Stepfamily Relationships Development Dynamics and Interventions 2nd by Coleman

Stepfamilies are structurally diverse and much more complex than nuclear families, which has created many challenges for those wanting to under-stand stepfamily functioning, including st

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Lawrence Ganong · Marilyn Coleman

Stepfamily

Relationships Development, Dynamics, and

Interventions

Second Edition

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Free ebooks ==> www.Ebook777.com

Stepfamily Relationships

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Lawrence Ganong • Marilyn Coleman

Stepfamily Relationships

Development, Dynamics, and Interventions

Second Edition

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ISBN 978-1-4899-7700-7 ISBN 978-1-4899-7702-1 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-7702-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016939451

This work is subject to copyright All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, speciﬁ cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microﬁ lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a speciﬁ c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use

The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors

or omissions that may have been made

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer Science+Business Media LLC New York

Lawrence Ganong

University of Missouri

Columbia , MO , USA

Marilyn Coleman University of Missouri Columbia , MO , USA

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Pref ace

We were fortunate to have started our research careers about the same time as the study of stepfamilies was “discovered” as a valid topic for social and behavioral scientists We also started our own stepfamily during the same time period (the late 1970s), creating a “perfect storm” in which our personal and professional stepfam-ily interests were mounting as stepfamilies and related topics started to receive attention by researchers, clinicians, journalists, policy-makers, and others Our skills as stepfamily researchers developed as the ﬁ eld advanced, and we feel privi-leged to have witnessed ﬁ rsthand how stepfamily research and clinical practice has expanded over the past few decades In fact, we have carefully and systematically written multiple reviews of research and clinical work targeting remarriage, step-parents, stepchildren, stepgrandparents, and other aspects of stepfamily living Our goal is to make this book a readable, yet thorough, compilation of what is known about stepfamily relationships

This is the third book we have written about stepfamily relationships (Ganong & Coleman, 1994, 2004) Since our ﬁ rst book, there has been a phenomenal increase

in the amount of research on stepfamily relationships; the total number of tions about stepfamilies has increased exponentially The quality of scholarship on stepfamily relationships has improved dramatically as well As both contributors to and consumers of this professional literature, we know that the quantity and quality

publica-of scholarly work on remarriage and stepfamily relationships have changed foundly The time seemed right for yet another comprehensive review of this litera-ture Thus the idea for this current book was born

As we started reviewing the literature on stepfamilies, we expected to be able to simply update our 2004 book—a straightforward task However, once we began to systematically review the research, theory, and clinical writing about remarriage and stepfamily relationships, we were surprised to discover how profoundly the body of knowledge had changed in a short period of time What we had expected to

be an update has become, at least in most areas of step-relationships, an entirely new look at a substantially different body of knowledge

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Throughout our careers we have investigated stepfamilies using what we have called a normative-adaptive perspective (Ganong & Coleman, 1994) This perspective does not deny the possibility of problems in stepfamilies, nor does it preclude comparing stepfamilies with other family forms However, the main focus

is not on problems, nor is it on seeing how stepfamilies and stepfamily members fare against the standard of the ﬁ rst marriage family Instead, the normative-adap-tive perspective looks at both positive and negative dimensions of stepfamily life; stepfamilies are conceptualized as a legitimate family form with several variations, all of them worthy of examination and consideration We have consistently raised research questions to explore the ways in which certain stepfamilies have been able

to function well, meeting the individual needs of stepfamily members as well as the needs of the stepfamily as a whole In short, our focus has not been on ﬁ nding ways

in which stepfamilies fail to function well—what we have labeled a deﬁ ison perspective Instead, we have sought adaptive, well-functioning stepfamilies and tried to ﬁ gure out how they differ from those who struggle to cope

cit-compar-Other scholars also have employed this normative-adaptive perspective Sometimes this has been labeled a risk and resiliency model (Hetherington, 1999), and sometimes researchers have eschewed labels, simply examining relationships

in stepfamilies without taking a deﬁ cit-comparison perspective In this book, we continue with the normative-adaptive perspective; we have made an effort to focus

on a wide range of behaviors and outcomes in stepfamily relationships, both tive and negative

We start this book with a brief history of stepfamily relationships as a ﬁ eld of study, reviewing the development of clinicians’ and researchers’ perspectives on remarriage and stepfamilies (Chap 1 ) We then look at the cultural context in which stepfamilies live, and review what is known about how relationships are initiated, maintained, and generally inﬂ uenced by cultural values (Chap 2 ) Anyone familiar with our writing about cultural views, social stereotypes, and stigma will not be surprised at our attention to the cultural backdrop of stepfamily living

We then look at pathways to stepfamily living (Chap 3 ), with an eye towards how these various pathways affect stepfamily relationships over time Continuing with this chronological orientation, we next examine courtship for stepfamily living (Chap 4 ) and remarriage and cohabiting couple relationships (Chap 5 ) We then review the literature on gay and lesbian stepfamily relationships in Chap 6 We know there is a risk that we might be seen as marginalizing them by setting aside an entire chapter on gay and lesbian stepfamilies, but we think recent global changes

in same sex marriage rights make them important enough for a separate chapter In Chaps 7 and 8 we present parenting and stepparenting processes, and then we fol-low with an examination of the effects of stepfamily living on children A range of sibling relationships are explored in Chap 10 , as we compare siblings, half-siblings, and stepsiblings In Chap 11 we review the growing body of knowledge about grandparents and stepgrandparents Throughout the book, we try to interweave researchers’ and clinicians’ contributions because, as applied researchers who have worked with stepfamilies (as educators, counselors, and mediators), we think this approach provides the reader with a more complete picture of the development and

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dynamics of stepfamily relationships In Chap 12 we deviate from this approach a bit by turning our attention almost exclusively to clinicians’ contributions Then, we summarize brieﬂ y in Chap 13 the interventions with stepfamilies In the ﬁ nal chap-ter we suggest future directions for researchers and clinicians

As usual, we have many people to thank for making this book possible Our large and growing “family” of former and current graduate students have enormously enriched our lives and our work with stepfamilies Former students, whose names appear in this volume, include: Jason Hans, Shannon Weaver, Melinda Markham, Jessica Troilo, Elizabeth Sharp, Jennifer Hardesty, Tim Killian, Tanja Rothrauf, Jacquelyn Benson, Jonathon Beckmeyer, Tyler Jamison, Richard Feistman, Catherine Cushinberry, Annette Kusgen McDaniel Current students whose work appears in this book include: Caroline Sanner, Luke Russell, Ashton Chapman, Nick Frye, Youngjin Kang, Sarah Mitchell, Kwangman Ko—we thank them for the many ways they have helped us ﬁ nish this book and advance the scholarship on stepfamilies Many other students have been part of our research and educational work—they are too numerous to mention, but we hope they know they are part of our academic stepfamily

Over the years, we have been privileged to have met and studied hundreds of stepfamily members We clearly owe them a great debt for sharing their lives with

us Some of their stories appear in this book—in some ways, all of them are reﬂ ected

in what we know and write about stepfamilies

Finally, we are indebted to the members of our own multigenerational ily We have learned the best lessons from them

Preface

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ix

Contents

1 Studying (and Understanding) Stepfamilies 1

Deﬁ ning Stepfamilies 2

What’s in a Label? 4

Demographics of Step 5

Remarriage 5

Stepfamilies 6

A Note of Caution About the Demographic Data Regarding Stepfamilies 7

Challenges in Studying Close Relationships in Stepfamilies 8

Stepfamily Structural Typologies 9

A Brief History of the Study of Stepfamilies 11

The “Discovery” of Stepfamilies by Social Scientists 12

Stepfamilies Across Time 12

A Demographic Turning Point 12

Research on Stepfamilies 13

Social Address Phase 13

Growing Recognition Phase 15

A Decade of Progress 16

Twenty-First Century 18

2 The Cultural Context of Stepfamilies 21

Stepfamilies as Incomplete Institutions 22

Absence of Appropriate Terms 23

Little Institutional Social Support 24

Nonexistent or Ambiguous Laws and Social Policies 24

Relative Absence of Norms 25

Stepfamilies as Deviant or Deﬁ cit Family Forms 26

Nuclear Family Ideology and Stigma 26

Language as Stigmatizing 26

Stereotypes About Stepfamilies 27

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Myths 29

Media Images 30

Stepfamilies as Reconstituted Nuclear Families 31

Implications of the Cultural Context of Stepfamilies 32

Implications for Stepfamily Members 32

Implications for Clinicians 33

Implications for Policy-Makers 34

Implications for Researchers 34

Epistemic and Nonepistemic Values 35

Stepfamilies in the Twenty-First Century 36

Stepfamilies as Adaptive and Resilient 36

3 Pathways to Stepfamily Living 37

Different Pathways to Stepfamily Living 38

The Disconnection of Remarriage and Stepparenting 38

Why Do the Pathways Matter? 41

Dissolutions of Previous Marriages 42

Reasons for Divorce 43

Parents’ Responses to Divorce 44

Outcomes of Divorce 45

Co-parenting After Divorce 47

Attitudes About Co-parenting 47

Co-parental Communication 48

Co-parenting Typologies 49

Nonresidential Father Involvement 52

Maternal Gatekeeping and Father Involvement 53

Postdivorce Stepfamilies 53

Bereavement as a Precursor to Remarriage/Repartnering 55

Younger Post-Bereavement Stepfamilies 56

Separation of Never-Married Cohabiting Partners 56

Parental Skills and Effectiveness 58

Fathers’ Involvement 59

Stepfamilies Formed by Never-Married Parents 59

4 Courtship in Stepfamilies 61

Remarriage in Stepfamilies 61

Demographics of Remarriage 62

Demographics of Cohabiting Repartnerships 67

Demographic Differences Between Remarried and Cohabiting Repartnering Couples 69

Motivations to Remarry or Repartner 70

Barriers to Remarry or Repartner 71

Courtship Differences Between First Marriages and Remarriages 73

Age 73

Marital or Relational Experience 74

Children 75

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Remarriage Courtship Behaviors/Dating 75

