IN 1961, WHEN SHE was thirteen, Barbara's parents divorced. Divorce was far from being a commonplace occurrence then—in fact, Barbara remembers that she was the only one in her grade who lived in a one-parent household. "Back then, in the town I lived in, the dads went off to work and the moms stayed home," she says. "But after the divorce, my mom was working at the dry cleaner's. I remember feeling so sad; I felt so different from all the other kids. "My mom wasn't around when my sister and I got home from school. She couldn't do things at our school like she had in the past—help with my sister's Halloween party, things like that. I remember thinking that it was like my family had this horrible secret that we couldn't talk about, and that made everything worse."

A last resort

Barbara's sense...