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The stepfamilies of today are different from the stepfamilies of the past. Not only are they more common, but life in today’s stepfamily is considerably different than it was, say, fifty years ago. The fact that divorce rather than death is now the usual precursor to the creation of a stepfamily makes for a far more complex family environment than ever before. Making it work demands flexibility, patience, and an understanding of the unique dynamics of stepfamily life.

What are these unique dynamics? What can a couple starting a new stepfamily do to help their children through this life-changing transition? What are the special challenges of marriage and parenthood in a stepfamily? In this issue of Transition we present three articles that attempt to answer these and many other questions on the topic of stepfamilies today.

First, Heather Juby gives us an overview of Canada’s stepfamilies in "Yours, Mine, and Ours." As both a family demographer and a stepmother, Dr. Juby is well-qualified to discuss issues such as how common stepfamilies are today, what differences exist between different kinds of stepfamilies, and what happens when a stepfamily couple adds to the complexity of their lives by having a child together.

In our second article, "When Lone Parents Marry," psychologist Melady Preece takes a look at the challenges of stepfamily relationships. Dr. Preece identifies the particular challenges facing stepfathers, as well as those of stepmothers, in their relationships with their stepchildren. She also looks at stressors that can cause marriage problems for stepfamily couples.

And finally, in "Suddenly Siblings," Patricia Kelley also looks at relationships within stepfamilies, focusing especially on how to help stepsiblings get along. Dr. Kelley, a professor of social work, points out that the first two years can be tough for a new stepfamily, but the good news is that, "if issues get ironed out during those years, things do get better."

Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel—fairy tales are full of the woes heaped on children whose father fails to protect them from the evil intent of their stepmother. Anyone who has taken on the role of stepmother has certainly had her fill of "amusing" references to "the wicked stepmother." But where are the stepfathers? They certainly don’t take center stage on those rare occasions when they do appear in fairy tales. Cinderella’s father, whose role as stepfather to the ugly sisters passes unnoticed, is a case in point.

One reason for the higher profile of stepmothers is that, in the past, they were more common than stepfathers. Until fairly recently, when someone became a lone parent it was usually because their spouse had died. A father, finding himself alone with children after his wife’s death (probably in childbirth), would typically remarry. A widowed mother, on the other hand, was less likely to find a new father for her children.

In fact, most stepfathers were not the second husbands of widowed mothers. They were generally in the position of the Christian world’s model stepfather, Joseph, who accepted Mary’s unborn son without question, and raised him as his own. Like Joseph, many men who became stepfathers through marriage to a young woman with a first child born out of wedlock were hardly perceived as such at all. Entering their stepchild’s life early on, they were viewed by one and all as the child’s "real" father.

Recently, the picture has changed. High separation and divorce rates among couples with children have meant growing numbers of stepfamilies in Canada, as lone parents embark on new conjugal relationships. The most recent statistics (2001) put the figure at just over half a million, up from around four hundred and thirty thousand in 1995. The fact that stepfamilies are now created after parents become separated rather than widowed has fundamentally altered the stepfamily, and challenged its very definition.

First, because children tend to live with their mother after separation, stepfather families are now by far the most common stepfamily type, representing approximately three-quarters of all stepfamilies. Second, stepfather families have changed in nature; marrying a single mother, and becoming the only father her child has ever known, is no longer the experience of most stepfathers. Now most men who become stepfathers do so to children born to married or cohabiting parents who later separated.

Moving in with a separated or divorced mother creates a very different type of stepfather family. Today’s separated or divorced mother is likely older than were the unmarried mothers of the past, she probably has more than one child, and her children are also older. More to the point, these children have spent the first part of their childhood living with their father, and they continue to see him regularly.