Length of Courtship 75

Dating 77

Preparation for Remarriage 79

5 Couple Dynamics in Stepfamilies 85

Building a Couple Bond 85

Boundary-Making: Children 86

Boundary-Making: Co-parents/Former Partners 87

Bonding Processes 89

Maintaining a Couple Bond 89

Communication and Conﬂ ict Management in Remarriages 89

Couple Dynamics 91

Power and Equity in Remarriage Relationships 91

Childbearing 96

Relationship Quality and Stability in Remarriages 98

A Seeming Paradox 98

Couple Instability and Selection Factors 98

Intrapersonal Characteristics 99

Socioeconomic Status 100

Prior Life Experiences 101

Interpersonal Causes for Remarriage Instability 101

Evolutionary Explanations for Couple Instability 104

What Explains Step-Couple Instability and Quality the Best? 104

Older Adults and Remarriages 105

6 Gay and Lesbian Couples in Stepfamilies 111

Pathways to Becoming a Gay or Lesbian Stepfamily 112

Being a Parent Before Coming Out 113

Adopting 113

Donor Insemination 115

Planned GL Families 116

Planned GL Families Versus GL Stepfamilies 117

Gay and Lesbian Couples in Stepfamilies 117

GL Stepparent–Stepchild Relationships 118

Dynamics of GL Stepfamilies 119

Challenges for Gay and Lesbian Stepfamilies 119

Resilience Strategies Among GL Stepfamilies 122

7 The Dynamics of Parenting in Stepfamilies 125

Mothers in Stepfamily Households 125

The Motherhood Myth/Mandate and Mothers in Stepfamilies 128

Mothers Stepping Up 132

Role Conﬂ icts 132

Nonresidential Mothers 134

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Fathers in Stepfamilies 135

Residential Fathers in Stepfamily Households 135

Nonresidential Fathers in Stepfamilies 136

Older Parents and Adult Children in Stepfamilies 138

Closeness and Contact 139

Coresidence 140

Why Are There Differences in Exchanges of Support? 141

8 The Dynamics of Stepparenting 143

Developing Stepparent–Stepchild Relationships 146

Relationship Development as a Bidirectional Process 148

Relationship Development in Interpersonal Contexts 149

Developing What Type of Relationship? 151

Patterns of Step-Relationship Development 151

Residential Stepfathers and Stepchildren 155

Stepfathers Developing and Maintaining Roles as Fathers 155

Stepfathers Developing and Maintaining Relationships as Friends 158

Stepfathers as Quasi-kin 158

Stepfathers as Intimate Strangers 160

Nonresidential Stepfathers 160

Stepmothers 161

Stepmothers and the Motherhood Mandate 161

Younger Stepparent–Stepchild Relationships 166

Adult Stepchildren and Older Stepparents 167

Caregiving 167

Exchanges Within Older Step-Relationships 168

Horizontal Families 169

Ex-Steps: What Happens to Step-Relationships After Divorce or Death? 170

The Role of Parents 173

9 Effects of Stepfamily Living on Children 175

Family Structure Comparisons 175

Gender Differences in Outcomes 177

Long-Term Effects on Stepchildren 178

Children in Cohabiting Stepfamilies 178

The Rest of the Story 179

Theoretical Explanations for Stepparent Effects on Stepchildren 180

Stress Models 181

Family Process Effects 183

Selection Effects 187

Child Abuse in Stepfamilies 187

10 Siblings, Half-Siblings, and Stepsiblings 191

Family Complexity 192

Who Are Half- and Stepsiblings? 192

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Theoretical Perspectives on Children’s Sibling Relationships

in Stepfamilies 195

Parental Resources and Investments 196

Stress Due to Sibling Structure 196

Selection Effects 197

Siblings as Resources 197

Siblings 197

Half-Siblings 199

How Well Do Half-Siblings Get along? 199

Half-Sibling Effects on Other Children 201

Stepsiblings 202

11 Grandparents and Stepgrandparents 205

Longer Life Spans 206

Fewer Children 206

Dissolutions and Re-partnering 206

Grandparents in Stepfamilies 207

Divorce and Grandparents 208

Death of an Adult Child or Child-in-Law and Grandparents 211

Remarriage and Grandparents 212

Bridges or Walls? 212

Stepgrandparents 213

Long-Term Stepgrandparents 214

Later-Life Stepgrandparenthood 219

Skip-Generation Stepgrandparents 222

12 Clinical Perspectives on Stepfamily Dynamics 231

Clinical Perspectives 232

Stepfamily Characteristics 235

Entering Stepfamilies 236

Structural Complexity 239

Variability in Relational Histories, Individual Life Courses, and Interpersonal Bonds 246

Cultural Contexts 249

Other Problems in Stepfamily Relationships 250

Nuclear Family Ideology and Stepfamily Functioning 252

Clinical Models of Stepfamily Development: The Stepfamily Cycle 254

Fantasy 255

Immersion 255

Awareness 255

Mobilization 256

Action 256

Contact 256

Resolution 256

Stepfamily Tasks 257

Summary of Clinicians’ Perspectives 257

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13 Working with Stepfamilies 259

Learning About Stepfamily Dynamics 260

Stepfamily Education Programs 260

What Is Taught? 261

When Are Stepfamily Educational Programs Offered? 263

How Effective Are These Programs at Changing Attitudes, Cognitions, and Behaviors? 263

World Wide Web 264

Self-Help: Reading 266

Books, Magazine, Newspapers 266

Self-Help Groups 268

Bibliotherapy or Biblioeducation 269

Teaching via Other Media 270

Teaching Stepfamily Dynamics 270

Entering Stepfamilies: Issues Facing New Stepfamilies 270

Losses and Gains 271

Expectations 271

Structural Complexity 272

Complexity 272

Afﬁ nity Strategies 275

Increasing Reciprocity Toward Afﬁ nity Behaviors 276

Learning Co-parenting Skills 277

Obtaining Financial Skills 278

Variability in Individual, Relational, and Familial Life Courses 279

Building a Shared Story 280

Creating Rituals and Traditions 280

Maintaining Parent–Child Bonds 280

Strengthening Couple Bonds 281

Managing Differing Timetables 282

Cultural Contexts 282

Normalizing Stepfamilies 282

Learning About Legal Issues 283

Helping Stepfamily Members Who Lack Skills or Knowledge 283

Communication Skills 283

Helping Individuals Cope 284

Validating Feelings 284

Reducing Feelings of Helplessness 285

Reframing the Situation 285

14 Next Steps 287

Research Trends and Challenges 287

Greater Sophistication in Designing Stepfamily Research 288

Greater Understanding of Stepfamily Complexity 289

Stepfamilies May Be Becoming More Complex 289

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More Theorizing and Theory Building 290

Greater Awareness of Values in Stepfamily Research 290

Ongoing Challenges and Understudied Phenomena 291

Stepfamily Scholarship Has Contributed to Social Sciences 291

References 293

Index 337

Contents

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L Ganong, M Coleman, Stepfamily Relationships,

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-7702-1_1

Studying (and Understanding) Stepfamilies

Abstract How have stepfamilies and stepfamily scholarship changed over time?

