In European and American psychiatry, catastrophes like divorce and death of parents occurring in childhood are considered to be important factors, contributing to the psychogenesis of emotional disturbances. However, while dealing with neurotic Ethiopian students, the authors were struck by the conflicting role played by the apparent instability of marriage in this country, the frequency of death of one or both parents and the early departure from home of a child to get proper education. On the one hand there were such observations as the obvious unhappiness about his past of a neurotic student, who was deserted by his mother and left in a hospital for more than a year when her husband abandoned her. Later his mother accepted him once more, and he was called “the one who died and came back to life”. His father even started to visit his first wife again, among other things to tell her that the children of his second wife were so much more clever. Are these experiences exceptional and significant, or is the next observation more representative? Two small children were examined during a home visit, and afterwards directed to return to their mother. Without the slightest doubt and with evident affection they chose their grandmother, while their own mother, a next-door neighbour since she had taken another husband, stood looking at the scene with nothing more than neighbourly interest. It is obvious that the significance of a broken home (by which is meant death of one or both parents and permanent separation) needs to be reconsidered under the circumstances prevailing in a country like Ethiopia. One way of approaching the problem could be provided by a child's behaviour at school as related to the occurrence of above-mentioned catastrophes. Sherwin and Schoelly (1965) name the school-community as one “reference group” providing standards of normal behaviour. Employing the native teachers as observers would include an additional advantage. We, as European observers, might run the risk of introducing cultural biases when we judge a child's behaviour ourselves.