Only one stepfamily in six includes a father, his children, and a stepmother without children of her own. Rarer still is the family established when a lone mother and lone father move in together, each bringing a set of kids with them. In this complex stepfamily type, both parents have the dual role of biological parent (to their own children) and step-parent (to those of the other). Representing only one stepfamily in twelve, these stepfather-stepmother families—sometimes called complex or blended stepfamilies—are the only ones in which stepsiblings share a residence.

Because children usually live with their mother after their parents separate, stepsiblings rarely live in the same household. A modern Cinderella, whose father is divorced rather than widowed, might never suffer the torments that the fairy-tale heroine endured at the hands of her jealous stepsisters. On the other hand, she might not live as happily ever after!

Clearly, right from the start there are considerable differences from one stepfamily to the next, and the differences increase as stepfamilies evolve. Roughly half of stepfamily couples cement their union by having a child together—adding yet another dimension to stepfamily complexity. The likelihood of this happening varies from one type of stepfamily to another. Not surprisingly perhaps, the youngest stepfamily couples are the ones most likely to decide to have a child together; an additional child is born within about two-thirds of stepfather families created when a young, unmarried mother marries (or moves in with) someone other than her child’s father. Next come couples in stepmother families—around half the women who first experience motherhood as a stepmother later have a child of their own. Only one-third of the other types of stepfamily couples—stepfathers with separated mothers, and those in which both have children from a previous relationship—expand their family by adding a common child.

These extra children are the half-siblings of those in the stepfamily from the start. Stepfamilies, in other words, may add both stepsiblings and half-siblings to a child’s family network. These two relationships are often confused in people’s minds although they are quite different. Stepsiblings have no genetic link with one another. In fact, they are even potential marriage partners. Half-siblings, on the other hand, have one biological parent in common. Stepsiblings are present from the moment the stepfamily is formed; half-siblings arrive later on. Children are much more likely to share a residence with half-siblings than stepsiblings.

The birth of a common child in a stepfamily is an especially significant event. My colleagues and I have even argued that, by creating a genetic link between all members of the stepfamily, the birth marks the beginning of a whole new family type, in much the same way as the arrival of a new parent figure transforms a lone-parent family into a stepfamily. The reason for this comes out most clearly when you look at the family from the children’s point of view.

The children who are present when the stepfamily comes into existence clearly belong to a stepfamily—they live with a step-parent. Their younger half-siblings, on the other hand, are born into the same family but live with both of their biological parents. For these children, the family looks more like an intact (or nuclear) family than a stepfamily. What is more, when their older half-siblings (the stepchildren) leave home, the stepfamily is actually transformed into an intact family.

Whether it is the child that cements the relationship, or whether it is precisely the more "together" couples that choose to have a child, the fact remains that stepfamily couples that have a child together stay together longer than those who do not. Other factors are also associated with stepfamily stability, not the least of which is the type of stepfamily.

Stepmother families are particularly durable—as much so as the average intact family (statistically speaking, at least). Why should this be the case? Are stepmothers so keen not be cast as the "wicked stepmother" that they go all-out to avoid it? Possibly. There is undoubtedly some "gender-role" explanation in there, in the sense that the traditional female role encourages more involvement in the daily activities of family life than the traditional male role does. Another interpretation, coming from stepmothers themselves, is that fathers who have custody of their children are atypical—they are more "family-oriented" than the average man, and more willing to work at maintaining the new family unit.

Getting back to the statistics, although the number of stepfamilies is on the rise, they are still a minority family type, representing under 12% of couples with children. So why do we get the impression that the stepfamily experience is much more widespread than this? Mainly because it is, in fact, more widespread. Far more individuals actually do experience life in a stepfamily than these statistics suggest, for a number of reasons.

The first reason is simply that, while cross-sectional images show the prevalence of a phenomenon at a particular moment, they do not give a picture of how common an experience it is over the lifetime of the population. Take smoking as an example of how statistics can be misleading. The latest estimate puts the proportion of smokers aged 12 years and over in Canada at 21.5%. Yet, far more than one-fifth of Canadians have been, or will become, smokers at some point during their lifetime.