Stepfamilies are an international phenomenon Historically, there have always been stepfamilies, but until about 50 years ago, they were formed primarily after death of

a spouse/parent, and so went largely unnoticed by social scientists Stepfamilies were discovered by scholars when divorce became the primary precursor to step-family creation Stepfamilies are structurally diverse and much more complex than nuclear families, which has created many challenges for those wanting to under-stand stepfamily functioning, including stepfamily members themselves In this chapter, we deﬁ ne stepfamilies, explore their structural diversity, and examine the development of stepfamily scholarship over the past 50 years

Keywords Deﬁ cit comparison model • Family structure • Stepfamilies

Stepfamilies are everywhere Stepparents and stepchildren are found in history books (e.g., George Washington was a stepfather, many US Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln , Bill Clinton , and Barack Obama , were stepchildren, inventor Booker T Washington was a stepchild, as were blues singer John Lee Hooker , novelist John Irving , human development theorist Erik Erikson , and race car driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr.) Stepfamily members are mentioned often in social media and

“old school” media that cover popular culture (e.g., the Jenner–Kardashian family, Oprah, Shaquille O’Neil, Diane Sawyer, and many, many others) If it seems as if everyone is either in a stepfamily or knows someone who is, that may not be far from the truth In a 2011 survey conducted by the PEW Research Center, 40 % of

US respondents had a close step-relative, deﬁ ned as a stepparent, stepchild, or other close kin—the percentage with a step-relative was about 50 % for Americans under age 30 (Parker, 2011 )

Stepfamilies also are an international phenomenon They exist in every society and in all corners of the globe Although most research on stepfamilies has been conducted in the USA, scholars from at least 20 countries have published work about stepfamilies in the past decade

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Part of the reason stepfamilies are so puzzling is because they are structurally diverse and complex They exist in dozens of household conﬁ gurations and family formations This complexity challenges our ability to draw generalizations that apply to all stepfamilies We address the diversity and complexity of stepfamilies at length in this volume

Stepfamilies are not always open and transparent with outsiders, which makes them hard to study In fact, it is often difﬁ cult for anyone—researchers, friends, neighbors, coworkers—to get un-retouched pictures of stepfamily life This lack of openness is due, we contend, to lingering stigma associated with being a stepparent

or stepchild (we discuss this at length later in this book) This stigma encourages some stepfamily members to present themselves as being part of happy, problem- free families, nearly identical to ﬁ rst-marriage families To avoid being seen as “less than” ﬁ rst marriage families, stepfamilies may engage in impression management strategies designed to present a carefree façade

Consequently, there are several reasons other than the fact they are quite mon in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and increasingly in Asian countries (Pryor, 2008 ), we need to revisit what is known about stepfamilies and stepfamily relationships This is our third book in 25 years speciﬁ cally about stepfamilies; each time we write there is much more to share about what is known, and what we still need to learn We begin by deﬁ ning what we mean when we use stepfamily terms

Defi ning Stepfamilies

A stepfamily is one in which at least one of the adults has a child (or children) from

a previous relationship A stepparent is an adult whose partner has at least one child from a previous relationship A stepchild is a person whose parent(s) are partnered

with someone who is not the child’s biological or adoptive parent A stepchild may

have siblings with whom they share both parents in common, half-siblings with whom they have only one parent in common, and stepsiblings they are not geneti-

cally related to at all These deﬁ nitions do not limit stepfamily status only to those who share a household A stepparent and stepchild do not have to live together all

of the time, or even part of the time, to have a relationship and to share family membership

These deﬁ nitions also are not limited to stepfamilies formed following riages Although most research has been on stepfamilies formed after remarriages,

remar-an increasing body of research is emerging on stepfamilies formed when unmarried

1 Studying (and Understanding) Stepfamilies

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adults live together as romantic partners, bringing with them children from prior relationships These cohabiting stepfamilies are on the rise in North America (Kreider & Ellis, 2011 ), and they constitute a large proportion of stepfamilies in Europe, New Zealand, and Australia (Beier, Hofacker, Marchese, & Rupp, 2010 ; Pryor, 2008 ) Although US scholars have often focused their attentions on remar-ried stepfamilies, that focus is gradually changing as the precursors to becoming a stepfamily change

We also want to point out that our stepfamily deﬁ nitions are not limited to erosexual unions Gay and lesbian (GL) couples in which one or both partners bring

het-a child or children into the relhet-ationship mhet-atch our deﬁ nitions Although GL fhet-ami-lies’ dynamics may differ somewhat from stepfamilies headed by heterosexual couples, many of the issues and dynamics they experience are similar (e.g., steppar-ent–stepchild interactions and former partner relationships)

The deﬁ nitions we use in this book are broad because our intention is to cover the

fi eld comprehensively and to identify areas where more research, theory, and eral scholarly thought is needed It will be obvious to the careful reader of this book, however, that most researchers and clinicians assume narrower defi nitions Even the task of defi ning who is and who is not in a stepfamily can be controversial

The controversy of deﬁ ning membership is related to value differences regarding families and to limited ways that social and behavioral scientists conceptualize fam-

ilies In the not-too-distant past, many scholars had difﬁ culty conceptualizing family

as any group other than one comprised of a mother, a father, and their biological or adopted children (i.e., the nuclear family) Some social scientists continue to regard nuclear families as the standard, the family form that is best for children and adults Nuclear families, often labeled the “traditional family” (e.g., Lamb, 1982 ), also have been known by other labels, including the Standard North American Family ( SNAF ; Smith, 1993 ), natural families (Farber, 1973 ) and “ intact families ” The continuation of heterosexual, fi rst-marriage, nuclear families as the comparison standard for other families is often infl uenced by societal and religious norms For instance, since 2002, the US government has spent millions promoting “healthy marriages and families,” by which they mean fi rst marriage, heterosexual families These programs encourage couples to marry and biological fathers to engage in child-rearing because nuclear families are seen by religious, political, and social conservatives as the best environments to enhance the well-being of children and adults (Acs, 2007 ) What does this perspective mean for stepfamilies? As we review and discuss research fi ndings about stepfamilies in this book, we focus on the appli-cation of scientifi c principles in these bodies of literature, but we also attend to the role that cultural, political, and personal values play in the development of stepfam-ily scholarship

Although most people, at some level of awareness, realize that nuclear families are not all alike, the structure—mother, father, and children living in the same household—is basically the same, is straightforward, and simple to understand Perhaps because nuclear families are relatively simple to understand and assess, scholars may have been inclined also to think simplistically about other types of families For years, this simplistic thinking has contributed to researchers, clini-

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4

cians, and policy makers treating families and households as equivalent, containing the same groups of people who all live together Such thinking has inﬂ uenced researchers to focus on stepfamily households as the family unit, overlooking important close family relationships with kin who do not share the household —such as children’s relationships with parents (usually fathers), stepparents (usually stepmothers), siblings, half-siblings, and stepsiblings that live in another residence all or some of the time

What’s in a Label?

In this book we choose to use the term stepfamilies , one of many labels applied to

the families we examine A review of professional, academic literature yields other labels for stepfamilies: reconstituted, blended, reconstructed, reorganized, reformed, recycled, combined, rem, step-, second-time around, merged, and remarried families Stepparents are sometimes called social parents , and some scholars use no

adjectives to label stepfamilies, instead referring to multiple partner fertility to

indi-cate when a parent has reproduced with more than one co-parent We ﬁ nd these

labels unsatisfactory Some seem awkward or even silly (e.g., reconstituted reminds people of orange juice, blended conjures images of whiskey), some are used incon- sistently to describe different types of families (e.g., blended sometimes is used to

refer to families in which both adults are stepparents, and sometimes it is used broadly to identify all stepfamilies), some are inaccurate as broad labels (e.g., not all

are second-time around families ; some are third- or fourth-time around, and in some

stepfamilies only one adult partner is remarried (the other may be in his or her ﬁ rst marriage) and some stepfamily couples are not married at all) Some labels are too

vague (e.g., combined ), and others suggest odd labels for individual family tions (e.g., a reformed or reconstituted father, a merged or reorganized mother, a blended child) Although some scholars have argued that stepfamily , and associated

posi-terms for family positions (e.g., stepchild, stepmother), carry negative connotations, the term stepfamily is the one most often used by social and behavioral scientists, and the preﬁ x “step” attached to family positions are familiar and known to many (Widmer, Romney, & Boyd, 1999 )

Continuing with the theme of inconsistent labeling, several have been applied to

stepparents: Non-parents, half-parents, acquired parents, added parents , and

sec-ond or third parents have been used in the professional literature (Espinoza &

Newman, 1979 ), and in recent years, social parent has appeared as a label for

step-parents (e.g., Berger, Carlson, Bzostek, & Osborne, 2008 ) We have heard

steppar-ents call themselves sociological parsteppar-ents , and in one study a child of gay parsteppar-ents

referred to her stepfather as her “vice dad” (Goldberg & Allen, 2013 ) Many family members refer to stepparents simply as parents We try not to use adjectives

step-like biological , genetic , or natural to describe parents and children—all have

draw-backs that we discuss later Instead, individual family positions in this book most of

the time are identiﬁ ed simply as parent or stepparent , and child or stepchild

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Demographics of Step

It is popular in modern American society to think of nuclear families as traditional and

“normal,” and all others are viewed as nontraditional, or alternative, families (Ganong, Coleman, & Russell, 2015 ) These labels convey the impression that stepfamilies are

a recent phenomenon, a result of the increased divorce rate Although it is true that divorce has replaced death of a spouse as the most common precursor to remarriage,

it is not true that stepfamilies are a recent phenomenon (Elman & London, 2001 )

There have always been stepfamilies Stepfamilies have existed in large numbers in every culture throughout history (Phillips, 1997 ; also, read Spanier & Furstenburg,

