed to examine whether there were differences in help seeking during and after the divorce reveals a significant difference only in the request for professional help (among fathers, p < .05; among mothers, p < .001). Both more single custodial mothers and more single custodial fathers sought professional help after their divorces than during their divorces.

Discussion

Most of the findings of the present study indicate that custodial fathers tend to adopt traditional male help-seeking patterns. Even though they faced roughly the same tasks and challenges as did custodial mothers, they wanted and sought less help from almost all sources, whether formal or informal, both during and after their divorces. In other words, gender role seems to have played a greater part in custodial fathers’ help seeking than situational factors, including the fact that they had undertaken a traditionally female task, in which the need for help should not have been all that threatening.

These findings are consistent with findings that men have fewer intimates and receive less support from both kin and non-kin after divorces than do women (Milardo, 1987; Spanier & Thompson, 1984) and are less prone to seek psychological assistance (e.g., Blazin & Watkins, 1996; Norman & Rosvall, 1994; Penning & Strain, 1994). The findings may be explained by McLaughlin, Cormier, and Cornier’s (1988) findings that exposure to similar stresses with the same frequency of occurrence has differential effects on men and women-a view borne out in the field of divorce by Spanier and Thompson’s (1984) findings that women experience more distress in the pre-divorce period than do men.


The lesser inclination of custodial fathers to want and seek help from most sources may be attributed to several factors. They may have felt less need for help because they appraised their divorce and its aftermath as less stressful than did custodial mothers. McLaughlin et al. ( 1 988) suggest that such a gender- linked difference in stress appraisal exists. Alternatively, their socialization may have led them to value their independence and ability to solve problems on their own, while women’s socialization permits or encourages greater readiness to admit need.

The role of material factors in the differential patterns found here could not be determined with certainty. The custodial fathers in this sample were not better educated, did not have older children, and were not divorced for more time than were the mothers. It is thus unlikely that they needed less housekeeping, child- care, or baby-sitting services. However, although there were no significant differences in the self-perceived economic situations of the two groups, it is possible that the fathers earned more and could thus buy services that the mothers were forced to ask their friends and families to help perform. Further study is required to resolve this question.

The results also show that custodial fathers receive less help than do custodial mothers from all sources. This finding, too, is consistent with traditional male patterns. Burda et al. ( 1 984) similarly found that men receive less social support than do women, while Spanier and Thompson (1 984) found that men with children received less money and services from friends than did women with children. The differential pattern may reflect a congruence between support asked for and support received (Burda et al., 1984). Alternatively, it may reflect society’s better understanding of the needs of custodial mothers (Coney & Mackey, 1989). This explanation would be consistent with Eckenrode and Wethington’s ( 1990) distinction between solicited support and unsolicited support.

At the same time, custodial fathers’ desire for, receipt of, and seeking of help were similar to those of the custodial mothers in several respects. For one thing, custodial fathers wanted and received help from the various sources in the same order of priorities as did the custodial mothers. Notably, both groups wanted and received the most help from any new partners that they had, followed by their own family, friends, and ex-spouse’s family, respectively. These findings are consistent with the findings of other researchers who report that divorced persons receive material and emotional support from their family of origin (Gerstel, 1988; Johnson, 1986; McLanahan, Wedemeyer, & Adelberg, 198 1 ) and help and cognitive support from friends (Malo, 1994), while their in-laws tend to provide less support and often lose contact as time goes by (Ambert, 1988; Kaslow & Schwartz, 1987). The findings are inconsistent with those of Spanier and Thomson ( 1 984): that friends were the most likely sources of emotional support and services for divorced persons.


The primacy of the new partner for both male and female single-custodial parents is worth noting. For the men and women in our sample who had new partners, the new partners were the major source of both help wanted and help received. Moreover, the custodial fathers who had new partners wanted and received about the same amount of help from those new partners as the custodial mothers did from their new partners. These findings hint at a comparative lack of social support among custodial parents who do not find new partners.

The exclusion of remarrieds from the sample makes it impossible to interpret the finding that a much higher percentage of custodial fathers than mothers had entered into significant new relationships. We cannot know whether this reflects a greater inclination on the part of custodial fathers to find new partners, the greater insistence on marriage among custodial mothers, or any other possibility. Nonetheless, it seems that whatever subtle obstacles hinder men seeking help from other sources do not apply to help from a partner. Such help may be consid- ered more legitimate for divorced custodial fathers than other sources of help.

Indeed, the entire pattern of preferences, for custodial fathers and mothers both, seems to reflect a clear hierarchy of legitimacy and obligation in the order of partner, own family, friends, and former in-laws. Yet another similarity between the two sets of custodial parents was in the pattern of disparities between the amount of help they wanted and the amount of help they received from the various sources. Both groups wanted more help from their own families and from their friends than they reported receiving, but they received as much help as they wanted from their ex-spouse’s families and their new partners. This pattern suggests that both groups of custodial parents have similar expectations and similar disappointments from the various sources of help. The lack of any difference between the help wanted and help received from ex-in-laws probably reflects the lower expectations of them, while the congruity of help wanted and help received from partners probably reflects the latter’s greater commitment and availability.

The one point of difference in the overall pattern of disparities is that the gap between wanted and received help from friends is much smaller for custodial fathers than for custodial mothers. Custodial fathers report a similar amount of shortfall in their received help from family and friends, while the custodial mothers report a larger amount of help from friends. This suggests that men expect less from their friends than women do. Bowen’s (1 987) finding that few of the single fathers on a U.S. Air Force had intimate friends with whom they shared problems or consulted is consistent with this conjecture.

The last point of similarity is in the changes in the help-seeking patterns between the time of deciding on the divorce and the postdivorce period. Although men generally preferred to cope alone while women requested professional help, both groups turned to professional help more after their divorces than during the divorces. This difference may derive either from their immersion in


the divorce crisis, which leaves little room for anything else (even help seeking), or from the increased task load and need to deal with their children on their own after the divorce.

This study is one of the few empirical investigations of custodial fathers to date that used a matched control group of custodial mothers. I t thus addresses the problem faced by researchers of custodial fathers of finding an appropriate comparison group (Meyer & Garasky, 1993). It is also one of the few studies to look at help wanted and help received both during divorce and after divorce.

On the other hand, because there are still relatively few custodial fathers in Israel and they are difficult to locate, the sample was too small to permit mean- ingful analysis of important issues, including the type of help wanted by custodial fathers and the associations between the help they wanted, the sources they wanted it from, and sociodemographic factors such as income, education, ages of live-in children, and length of time since divorce. Other limitations derive from the use of self-report. The help-received variable is obviously the help perceived by the recipient. As Cutrona, Suhr, and MacFarlane (1990) point out, the two are not necessarily identical. Without querying other members of the network, we cannot know how much their answers reflect objective reality and how much they reflect subjective perceptions that depend on such things as their apprecia- tion of and satisfaction with the help that was given.

To learn more about the help that is wanted by and available to fathers who raise their children on their own, future studies must use larger samples of custodial parents and include friends, own kin, in-laws, and new partners. Further understanding in the interaction of gender and situation in the help seeking of men and women could be obtained by studying other groups of men and women who carry out similar tasks or who have similar social roles (eg., widowers and widows; male and female nurses). The studies could be enriched further by the inclusion of gender-role and gender-identity measures.

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