Based on Survey of Family Income and Expenditures, 1980-94, this paper focuses on the factors that caused the increase in single-mother families in Taiwan. The findings of this paper indicate that women's independence largely contribute to this growth. Specifically, for divorced mothers, the rapid increases of women's education and the decrease of number of children raise their socioeconomic status and make them more independent. This independence in women's status allows women able to terminate their marriages when they feel they must to. For widowed mothers, education shows a significantly negative effect for all cohorts and points out the different mortality probability of the husbands among classes.