1987 ; Ihinger-Tallman & Pasley, 1987a or 1987b for concise, informative historical reviews of stepfamilies) In fact, eighteenth century rates of remarriage in Europe and the USA were similar to current remarriage rates (Chandler, 1991 ; Noy, 1991 )

Remarriage

Up until the late twentieth century, the USA could claim being the most pro- marriage Western nation in the world Americans married at a high rate; however, they also divorced at a high rate So in addition to a high marriage rate, we also can claim one of the highest divorce rates in the world (Cherlin, 2010 ) Perhaps because Americans are optimistic, most divorced individuals remarry, sometimes several times (Schoen & Standish, 2001 ) As a result, we also could proclaim ourselves to

be “number one” in the world in remarriage, although increases in cohabitation (Lamidi, 2014 ; Manning, 2013 ) and a decline in remarriage rates (Kreider, 2006 ; Payne, 2015 ) threatens our ranking Even so, between 31 % (Lamidi & Cruz, 2014 ) and 40 % (Lewis & Kreider, 2015 ) of all US marriages are remarriages for one or both partners, and the number of remarried adults in the USA has tripled since 1969 (Livingston, 2014 ) Relatively high rates of remarriage also are reported in Canada (e.g., Wu & Schimmle, 2005 ) and in the UK (Wilson & Smallwood, 2008 ) In fact, the percentage of all marriages that were remarriages increased from 1960 to

2006 in nearly every European country, primarily because of increases in the rates

of divorce (Beier et al., 2010 ) In other western nations, remarriage rates are lower than in North America because long-term cohabitation as an alternative to remar-riage is prevalent Repartnering without marriage also is common in other western nations (e.g., Beier et al., 2010 )

People remarry rather quickly In the USA, the median interval between divorce and remarriage is less than 4 years (Kreider, 2006 ) Keep in mind that most couples cohabit before they remarry (Lamidi & Cruz, 2014 ), which means the median inter-val from one romantic relationship ending to another beginning is short Men remarry at a higher rate than women, although the gender gap in remarriage is decreasing (Brown & Lin, 2013 ) White Americans remarry at higher rates than African Americans and Hispanics (McNamee & Raley, 2011 )

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Remarriage also is not just for the young; remarriage rates are holding steady or increasing for Americans over age 55 (Brown & Lin, 2013 ) Of all US remarriages between 1996 and 2004, 11 % were by men older than 55, and 7 % were by women over age 55 (Kreider, 2006 ) The prevalence of divorced older adults, increased longevity of widowed and divorced adults, and better health throughout the life course are factors related to increases in remarriage among older adults

Remarriage rates, however, are generally dropping in the USA (Brown & Lin,

2013 ) and in other countries This does not mean a reduction in people recoupling, but rather an increase in couples choosing to cohabit as an alternative to marriage or remarriage (Lamidi, 2014 ; Seltzer & Bianchi, 2013 ) Lower marriage rates lead to lower divorce rates, which lead to lower remarriage rates (Bramlett & Mosher,

2001 ) Remarriages tend to end in divorce more often than do ﬁ rst marriages (Teachman, 2008 ) Because rates of cohabitation are harder to assess than marriage rates, it is difﬁ cult to track dissolutions of cohabiting unions (Cherlin, 2010 ) It has been estimated that cohabiting relationships tend to end within 5 years (Lichter, Qian, & Mellott, 2006 )

Cohabiting parents create de facto stepfamilies Based on the 2007 US Current

Population Survey, 18 % of adults lived in cohabiting unions with a person of the other sex (Kennedy & Fitch, 2012 ) Cohabiting is becoming an alternative to remar-riage even among older adults; about 2 % of older people in the US cohabit with a new partner (Lamidi, 2014 )

Stepfamilies

Just as marriage and parenthood have become decoupled in industrialized societies (Seltzer & Bianchi, 2013 ), so have remarriage and stepfamilyhood gradually become relatively independent phenomena That is, not all remarriages create stepfamilies because not all adults have children from prior relationships Likewise, not all stepfamilies are formed when a parent or parents remarry For instance, some

ﬁ rst marriages create stepfamilies and stepparent–stepchild relationships (i.e., when never-married mothers marry men who are not the children’s father) Other step-family households are formed by cohabiting adults—approximately 26 % of cohab-iting couples in the USA are households in which at least one adult brings children from prior relationships (Kennedy & Fitch, 2012 ) In fact, cohabiting couples are more likely (48 % vs 37 %) to have children from previous relationships than are remarried couples (Wineberg & McCarthy, 1998 )

For a variety of reasons, Census Bureau data regarding the number of lies varies widely However, in 2009, 5.6 million children in the USA lived with a stepparent (Lamidi & Payne, 2014 ) Thirteen percent of children in married two- adult households are stepchildren to one of the adults, whereas 64 % of the children in cohabiting adult households are stepchildren (Kennedy & Fitch, 2012 ) Nearly 10 % of children reside in complex stepfamily households (those containing half- siblings or step-siblings); 39 % of these children are in married stepfamily

stepfami-1 Studying (and Understanding) Stepfamilies

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households and 21 % are in cohabiting stepfamily households (Kreider & Ellis,

2011 ) To these numbers must be added an unknown number of children who do not

live with a stepparent but are part of a stepfamily These children are counted as living with single parents because they live with their mothers or, less often, their fathers, in one-parent households

It is estimated that about one-third of US children will live in a remarried or cohabiting stepfamily household before they reach adulthood (Bumpass, Raley, & Sweet, 1995 ), and 40 % of adult women will reside in a remarried/cohabiting stepfamily household as a parent or stepparent at some time (Bumpass et al., 1995 ) Because of increasing numbers of parents having complex marital and cohabiting histories (Cancian, Meyer, & Cook, 2011 ), it is likely that stepchildren also will have complex family histories; some will live in several types of family households (e.g., with married parents, a single parent, and a stepparent-parent) before they reach adulthood

The numbers of multigenerational stepfamilies will likely increase as the “baby boom” generation ages (individuals born between 1946 and 1964) About half of this cohort’s marriages will end in divorce, and about 75 % of those who divorce will remarry at least once (Schoen & Standish, 2001 ) The Baby Boom cohort contains an unprecedented number of individuals who are stepparents (Cornman

& Kingson, 1996 ), and many of these older adults are becoming stepgrandparents

It is likely that the 40 % of US families that now include stepgrandparents (Szinovacz,

1998 ) will increase in the future (see more on this on in Chap 11 )

A Note of Caution About the Demographic Data

in a stepfather-mother household answers a survey on behalf of the household, and the questions are about her relationships with children in the household (“Do you have children?” “If so, how many?” “Do you have stepchildren?” “If so, how many?”), then her family will get counted as a nuclear family with no stepchildren, whereas if the stepfather was the person being asked the questions, then the children

in the house would be identiﬁ ed as his stepchildren and the household would be counted as a stepfamily household If demographers are not careful with question wording, or they do not ask enough questions about marital status and relationships between children and adults, then stepfamilies are not accurately counted

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Finally, as we discuss later, stepfamily members, like members of all families, create their own deﬁ nitions of kinship (Nelson, 2013 ), and these deﬁ nitions might not be congruent with that of demographic researchers (Chapman, Coleman, & Ganong, 2016 ) The fact that family identities are socially constructed by family members is a constant challenge to researchers, including demographers (Cherlin, 2010 )

Challenges in Studying Close Relationships in Stepfamilies

Close relationships in stepfamilies are among the most fascinating and frustrating phenomena to study The complexity of stepfamily relationships presents challenges

to researchers, scholars, and students One problem that has plagued the study of remarriage and step-relationships has been confusion over what and who are being studied Being clear about who is included in a study of stepfamilies is more diffi -cult than one might think and certainly is more complicated than identifying and defi ning samples of fi rst-marriage nuclear families

Unlike ﬁ rst-marriage, nuclear families, stepfamily members often do not reside full-time in one household In fact, with the increase in courts’ preferences for joint legal and physical custody of children postdivorce, children’s membership in two households is increasingly common Thus, a step-household may be linked

to another step-household or to a single-parent household by children (Jacobson,

1987 ) and these linked or binuclear households may contain several combinations

of full- and part-time step-relationships (Ahrons & Perlmutter, 1982 ) The tant point is that in stepfamilies, households and families are not necessarily equiva-lent groups, as they are in most ﬁ rst-marriage, nuclear families That households and families are not the same groups, however, is only part of the complexity of deﬁ ning stepfamilies Roles and relationships within and across these families and households are incredibly complex as well

Bohannan ( 1984 ) identiﬁ ed eight roles and eight possible dyadic relationships

in the nuclear family known by kinship terms recognized in English—husband–wife, father–son, father–daughter, mother–son, mother–daughter, brother–brother, sister–sister, and brother–sister Death, divorce, or separation changes the family and household structure, resulting in vacant roles and absent dyadic relationships For instance, a woman who divorces is no longer a wife, and the family no longer has a husband–wife (marital) relationship If she and her former spouse remarry people who already have children, there will be a total of 22 possible dyadic rela-