To measure the real incidence of stepfamilies, as of smokers, you need to follow their evolution through the life-course. Obviously, following families is more complicated than following individuals because families are made up of several individuals. It makes no sense to calculate the percentage of families that become stepfamilies, because the transition involves a change in who is part of the group.

Instead, you need to focus on individuals, estimating what proportion of fathers, mothers, and children spend part of their life in a stepfamily. Our research into the transformation of the family over the last three decades, based largely on information from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, indicates that children are far more likely to experience stepfamily life than suggested by the proportion actually living in a stepfamily at any moment in time.

Another reason why stepfamily statistics underestimate the number of people involved arises from the fact that family statistics are usually based on the residential family unit. In other words, a stepfamily exists only when step-parents and stepchildren live in the same household. This definition was perfectly adequate in the past, when most stepfamilies were created through the remarriage of a widowed parent. The new spouse entered the household and, figuratively speaking, stepped into the shoes of the dead parent. Instead of a biological mother and father, children now had a mother and stepfather, or a father and stepmother. They still had two parents, and only two parents, with whom they lived.

With the vast majority of stepfamilies now formed by separated and divorced parents, the residential family unit no longer provides a satisfactory image of the child’s family universe. Nowadays, children can have a mother and a stepfather, and a father and stepmother; they can also have stepsiblings and half-siblings from both sides. The only "step-relatives" who make it into the statistics, however, are those with whom the child lives. For instance, children in their mother’s custody after separation are classified as having a step-parent only if their mother enters a new relationship, regardless of whether or not their father has done so.

Louise and Martin’s story is typical. They lived together for a couple of years, married when Thomas was conceived, and separated seven years later, when their second child, Laura, was four years old. Within a year, Martin moved in with Marie and, two years later, baby Jessica was born. Thus, within three years of their parents’ separation, Thomas and Laura had acquired a stepmother and a half-sister. Yet, because Thomas and Laura lived mostly with their mother after the separation, their paternal stepfamily relationships never made it into the statistics.

But should this family count as a stepfamily in any case? When children only spend one weekend in two with their father and his new wife, is this really a stepfamily? Is the quasi-absence of these relationships in stepfamily research simply due to lack of data, or is there a tacit assumption that if you don’t live with them, they really aren’t important? The reality is that these relationships are of great importance, at many different levels. Even though Thomas and Laura spend only weekends and holidays with their father and his new family, there are important implications for them all.

For Martin, being a part-time dad to Thomas and Laura involves frequent emotional adjustments as his children come and go. He’s also affected financially, since he needs a bigger house with separate bedrooms for Laura and Thomas, and he contributes towards the cost of Louise’s house through monthly child support payments. Marie has to deal with the challenges of being a part-time stepmother, and Thomas and Laura with having two "mothers."

Once Jessica comes along, Thomas and Laura also have to cope with the potential threat to their father’s affection posed by the new baby, who, unlike them, lives with him all the time. As for Jessica, she must learn to negotiate the complicated universe into which she was born. She will never be the oldest or the only child in the family network; nonetheless, she has to shift back and forward between the positions of younger half-sibling when Thomas and Laura are in the house, and only child when they leave.

How much does this complex system of relationships contribute to the relative instability of stepfamilies? Andrew Cherlin (1978) sees role uncertainty as one reason for the fact that stepfamilies tend to be less durable than first families. He talks of the stepfamily as an "incomplete institution," suggesting that stepfamilies are under stress because they lack social support, guidelines for role performance, and institutionalized procedures for dealing with problems. Is this one reason why having a child within a stepfamily, although it adds further complexity to an already complicated system, is associated with greater stepfamily stability? Does the fact that the step-parent also assumes the role of biological parent at the birth of the common child restore some level of "institutionalization" to this family unit?

