CHAPTER ONE 1.0 Introduction. 1.1 Background of the Study. This study is concerning the causes of family breakdown and its effects on children in Juba Town, Central Equatoria State, and South Sudan. In today's society, there are many different types of families. Some include intact, non-intact, single families, stepfamilies and a variety of others. Along with these different varieties of families there is one common incident that can cause the family structure to change. Family breakdown is an unplanned event in a family's life. It is something that affects each member of a family at different times and in different ways. About half of all marriages will end in breaking up, leaving one million children each year to deal with the process of family breakdown (Martin et aI, 2003). Family breakdown rates in the United States rose since the Civil war, decreased during the Great Depression while peaking in 1980, and have remained around fifty percent since then (Lazar et aI, 2004). Studies predict that thirty- eight percent of white children and seventy-five percent of black children born to married parents will experience family breakdown prior to sixteen years of age (Lazar et aI, 2004). The majority of these adolescents will become part of a remarried family prior to tuning eighteen years of age 1