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tionships The new stepfamily contains some of the original family relationships (e.g., mother–son), but it also contains relationships never found in ﬁ rst-marriage nuclear families (e.g., stepsister–stepbrother)

Stepfamily Structural Typologies

Studying stepfamilies is challenging in part because they are so structurally able In efforts to help make the structural complexity more manageable for schol-ars, a number of researchers have identiﬁ ed typologies for conceptualizing stepfamily structural variations Some of these typologies are shown in Table 1.1 For example, Clingempeel and colleagues developed a structural taxonomy based

vari-on vari-only two variables, the presence or absence of children from prior relativari-onships and the physical custody (i.e., residence) of those children, resulting in nine types of stepfamilies ( 1987 ) Pasley and Ihinger-Tallman (1982) also postulated a nine- category typology, based on presence or absence of children from prior relation-ships or the present union, age of the children (i.e., adult or minor children), and physical custody (i.e., residence) of children from prior relationships Wald ( 1981 ) identiﬁ ed 15 types of stepfamily conﬁ gurations based on the residence of children from the prior unions of both adults The number of categories in Wald’s typology doubles when children are born to the couple

Before we leave this simple example of why studying stepfamilies is so lenging, we want to point out, just as there is no single structural deﬁ nition of stepfamilies, there is also no uniform psychological deﬁ nition of stepfamily mem-bership For example, Gross ( 1987 ) asked stepchildren to identify who was in

chal-their family Their responses fell into four categories that she labeled retention,

substitution, reduction, and augmentation In the retention group were children

who psychologically retained both parents as family members and who were tionally close to both their nonresidential and residential parent but not to a step-parent with whom they lived The children in the substitution group replaced their nonresidential parent with the stepparent they lived with, so that household mem-bers only, regardless of biological ties, were considered family In the reduction group, children included only one parent as part of their family, the one with whom they resided, usually the mother The other parent and any stepparents were excluded The ﬁ nal group, augmentation , contained those children who identiﬁ ed both parents and at least one stepparent as family In a similar study, Australian stepchildren used a variety of criteria to decide who was in their family (Funder,

1991 ) Among the criteria were biological ties, sharing a household with the child, sharing a household with the child’s nonresidential parent, and being important to the child for some reason Gross ( 1987 ) cautioned researchers and clinicians

to take into account children’s perspectives on stepfamily membership rather than imposing deﬁ nitions upon them; she especially argued that adherence to a view of stepfamilies as recreated nuclear families impedes understanding of these families

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Table 1.1 Three structural typologies of stepfamilies

Pasley and Ihinger-Tallman

1 No children a 1 Remarried family a

(if either were married before)

3 Custodial children from

prior marriage only

2 Nonresidential stepmother family

3 All All elsewhere e

4 All All

4 Noncustodial children from

prior marriage only

3 Residential stepmother family

5 None All

5 Adult children only 4 Nonresidential

stepfather family

6 Some/some elsewhere

All elsewhere

6 Custodial children from

prior marriage and children

from this marriage

5 Residential stepfather family

7 All elsewhere All

6 Nonresidential stepparent family f

Some/some elsewhere

7 Noncustodial children from

prior marriage and children

from this marriage

7 Residential stepparent family g

None

8 Mixed stepparent family (stepmother type) h

10 All elsewhere Some/some

elsewhere

8 Noncustodial and custodial

children from prior

marriage

9 Mixed stepparent family (stepfather type) h

11 None Some/some

elsewhere

9 Noncustodial and custodial

children from prior

marriage and children from

this marriage

All elsewhere

13 All None

elsewhere

14 None All elsewhere

15 All elsewhere All elsewhere

a A family type not covered in the deﬁ nition of stepfamily used in this book

h Both adults are parents; only one set of children lives in the household

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Adults also cognitively construct their families An amusing, albeit idiosyncratic construction of family status was conveyed by Mary Catherine Bateson ( 1990 ), who

stated in her book, Composing a Life , that her mother, the anthropologist Margaret

Mead, only counted her previous legal unions as marriages if they produced either

a child or a book! Most psychological deﬁ nitions of family membership are less unique than Mead’s Burgoyne and Clark ( 1984 ) developed a ﬁ ve-category typology based on how remarried adults thought about their families Those in what they

called progressive stepfamilies thought of themselves as stepfamilies and

recog-nized that family membership extended beyond the household Those in the

category, looking forward to the departure of the children , accepted their stepfamily

status as something different from that of nuclear families, but they longed for the point in the future when children were gone and interactions with former spouses were reduced Stepfamilies who wanted to identify themselves and function as

nuclear families were labeled conscious pursuit of a nuclear family life frustrated

because former spouses and nonresidential children from prior relationships would not allow them to pretend to be nuclear families Both of the ﬁ nal two groups in Burgoyne and Clark’s typology thought of themselves as nuclear families, and as far

as possible, functioned as nuclear families In the not really a stepfamily group,

stepchildren were young when the parent remarried, and often children were born

of the remarriage union In the largely successful conscious pursuit of a nuclear

family group, stepparents had consciously and purposively tried to assume the role

of parent, even going as far as transferring their allegiance from their nonresidential children to the stepchildren with whom they lived Some call this phenomenon

“ swapping families ” (Manning & Smock, 2000 ) Although we focus on the deﬁ tional aspects of this typology, it should be kept in mind that these cognitive con-structions of family status have enormous pragmatic importance in the day-to-day functioning of these families

A Brief History of the Study of Stepfamilies

In the remainder of this chapter we present a brief history of the scholarly study of stepfamilies Examining the historical development of a fi eld of scholarly inquiry can be instructive For example, such an examination allows you to assess the relation between sociocultural and historical changes, and changes in how social scientists think about and conduct research on a specifi c subject matter (in this case, stepfamilies) Although researchers are often portrayed as impractical dreamers working in an isolated “ivory tower” apart from the cultural and historical forces that infl uence the rest of society, for social scientists who study family relationships, this is a myth In practice, social and behavioral researchers generally are fi rmly entrenched in their cultural time and place and are reinforced by a variety of infl uences, such as funding agencies who are responding to social trends and con-cerns, colleagues who review manuscripts for journals, editors, tenure committees, and the community of scholars who study and write about the same topic

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The “Discovery” of Stepfamilies by Social Scientists

Although there have always been large numbers of stepfamilies, the study of family relationships is surprisingly recent Prior to the late 1970s, researchers showed little interest in them The ﬁ rst North American study on remarriage was published in the 1930s (Waller, 1930 ), a few studies appeared in the decade follow-ing World War II (e.g., Bernard, 1956 ; Landis, 1950 ; Smith, 1953 ), and a handful were published in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Bowerman & Irish, 1962 ; Duberman,

1975 ) In 1979, a review of the literature yielded only 11 studies on stepfamilies, including unpublished doctoral dissertations These studies sampled a total of only

550 individuals (Espinoza & Newman, 1979 )

Since 1980, hundreds of studies about stepfamilies have been conducted all over the world We trace this explosion of scholarly interest in stepfamilies to a demo-graphic turning point that occurred in the early 1970s

Stepfamilies Across Time

For most of human history, life spans typically were much shorter than now For example, an infant born in the late nineteenth century could expect to live about half

as long as a baby born in the late twentieth century Life was dangerous and diffi cult Many parents died when their children were quite young When a spouse or partner died, parents had to fi nd a way for themselves and their children to survive For many, part of survival was fi nding a new spouse

Consequently, throughout history and in all parts of the world, stepfamilies were formed when a parent died and the widowed parent remarried or repart-nered The stepfamily members usually lived together in one household, and stepparents functionally replaced deceased parents in the work of the household, the main tasks being earning a living, managing the household, and rearing chil-dren Bringing together two sets of children into a stepfamily household was probably common Mothers as well as fathers died young, and so for most of human history stepfamily households probably contained stepmothers as often as they did stepfathers

A Demographic Turning Point

In the early 1970s, in the USA, a major turning point occurred in the history of stepfamilies For the ﬁ rst time ever, more stepfamilies were formed after divorce than after the death of a parent (Strow & Strow, 2006) This demographic trend also occurred a few years later (mid-1970s and early 1980s) in other western nations (e.g., Canada, Australia, New Zealand)

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For a variety of reasons, and due to multiple changes in American society, divorce rates increased rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century The increase in the number of divorced individuals, many of whom were parents, led to a rapid increase in the number of postdivorce stepfamilies Divorced parents did not remain single for long—most divorced parents remarried or repartnered soon after divorce, and therefore many stepfamilies were formed

In these postdivorce stepfamilies, stepparents were no longer automatically replacements for absent parents Nonresidential biological parents often were still

in contact with their children and their former spouses They also continued to

ﬁ nancially support their children at some level Postdivorce remarriage no longer closed the family circle and reconstituted the nuclear family; instead, adding a step-parent postdivorce created new kin and new interaction patterns It also created issues that could not be ignored

If stepparents were not replacements for deceased or otherwise absent parents, what were they? What roles in the family were they expected to perform? What types of relationships were they expected to have with stepchildren and stepchildren with them? Growing numbers of stepfamily members felt like they were living in a new and rare family form, and they needed help Unfortunately, therapists, teachers, clergy, and other helping professionals who interacted with these postdivorce step-families seemed unprepared It was as if stepfamilies had been discovered as a new and troubling family form

Shortly after the “demographic turning point” in the early 1970s, it became difﬁ cult for researchers, clinicians, and policy-makers to ignore postdivorce stepfamilies However, when scholars began to explore the terrain of stepfamily life, it was predomi-nately with a nuclear family map Because this map did not allow families to have more than two parents at a time, researchers, practitioners, and stepfamily members were forced to become pioneers in discovering the topography of this “brave new world.”