Whatever the reason, stepfamily couples who decide to have a child together stay together longer than those who do not. Shifting from the family to the child’s perspective, however, gives a different image. Compared with other children, those born within most types of stepfamilies are more likely to experience their parents’ separation. Even when other factors— such as the type of union or age of the parents—are held constant, children born within a stepfather family are twice as likely to see their parents separate before their tenth birthday. That this is also true for children whose half-siblings are not actually present in the household only reinforces the case for extending stepfamily research beyond the residential family unit.

Only by taking this perspective is it possible to appreciate another, rather extraordinary consequence of the fact that the modern stepfamily is created essentially by separated families: the interlinking of households through children. Louise and Martin’s story is a relatively simple one. Louise has not yet formed a new union, expanding the family network on the other side, and Marie had no children from a previous union who could circulate between her household and that of their father, as Thomas and Laura do. Here, only two households are linked through the circulation of children and resources; in many other cases, several households can be related to one another. This is a new phenomenon, and its implications are yet to be appreciated.

The rise of the stepfamily, and the expansion of the family network as a result of "step" relationships created by separated parents, present a particular challenge for parents, children, researchers and policy-makers alike. Parents and children have to integrate these new relationships into the family universe; nowhere is this challenge clearer than when it comes to deciding on the invitations and seating arrangements that are least likely to offend at a family wedding!

For their part, researchers need to develop new tools to deal with the complexity of modern family life, extending the family network beyond the residential group that has been the basis for so much family research in the past.

As for the policy-makers, the rise of the stepfamily has raised some particularly thorny issues related to the rights and responsibilities of step-parents—rights and responsibilities that may extend even beyond the life of the stepfamily. The hot debate surrounding a recent ruling handed down by the Manitoba Court of Appeal, in which a stepfather was ordered to pay child support for his stepdaughter after separating from her mother, is a case in point.

Today’s stepfamilies are pioneers exploring uncharted territory in the world of family relationships. Clearly, the old stereotypes about stepmothers and stepfathers need to be re-examined, just as the new experiences of children growing up in complex stepfamilies deserve our attention.

Heather Juby, Ph.D., is a family demographer, a research associate at the INRS-Urbanisation, Culture et Société, and a member of Montreal’s Inter-University Centre for Demographic Study. A mother and stepmother herself, her interest in the stepfamily is not merely academic!

More details on the rise and evolution of the Canadian stepfamily can be found in: "A Step Further in Family Life: The Emergence of the Blended Family" by Heather Juby, Nicole Marcil-Gratton, and Céline Le Bourdais (2000). The article appeared in Statistics Canada’s Report on the Demographic Situation in Canada (issue 2000-2001, catalogue no. 91-209-XPE, pages 169-203).

When a lone parent marries, it’s with the hope that the marriage will be good for the family. In the best possible scenario, a new step-parent can provide economic advantages, as well as emotional and child-rearing support, to the biological parent. But my research on stepfamilies (conducted with Anita DeLongis at the University of British Columbia) has shown that, as often as not, the promise of improved family well-being goes unrealized because members of a new stepfamily must cope with a number of stressors unique to the remarried family structure.

These stressors can be so problematic at times as to outweigh any advantages, particularly if both partners have children from other unions. For example, creating and maintaining a strong marital bond is more challenging when the step-parent must simultaneously work to construct a functional step-parent/ stepchild relationship. At the same time, remarried parents also need to sustain a close relationship with their children from their previous union, and to resolve any loyalty conflicts that may emerge. One woman in this type of stepfamily describes how some of these issues affect her marriage: "We have started taking separate vacations, each of us with our own kids. So there is not enough time away together. I need to spend more quality time alone with my husband without the kids around."

Divided loyalties are not the only problems that remarried couples have to deal with, however. For many, there are still unresolved conflicts between the divorced parents, and ongoing financial disagreements. Many families also struggle with the disruptions to family life that happen when the children go back and forth between two households with different expectations and ways of doing things. On top of these problems, multiple conflicts between stepfamily members—perhaps between a step-parent and stepchild, between two stepsiblings, or between a step-parent and his or her inlaws—may be a part of everyday life. These difficulties can be so far-reaching and challenging that many may not be resolved until long after the children have grown up and left home.

