A single parent is a person who has a child or children but does not have a spouse or live-in partner to assist in the upbringing or support of the child. Reasons for becoming a single parent include decease, divorce, break-up, abandonment, becoming widowed, domestic violence, rape, childbirth by a single person or single-person adoption. A single parent family is a family with children that is headed by a single parent.
Statue of a mother at the Yasukuni Shrine, dedicated to war widows who raised their children alone
A single mother and child
Divorce is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union. Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganising of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving the bonds of matrimony between a married couple under the rule of law of the particular country or state. It can be said to be a legal dissolution of a marriage by a court or other competent body. It is the legal process of ending a marriage.
"JUST DIVORCED!" hand-written on an automobile's rear window.
Cartoon parodying the circus-like divorce proceedings of Anna Gould (an American heiress and socialite) and Boni de Castellane (a French nobleman) in 1906 in Paris, France. Boni de Castellane then sought an annulment from the Vatican so that he could be free to remarry in the Church. The annulment case was not finally settled until 1924, when the highest Vatican tribunal upheld the validity of the marriage and denied the annulment.
Roman married couple.
Henry VIII of England broke with the Catholic Church in order to obtain an annulment.