Social Address Phase

The fi rst phase consisted of mostly descriptive and demographic studies, identifying and deﬁ ning stepfamilies and the issues experienced by them During this social

address period , which roughly occurred before 1990, stepfamilies were nearly

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always treated as if they were a monolithic, homogeneous group Sometimes data were gathered from children, parents, and stepparents of both sexes and analyzed together as if there were no differences between these individuals One study about remarriage was based on data gathered from non-stepfamily members (Bernard,

1956 ) In many early studies, stepfamilies were compared to ﬁ rst married families and single parent households, and these family forms also were conceptualized as if they were monolithic, uniform groupings Remarriages generally were assumed to

be second marriages, households and families were regarded as if they were the same units, which meant that nonresidential stepfamily members were ignored, and data were often gathered from one household member only Samples were often small and scant attention was paid to controlling for years in the stepfamily, precur-sors (parental death or divorce) to stepfamily living, numbers of prior family transi-tions and other relevant variables

Although mid-range and major theories were employed by researchers of this period, the primary conceptual underpinning of these social address studies was that stepfamilies and stepfamily members would function more poorly than ﬁ rst mar-

riage nuclear families and members of those families We called this a defi cit

com-parison model , and this model is still used today, although far less often

In the early years of this era, some of the research on stepfamily relationships

was characterized by Whoozle Effects , in which generalizations were drawn

based on very little evidence (Ganong & Coleman, 1986 ) According to Gelles ( 1980 ), a Whoozle Effect occurs when a particular ﬁ nding reported in one study

is subsequently cited by others without consideration of possible limitations to the study and without efforts to replicate the fi ndings When studies are fre-quently cited, the fi ndings are treated as more solidly confi rmed by data than is actually the case, and original caveats regarding study limitations are forgotten Whoozle Effects are more likely when a body of literature is not comprehensive, and when there are few studies to cite Such was the case of research on stepfam-ily relationships in the 1980s

Overall, the early stepfamily research was conceptually and methodologically limited There were no longitudinal investigations, few had large, representative samples of stepfamilies, and there were few studies in which standardized measures were used

In contrast to the researchers of this era, clinicians seemed to have much more to say about stepfamily dynamics, and their thinking was more conceptually sophisti-cated There were many insightful clinicians writing in this period (e.g., Messinger,

1976 ; Messinger, Walker, & Freeman, 1978 ; Mills, 1984 ; Papernow, 1984, 1987; Sager et al., 1983 ), but the work of John Visher and Emily Visher ( 1979 , 1986) had

by far the most inﬂ uence on how stepfamily dynamics were conceptualized The Vishers, clinicians who were stepparents in a complex stepfamily, began writing extensively and lecturing nationwide to stepfamily members and clinicians during the 1970s They founded the Stepfamily Association of America , a national self-help and support group for stepfamily members The Vishers’ clearly articulated perspectives on remarriage and stepfamily functioning had broad appeal to stepfam-ily members, clinicians, and researchers Their assertions that: (1) stepfamilies

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functioned differently than ﬁ rst-marriage families, and (2) should be conceptualized

as having unique relationships and patterns of interactions, have been highly inﬂ ential They were among the ﬁ rst to focus on strengths of stepfamily living as well

u-as problems, serving u-as a counterbalance to the generally pervu-asive, problem- oriented views

Growing Recognition Phase

In the second phase of the research trajectory on stepfamilies, which began roughly

in the late 1980s, there was growing recognition that stepfamilies were a complex and challenging area of study Researchers employed larger, more representative data sets and more sophisticated study designs than previously Efforts were made

to be more aware of differences across stepfamily types by either controlling for extraneous variables or limiting samples to specifi c types of stepfamily households (usually stepfather households), and attempts were made to assess stepfamily dynamics as well as family structure During this phase of research, the intersec-tions of family processes and family structures started to be explored, and research-ers made a greater effort to use theories to guide variable selection In fact, during this era researchers fi rst began to generate theory specifi c to stepfamilies Both inductive theories (Gross, 1987 ), and deductive, propositional theories were devel-oped (Ihinger-Tallman, 1987 ; Rodgers & Conrad, 1986 )

Unfortunately, prior to this phase, it was rare for researchers to be informed about clinical scholarship We found little congruence between the clinical and empirical literature on stepchildren, concluding, “There is much evidence to indi-cate that researchers and clinicians interested in stepchildren are professionally seg-regated and little evidence demonstrating communication between the groups” (Ganong & Coleman, 1986 , p 315) Gradually, researchers began to examine hypotheses derived from clinical scholarship, which enhanced the ecological rele-vance of stepfamily research, although the focus often was still on stepfamily prob-lems There was a rise in small qualitative studies designed to explore processes within stepfamilies A few intervention studies began to appear in the literature, but they tended to consider stepfamilies as mostly homogeneous, and interventions were “one-size-ﬁ ts all” designs

Researchers also began utilizing longitudinal data sets to search for changes

in stepchildren and their families over time, and they began considering selection effects (i.e., unmeasured preexisting characteristics of stepfamilies and stepfam-ily members that may make them different from other families) as an explanation for differences between stepchildren and children from other family structures For instance, there may be personality differences between parents who divorce and remarry and parents who stay married for decades, and these personal-ity characteristics may affect child outcomes and the general well-being of individuals

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A Decade of Progress

In the third phase of the research trajectory, which basically corresponded to the

1990s, the outpouring of research, clinical, and theoretical writing about families that began in the 1980s became a thunderous torrent of publications We located over 850 professional publications in that decade (Coleman, Ganong, & Fine, 2000 )

There was greater reliance on longitudinal studies, sometimes framed from the perspective of multiple family members (data collected from children, parents, and sometimes teachers or others) The efforts by researchers to control for inher-ent differences in family structures became more sophisticated and greater atten-tion was given to contexts, such as the number and timing of transitions, the types

of transitions, and precursors to current stepfamily type Greater attention was paid to gender issues, and researchers took more care in deconstructing parents’ marital and relational statuses (e.g., married vs cohabiting) There were more observational studies, multiple methods of data collection were used more fre-quently than before, and there were more qualitative studies The existence of large national data sets allowed researchers to examine more variables and to think more complexly about stepfamilies The research also was characterized by more frequent use of grand and mid-range theories to explain phenomena and to test propositions

Also in this third phase, research questions became more nuanced and gradual

“truths” about stepfamilies became known through replication of ﬁ ndings in ple settings with diverse samples In contrast to earlier periods, more researchers attempted to reﬂ ect the complexity of stepfamilies A few began looking beyond households to conceptualize family membership (e.g., nonresidential parents were included in studies of stepchildren; half-siblings and stepsiblings that did not share

multi-a residence with tmulti-arget children multi-also received multi-attention) Resemulti-archers’ conceptumulti-al-izations became more complex and more closely reﬂ ected the realities of children’s and families’ lives Researchers from many disciplines and countries increasingly made contributions

In this era, more than 200 studies focused on the effects on children of living with a stepparent, reﬂ ecting not only the importance of the topic, but also the avail-ability of large data sets and the ease with which family structure and a variety of child outcomes (e.g., self-esteem, grades) could be measured Researchers who studied child outcomes primarily compared stepchildren to children in other family structures A typical approach was to compare children living in different family structures (e.g., stepfamily households, nuclear families, single mother households)

on a selected outcome variable, statistically controlling for various demographic characteristics This design was useful in determining why one group of children differed from another based on certain predictor variables, but too often researchers tried to infer causal relations from correlational data Family process was seldom examined with this approach

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There was progress in understanding stepfamily processes, however, which often came from in-depth investigations, many of which employed qualitative methods or mixed methods Perhaps not surprisingly, given the emphasis on step-family effects on children, stepparent–stepchild relationships were frequently examined There was also growing interest in remarriage and the legal aspects of stepfamily living

The rise in researchers’ contributions was accompanied by a decrease in the ume of writing by clinicians Perhaps clinicians thought that the Vishers’ (Visher & Visher, 1996) clinical work had said it all, and there was little to be added The inﬂ u-ence of the Vishers certainly was dominant throughout the decade, but there also was evidence that a few therapists were considering stepfamily issues with greater sophistication than before (e.g., Browning, 1994 ) New prevention and educational programs for stepfamilies were developed, usually by family life educators (e.g., Kaplan & Hennon, 1992 )

