There are plenty of people around who will tell you that single-parenthood is a recipe for disaster. Full stop. No exceptions.

But it isn't, always. Two parents who are in harmony and pulling in the same direction for the benefit of the whole family are the ideal. They can support each other and share the responsibilities of parenthood.

But when there aren't always able to be two parents, for a variety of reasons, one can sometimes do a reasonable job of raising a family - particularly if there's back-up from grandparents.

However, I doubt that it's right to put the sort of gloss on single-parenthood that Jackie Anderson did this week.

Mrs Anderson is president of the Girls' Schools Association. She told members of the association, which represents 220 fee-paying schools, that traditional family life had been "idealised" and society should accept that children could be raised just as well in a broken home.

There's no disputing that. Given an exceptional single parent, some children can travel through a problem-free childhood and grow into well-balanced adults. But others can go terribly astray because the parent who is raising them alone isn't up to the job and the youngsters are unable to cope with the pain of their family break-up.

Jackie Anderson, looking at the situation through rather genteel middle-class eyes, sees single-parenthood in terms of divorce. But that isn't the big issue in more down-to-earth circles. It's teenage single-parenthood with young girls who can't cope having babies from casual relationships and the taxpayers footing every bill for the raising of siblings who in too many cases don't share the same father.

If ever there was a recipe for a confused, alienated and disruptive new generation, that's it. The estates around every city and town offer plenty of evidence of that.

So it probably isn't wise for people in the public eye to make well-meaning statements about how well single parents cope.

In too many cases out here in the real world, they simply don't.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.