To decrease isolation among single parents, one objective should be to take a close look at the advice and lack of support from government.

In the 1980s, for example, numerous social agencies tried to reduce the likelihood that a single-parent household would include other adults, particularly unmarried partners. In the mid-1980s, federal officials even discussed reducing the level of allotments for households in which grandparents joined the single-parent family.

This is shockingly myopic thinking. Findings from Stanford studies indicate that the presence of any other adult in the household brings adolescent control levels closer to those found in two-parent families. This suggests that there are functional equivalents of two-parent families -- that non-traditional grouping can do the job of parenting, and that the raising of adolescents is not a task that can easily be borne by a lone parent. Single mothers who choose television's Kate and Allie model, in which two single parents join forces and share the burden, report that housing costs decrease (and the comfort and size of the house usually increases), baby-sitting headaches lessen, and emotional support increases.

Government should be encouraging such extended families rather than viewing them as deviant. A few private organizations, such as Roommates for Today's Family, in Southern California, match single parents.

Schools could offer formal or informal help to single parents under financial duress (such stress can affect a child's grades as much as or more than a learning disability) by helping them find support networks or supportive living situations.

Extended support networks could also be offered by churches, government, private organizations, and employers. These could come in a variety of forms. For example, a program called Project Self-Sufficiency, sponsored by the City of Huntington Beach, California, has offered a self-esteem workshop to help single parents and other, low-income parents, make the transition from public assistance to employment and economic self-sufficiency. The basic theory of this program, which grew out of a drug and alcohol-abuse prevention agency, is that the best way to prevent child abuse and substance abuse is to promote a positive self-image among single parents and their children.

Some single parents have already established more informal models for the rest of us.

The director of one preschool described an imaginative single mom who, through her contacts at the school, has started bartering with other parents. "She's learned how to network through her business experience. She used to be a hairdresser, so she might do Delane's hair. And Delane makes beautiful birthday cakes, which is what she barters. Or they trade baby-sitting time." Such trading of skills and time can go a long way toward easing the burden. "This parent has created her own extended family. We have offered group sessions to try to discuss bartering, to assess individual needs and what could be traded."

One woman in Los Angeles, a veteran of the women's movement and a single mother for 18 years, suggested that new parent networks are a logical extension of feminism and the self-help movement that followed the women's movement -- all those twelve-step programs for compulsive drinking, gambling, overeating.

"You find the same emphasis on the group, the consciousness-raising group -- leaderless, non-hierarchical, structured so that everybody has time to participate. These groups are basically non-judgmental, though there are a set of norms and values attached," she said. "People make fun of the self-help movement, but you don't solve problems by making fun of people. One woman in the group I attend (for overeaters) also belongs to Alanon, a self-help group for families of addicts; she joined because her child is a cocaine addict. She needed this group of other parents, who were facing the same problem with their children, because her family of origin just didn't know how to cope; if anything, their advice made the problem worse. The parent network movement may, however, harken to the feminist movement more in this sense: the personal will eventually become political."

She continued, "I'm a child of my times -- I'm connected with both these movements. In the 1960s, I connected with other single parents through an alternative public school that we helped start. We could just as easily have linked through church or synagogue, but we didn't go. Rather, we did politics together and what survived the politics was friendship and connection. We were all single parents. We formed an informal extended family. With the exception of Dr. Spock, I've never read a how-to-parent book in my life; I have my friends. It's revealing, I think, that most of us who made these kinds of connections can truthfully say today that our kids are OK. The parents who didn't make those connections tend to be the ones with kids with severe problems. Those of us who connected with each other shared resources; it's the people without human resources who are so terribly lost, in part because human resources often lead to other resources.

"The group was non-hierarchical, but I did consider some of the people in my group to be expert parents, because I saw them parenting. However, you don't turn to the same parent every time. Some parents are good at some kinds of advice; others are good at other kinds of advice. I was an expert on schools, so other mothers turned to me for advice on that. And I knew about how to collect child-support payments. Word spread. Other parents were experts on finding a baby-sitter or pediatricians. This was not a group that met formally. It was simply a group of women, and some men, too, who talked frequently on the telephone. I didn't know 'networking' was a word 18 years ago. In a sense, networking is a spurious term. It simply means connecting with people."

As she spoke on the phone, her call-waiting line beeped. The caller was a single parent she had met 17 years ago, a member of the informal parenting group.

"You see, this doesn't end," she said, when she returned. "Our children are in their twenties and we still turn to each other for parenting advice."