The increase in the volume and quality of studies in the last decade of the tieth century was phenomenal, and yet many questions remained Knowledge of African American, Latino, and other ethnic stepfamilies remained woefully inad-equate Perhaps even more surprising was the small number of studies investigat-ing mothers in stepfamilies Moreover, despite heightened sensitivity to structural diversity, researchers seldom adequately described the complicated conﬁ gura-tions of remarriages and stepfamilies For instance, only a few researchers took note of the multiple pathways to creating stepfamilies, and samples did not always reﬂ ect the diversity of step-relationships Some types of stepfamilies were excluded and potentially important distinctions between types of stepfamilies

twen-were ignored In addition, the interactions of stepfamily household members with

nonresidential parents and other nonresidential family members were usually ignored, and factors related to the larger social environments in which families reside usually were not included

Some reasons researchers disregarded stepfamily complexity were pragmatic

It was and remains prohibitively expensive to recruit the numbers of stepfamilies needed to examine or control for all relevant structural variables Certain types of stepfamilies are hard to identify (i.e., members of father–stepmother households who share a last name; stepfamilies who are reluctant to identify themselves to researchers), so they end up being under-investigated Researchers continued to study concepts that were easy to measure rather than conceptually meaningful Few measures were developed speciﬁ cally to be used with stepfamilies, and norms for stepfamilies were not established for commonly used family instruments

In our view, studies in the 1990s continued to over-emphasize stepfamily lems Researchers seemed to focus more on negative ﬁ ndings (e.g., stepchildren were more likely than children living with both parents to be depressed), while

prob-barely mentioning others (e.g., three-fourths of stepchildren were not clinically

depressed) Advancements in understanding stepfamily dynamics were hampered

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when small, but statistically signiﬁ cant effects were treated as if they were large and generalizable to all stepfamily members (Amato, 1994 ) or when extremist positions were taken that stepfamilies were inherently harmful to children (for a critique of this work, see Cherlin, 1999 )

Twenty-First Century

In the fourth phase , roughly since the start of the twenty-ﬁ rst century , stepfamily

scholarship has become even more sophisticated methodologically and ally Stepfamily research is also now an international endeavor, much more so than

conceptu-in the past, which stimulates new approaches and fresh ways of thconceptu-inkconceptu-ing about stepfamily dynamics

A major recent demographic trend also probably helped encourage researchers

to think more complexly about stepfamily issues We are unsure when this trend started (there is not a discernable turning point such as when divorce surpassed death as the precursor to remarriage), but gradually and increasingly, single parents are choosing not to marry or remarry in favor of cohabiting with romantic partners Stepfamilies in the twenty-ﬁ rst century are not necessarily “remarried families.” European societies have long moved from marriage as a predominant social institu-tion toward domestic partnerships (cohabiting unions), and North American societ-ies are following this trend Along with nonmarital unions forming stepfamily households and creating de facto step-relationships, serial romantic partnerships and multiple partner fertility are creating ever more complex stepfamilies, some led

by married adults, some by cohabiting adults As stepfamilies become more turally intricate, stepfamily research becomes both more difﬁ cult and more complicated

Researchers in this latest phase are continuing to examine the interactions of family structure and family processes (particularly co-parenting and stepparent–stepchild relationship dynamics), using theoretically informed and analytically sophisticated designs Selection effects are being examined in various ways, using a variety of sophisticated analytic procedures including the use of ﬁ xed effects ana-lytic designs, differences-within-differences approaches, and matching of children and parents in stepfamilies to children and parents in nuclear families Multiple theoretical explanations are being examined There is the start of work examining biogenetic and genomic effects on children in stepfamilies, as well as examinations

of stepchildren’s effects on parents and stepparents

Qualitative studies in this fourth phase have been focused on illuminating cesses within family structures, leading to grounded theories about various aspects

pro-of stepfamily dynamics, testable quantitative hypotheses, and more understanding

of how social contexts affect stepfamilies There has been growing use of mixed methods designs

The increasing sophistication of analytic models, the availability of large, sentative longitudinal data sets from multiple nations, and reﬁ nements in qualitative

repre-1 Studying (and Understanding) Stepfamilies

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research approaches suggest that the study of stepfamilies is on the verge of signiﬁ cant growth This does not suggest, however, that challenges do not remain Stepfamily structures are not new, but widespread trends, such as the increases in unmarried parenthood and multiple partner fertility are accelerating the pace of change What is new is that “today’s family scholars have multiple sources of rich data and useful methodological tools with which to try to understand such changes and their implications” (Smock & Greenland, 2010 , p 589) In addition, develop-mental and family scholars more often seek “to specify and test individual–context relations that are linked developmentally to health and positive functioning” (Lerner

-& Overton, 2008 , p 247), instead of simply comparing children and adults in families to those in nuclear families Understanding how stepfamilies change in positive directions and learning how to proactively enhance those changes are among the key tasks for the ﬁ eld

step-Research on Stepfamilies

www.Ebook777.com

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L Ganong, M Coleman, Stepfamily Relationships,

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-7702-1_2

Chapter 2

The Cultural Context of Stepfamilies

Abstract How do cultural values and norms affect stepfamilies? Stepfamilies do

not live in a cultural vacuum Cultural values affect stepfamily members How titioners and researchers think about stepfamilies also is affected by cultural beliefs and norms Stepfamilies are incomplete institutions; in this chapter we examine what that means, and we explore a variety of ways in which stepfamilies are concep-tualized in western societies They are seen as incomplete institutions, as deviant family forms, or as reconstituted nuclear families In the twenty-ﬁ rst century, there are signs that stepfamilies as adaptive and resilient families may be a new cultural model We examine the implications of these various perspectives on stepfamilies for practice, policy, and research, and we consider their implications for stepfamily dynamics

Keywords Incomplete institutions • Nuclear families • Nuclear family ideology •

Stigma • Stereotypes • Myths • Epistemic values • Nonepistemic values

Stepfamilies do not live in a cultural vacuum, neither do researchers, educators, practitioners, or policy makers As we noted brieﬂ y in Chap 1 , prevailing cultural values and belief systems about remarriages and stepfamilies affect the perspectives

of individuals who study and work with stepfamilies More importantly, cultural beliefs and values wield strong inﬂ uences on the ways in which stepfamily mem-bers themselves think about their relationships, interact together, and feel about each other In short, stepfamily relationships and the dynamics of stepfamilies are determined, at least in part, by the prevailing ideologies in their cultural contexts For this reason, we present a brief overview of the cultural milieu in which step-families live before we explore stepfamily functioning in depth in later chapters We think it is important to understand the social and psychological environments in which individuals create stepfamilies (e.g., remarrying adults), ﬁ nd themselves con-scripted into stepfamilies (e.g., stepchildren), or interact with stepfamily members (e.g., teachers, clergy)

What are the prevailing ideologie s in the cultural context in which stepfamilies live? Over the last two decades researchers from around the world have examined how people perceive stepfamilies and stepfamily positions (e.g., stepmother, stepfa-ther, stepchild) Ideologies about stepfamilies are remarkably similar in many parts

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of the world—studies from Australia (Webber, 1991 ), Canada (Claxton-Oldfi eld, Goodyear, Parsons, & Claxton-Oldfi eld, 2002 ), Norway (Levin, 1997 ), the UK (Allan, Crow, & Hawker, 2011 ; Collins, 1995), the USA (Ganong & Coleman, 1997a , 1997b ), Singapore (Webber, 2003), Hong Kong (Tai, 2005 ), New Zealand (Cartwright, 2006 ; Pryor, 2008 ), Ireland (Hadfi eld & Nixon, 2013 ), and other coun-tries reveal comparable images and ideologies about stepfamilies

These studies also indicate that the ideal model for North America, and to a

lesser extent, all Western societies, is the middle-class, ﬁ rst marriage family, often

called the nuclear family, consisting of a mother and father and their genetic or adopted children residing together in a household (Coontz, 1997 ; Scanzoni, 2004 )

In most European countries, ﬁ rst-union cohabiting nuclear families have become as common as ﬁ rst marriage nuclear families , but apart from the legal status of the adult couple, many cultural expectations for these families are similar

What this means is that an idealized, biologically connected family serves as the standard by which all other families are evaluated, even though a wide diversity of family structures and family practices are present in all Western societies In the idealized nuclear family, the husband/father is employed for wages and is generally considered to be the primary wage earner, even if the wife/mother also works for wages, and even if she earns more income than the husband/father Her primary responsibilities are to provide care for the husband, household, and children In the idealized version of this family form, children are loved and socialized by both parents to be obedient, mentally and physically healthy, and socially skilled Spouses love each other and fulﬁ ll each other’s emotional, social, and physical needs In North America, this cultural ideal of the private nuclear family is based on white families of European descent—it ignores cultural and historical family patterns of African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and other groups

of families from collectivist cultural orientations

How does this nuclear family ideology inﬂ uence the cultural context of

stepfami-lies? We think there are three broad societal views of stepfamilies, all of them rooted

in the nuclear family ideology—the stepfamily as an incomplete institution (Cherlin,

