Lack of knowledge and experience and the absence of role models for young fathers are among the factors that lead to the breakdown of teenage marriages and of links between teen father and child. Fatherhood is also being experienced today in new situations which arise because of separation, divorce and the reconstituted or blended family. In such situations, fathers must adapt to the new conditions that arise from the conjugal mobility of parents and new forms of family association. The decision to reduce or cut off contact with the child is not always voluntary. Life in a blended family is also likely to change the father's experience.
Fathers acquire their expertise through a lengthy period of trial and error.
The father in a blended family faces a triple challenge as a parent. He must come to terms with the children of his new spouse. And he may also be the biologial father of children from his new amage. The special circumstances of lone fathers Over the course of the last few decades, the number of single-parent families has been growing. These families are distinguished in certain aspects from those headed by a mother.