Stepfamilies

Most divorced people remarry. Because 60 percent of remarried persons are parents, their new partners become stepparents. One in six American families is a stepfamily; 35 million Americans live in one. Some 35 percent of children born today will live in a stepfamily before they are 18 (Johnson, 1986). Clearly, biological and sociological parenthood are not necessarily one and the same. Nor is being a sibling. Almost one in five children share the home with half-siblings, and many more have stepsiblings (Bumpass, 1984).

Most stepparents attempt to re-create a traditional family because it is the only model they have. But a stepfamily functions differently from a traditional nuclear family (Mills, 1984; Beer, 1988a). For one thing, the stepparent role is not equivalent in authority, legitimacy, and respect to that of a biological parent. For another, stepparents and stepchildren lack a mutual history and a previous opportunity to bond; adjustment of family members must come after the family is formed, rather than gradually as it is being formed. Further complicating matters, society lacks a clear picture of how members should relate to one another. For instance, how should a son relate to his stepparent and vice versa, and how should the custodial stepparent relate to the former spouse? Overall, the family tree of a stepfamily can be complex and convoluted, populated not only by children of both spouses, but by six sets of grandparents, relatives of former spouses, relatives of new spouses, and the people former spouses marry. The more complex the social system of the remarriage, the greater the ambiguity about roles within the family and the greater the likelihood of difficulties (Clingempeel, 1981). Because stepfamilies lack a clear definition of the expectations and roles for each family member, sociologist Andrew Cherlin (1978) terms them “an incomplete institution.”

Stepfamilies often start on an idealistic note. Each spouse typically expects the other to be a new and improved version of the old one. As the months go by, family members gain a more realistic view. Misunderstandings in stepfamilies take many forms. Often, they are caused by conflicting family traditions, unfulfilled expectations, financial pressures, loyalty conflicts, unresolved power struggles, and ill-defined behavior standards for the children. Discipline is a frequent problem, because children often see the stepparent as an intruder. Accordingly, it is hardly surprising that stepparents report significantly less satisfaction with their family life than do married couples with biological children. Recent research shows that 17 percent of remarriages that involve stepchildren on both sides wind up in divorce within three years, compared with 6 percent of first-time marriages and 10 percent of remarriages without stepchildren (White and Booth, 1985).

Most stepparents are stepfathers. Although growing numbers of fathers are winning child custody cases, the vast majority of children still live primarily with their mothers. Stepfathers usually underrate their parenting skills and their contributions to the lives of their stepchildren. Indeed, their stepchildren and spouses give them higher marks than they give themselves (Bohannan and Erickson, 1978). Children living with stepfathers appar­ently do just as well, or just as poorly, in school and in their social life as children living with natural fathers. And children with stepfathers on the whole do better than children from father-absent homes (Robinson, 1984; Ganong and Coleman, 1984). Overall, the good news for stepfamily members is that the emotional, social, and family adjustment of American stepfamilies is not drastically different from that of people from intact nuclear families. However, children from stepfamilies fare somewhat better if the natural parent is of the same sex as the child (Beer, 1988a). Much also depends on the age of the children; adolescents seem to induce more stress and complications than do younger children (Hobart, 1988).

The stepfamily must adjust to many types of challenges not encountered by most natural families. In order to succeed, the stepfamily must loosen the boundaries that encapsulated the two previous biological families and structure a new social unit (Paernow, 1984; Hobart, 1988; Peek et al., 1988). As old arrangements “unfreeze,” members must create enough mutual empathy to support a shared awareness so that the family can mobilize and act to meet its members’ needs. Most workable solutions leave some of the “old” ways of doing things intact while fashioning new rituals, expectations, and rules that define differences between the stepfamily and the previous family. When the restructuring is successful, the members need no longer give constant attention to relationships and can interact spontaneously and comfortably. Although certain strains are associated with stepfamilies, so is a good deal of positive adaptation.