1978 ), the stepfamily as a deviant or defi cit family form (Ganong & Coleman, 1997c ), and the stepfamily as a re-formed or reconstituted nuclear family (Levin, 1997 )

Stepfamilies as Incomplete Institutions

Andrew Cherlin ( 1978 ), in perhaps the most frequently cited stepfamily article ever

published, argued that what he called remarried families were incompletely

institu-tionalized in US society He posited that the absence of guidelines and norms for role performance, the dearth of culturally established, socially acceptable methods

of resolving problems, and the relative absence of institutionalized social support for remarried adults contributed to greater stress, inappropriate solutions to prob-lems, and higher divorce rates for stepfamilies Cherlin pointed to the paucity of language and legal regulations as illustrations of how remarriages are incompletely institutionalized

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Cherlin’s ( 1978 ) incomplete institution hypothesis has been extremely inﬂ uential

for researchers and clinicians, and it has engendered several studies, despite being difﬁ cult to operationalize (cf., Booth & Edwards, 1992 ; Clingempeel, 1981 ; Coleman, Ganong, & Cable, 1997 ; Fine, Coleman, & Ganong, 1998 ; Giles-Sims,

1984 ; Grizzle, 1999 ; Hequembourg, 2004 ) Although this hypothesis has been cized (Jacobson, 1995 ), for the most part the results of studies have lent support to Cherlin’s ideas

Absence of Appropriate Terms

Cherlin ( 1978 ) wrote that, “Where no adequate terms exist for an important social role, the institutional support for this role is deﬁ cient, and general acceptance of the role as a legitimate pattern of activity is questionable” (p 643) In Chap 1 , we men-tioned some of the labels for stepfamilies and stepfamily positions; Cherlin argued that this confusion of labels was a consequence of the incomplete institutionaliza-tion of stepfamilies

In addition to the lack of consensus and a plethora of options about what to call stepfamilies and stepfamily positions, some stepfamily relationships remain name-less For example, there is no word in English for the relationships between a father and a stepfather or between a mother and a stepmother In Japanese, there was no word for stepfamily, so the English term stepfamily was appropriated (Nozawa, personal communication) The absence of terms is indicative of cultural expecta-tions that such relationships do not and should not exist There are other relation-ships in stepfamilies that have no labels, but are identiﬁ able by simply adding a

step - preﬁ x (e.g., step-aunt, step-cousins) We have known individuals who have

created terms for their kin; for instance, one of our graduate students, Sarah Pierotti, considered her father’s former stepchildren from an earlier marriage to be her

“quarter- siblings,” a term she made up because no words existed for her to use Sarah considered these young men to be her brothers because her father stayed involved in their lives after divorcing their mother and was a father-ﬁ gure to them; she had regular contact with them while growing up Another young friend has two half-siblings, one with whom she shares a father and one with whom she shares a mother Her half-siblings have decided to call each other siblings, despite having no genetic or legal connections to each other, because they spend time together and are linked emotionally through their shared half-sister

The absence of appropriate terms for speciﬁ c relationships makes it hard to think

about, much less communicate about, them Although such quasi-kin relationships

do not exist in nuclear families, they are common in stepfamilies, particularly in an era in which many children are in the legal and physical custody of both of their divorced parents In shared custody stepfamilies, stepparents as well as parents become involved in planning the logistics of transporting children from household

to household, in helping children with school, scouts, and 4-H projects, and in porting children’s activities through attendance at sporting, theatrical, and musical events In these stepfamilies, a father and a stepfather may indeed communicate and

sup-Stepfamilies as Incomplete Institutions

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interact about the child/stepchild, as do mothers and stepmothers (Ganong, Coleman, Jamison, & Feistman, 2015 ) From the perspective of the incomplete institution hypothesis, these stepfamilies must create relationships for the good of their house-holds in spite of the absence of normative assistance and the implicit expectation that such relationships should not exist In our experiences in interviewing stepfam-ily members, when they tell us about the mother and stepmother (or father and stepfather) who talk to each other about the children, they nearly always preface such comments with, “I know it sounds weird, but …,” or “We are probably the only people who do this, but ….” These comments indicate that stepfamilies often oper-ate in ways that they perceive to be at odds with cultural expectations

Little Institutional Social Support

Stepfamilies receive less social support than ﬁ rst marriage families from the social institutions and organizations with which they interact For example, stepparents who are involved in their stepchildren’s schooling frequently ﬁ nd that the customs and procedures of school systems make little allowance for the presence of step-parents Although there has been considerable improvement, enrollment forms may still have places for biological or adoptive parents’ names only, graduating seniors are given only two tickets for their parents to attend graduation ceremonies, and teachers are ill-prepared for a child to have three or more step/parents show up for parent–teacher meetings (Coleman, Ganong, & Henry, 1984 ; Crosbie-Burnett,

1994 ) Other social organizations, such as youth groups, religious groups, and health care systems also are based on policies and procedures designed primarily for ﬁ rst marriage families (Ganong, 1993 ) Members of stepfamilies and other fam-ily forms are usually welcome to participate in these organizations, but there are few attempts, if any, to accommodate organizational practices to facilitate their partici-pation A nurse who worked in a hospital intensive care unit (ICU) once told us that whether step-kin were allowed into the unit to see patients or not depended on who was working in the ICU at the time The hospital policy was that only immediate family members were allowed into the ICU—some nurses considered step-kin to be immediate family, some did not This nurse, who was a stepmother, advised step-kin

to omit the prefi x, step, when describing their relationships with the patient This subtle social coercion on stepfamilies to present themselves as fi rst marriage fami-lies puts pressure on stepfamily members to imitate as closely as possible the nor-matively expected behaviors of members of fi rst marriage families

Nonexistent or Ambiguous Laws and Social Policies

Family laws also are seen as failing to provide support to stepfamilies Stepparents have been generally overlooked in federal and state laws in the USA and elsewhere; they have few legal responsibilities toward their stepchildren, and few rights as well

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(Komamura, 2015 ; Mason, Fine, & Carnochan, 2004 ) Mahoney ( 1994 ) noted, “The preference for nuclear family ﬁ nds expression in the legal system through laws that cre-ate distinct protections, entitlements, and responsibilities for spouses, parents, and chil-dren” (p 1) Although there have been changes in family law that affect the legal relations between stepparents and stepchildren (e.g., in the USA, more states are allow-ing third parties, such as stepparents, to have postdivorce custody; in the UK and New Zealand, residential stepparents can obtain legal guardianship of stepchildren as third parents), there is still little consensus on what legal changes are needed, and there is little political pressure to alter existing policies and laws (Komamura, 2015 ; Mason et al.,

2004 ) In Singapore, a small country where space and housing are precious resources, housing policies are primarily oriented to assisting young, previously unmarried couples

to afford their own apartments These policies make it extremely difﬁ cult for remarried stepfamilies to receive governmental housing grants, which is a disincentive to remarry after divorce In Japan, laws are structured so that nonresidential fathers are marginal-ized, and policies often make stepchildren feel as if they have little control over adoption and changes to their surnames (Komamura, 2015 ) In contrast, New Zealand law allows stepparents to have legal decision making rights, without severing the legal responsibili-ties of parents; this federal law was designed to facilitate parent and stepparent involve-ment in child-rearing in a way that beneﬁ ts stepfamilies (Pryor, 2015 ) This is an example of institutionalizing stepfamily relationships, but such examples are rare

Relative Absence of Norms

“The day-to-day life of remarried adults and their children also includes many lems for which there are no institutionalized solutions” (Cherlin, 1978 , p 646) We can think of many of these issues For instance, how should children be told about their parent’s marriage? When should they be told? What do stepchildren call their stepparent? How do stepfamily members introduce each other (e.g., “These are my parents?” “This is my mom and my stepdad?”)? How involved should stepparents

prob-be in child discipline? Who should make household rules for children to follow? Do children who are part-time household residents follow the same rules and have the same chores as full-time residents? Should stepparents be ﬁ nancially responsible for their stepchildren? How should stepchildren and stepparents feel towards each other—like parent and child, like friends, like what?

Clinicians have ﬁ lled volumes over the last 50 years with example after example

of dilemmas that stepfamilies face Given their exposure to stepfamilies struggling to develop rules for functioning as a family, and because their stepfamily clients often attempt to solve these dilemmas by using institutionalized solutions designed for

ﬁ rst-marriage families, clinicians generally attribute substantial validity to the incomplete institution hypothesis (Papernow, 2013 ; Visher & Visher, 1996 ) Finally,

in our studies of normative beliefs about stepparents and stepchildren’s roles and responsibilities (e.g., Coleman & Ganong, 1998a, 1998b; Ganong & Coleman 1998a , 1998b , 1999 ), we have found, in general, that there is more consensus about nuclear family roles and responsibilities than about stepfamily roles and responsibilities

Stepfamilies as Incomplete Institutions

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