Stepfamily researchers agree that the quality of the step-parent/ stepchild relationship is an important determinant of overall stepfamily happiness. However, because many step-parent/ stepchild relationships do not have the solid foundation created by early childhood bonding experiences, the step-parent/ stepchild bond may be particularly vulnerable to family stress.

When a stepfather joins a divorced mother and her children, a positive relationship between the stepfather and stepchildren can lead to positive outcomes both for the children and for the family. However, the relationship is affected by a number of factors that the stepfather can’t control.

Younger children may be jealous of their mother’s preoccupation with her new spouse. They may misbehave and act out as a way of regaining her attention, even though this attention is likely to be negative. They may also reject their new stepfather’s efforts to engage them. Unfortunately, when a new stepfather finds himself rejected in his early attempts to become involved with his stepchildren, he may feel hurt and withdraw, giving up on any possibility of establishing a parental relationship. One mother sees the relationship between her daughter from a previous marriage and her current husband this way:

A disengaged style of parenting is the most commonly observed approach used by stepfathers. Some researchers have suggested that such disengagement is what leads to the frequent failure of stepchildren to adapt successfully to membership in a remarried family. But stepfathers may not see any alternative except to remove themselves from involvement in any parenting issues.

As recently as twenty years ago, 90% of divorced mothers retained sole custody of their children. Today however, more men are seeking custody of their children than ever before, joint custody arrangements have become common, and more children live with their father and stepmother at least part of the time— although this type of stepfamily is still less common than mother/children/stepfather households. Even if the step-children don’t live in the home, the impact of stepchildren on the couples relationship can be tremendous.

Researchers have found that, in general, stepmothers tend to experience a great deal more stress, anxiety, depression, and anger about their role in the family than do other mothers. There are a number of reasons for this.

For one thing, many husbands view the caring for and entertaining of children as their wives’ responsibility, even when the children are his, not hers. Another reason for stepmother stress is that both visiting and live-in stepchildren increase the housework load, with more cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, and so on. And, in many households, this extra burden is largely on the wife’s shoulders.

Besides the domestic responsibilities, some stepmothers find themselves having to cope with their husband’s teenage children acting out in reaction to family disruptions. One stepmother explains her dilemma this way:

To counteract guilty feelings about the divorce, a father may be more solicitous or extravagant with his children when they visit, and be unwilling to use any form of discipline. The wife may see this as favoritism, and an indication that her husband cares more about his children than about her, or her children.

Visiting stepchildren may also become involved in conflicts with the wife’s children. If she intervenes, the stepchildren may perceive her as taking sides with her children against them. Given the way girls and boys are socialized in our society, women usually care more, and are more upset by these conflicts than are men. Here’s how one stepmother understands a situation involving her son (a teenager), her new husband, and her young stepson who lives with them:

Children’s loyalty towards their mother usually outweighs their loyalty towards their father, because their mother has usually been their primary parent, and, for a variety of reasons, they may see her as the more vulnerable parent after the separation. This may lead the children to feel protective of their mother, which brings us to another problem that is more common for stepmothers than for stepfathers. A new stepmother may discover that her stepchildren resist closeness with her to avoid feeling disloyal to their own mother. But, in a family where children live with their mother and stepfather, the children’s feelings of loyalty to their dad are less likely to interfere with their relationship with their stepfather, as non-custodial fathers are generally less involved with their children than are non-custodial mothers.

Ironically, one reason the experience of being a stepmother can be so negative is the tremendous effort the typical stepmother makes to competently fulfill her role as a parent to her husbands’ children. Even though she may take responsibility for a goodly amount of the daily parenting activities, she often feels that she doesn’t receive adequate recognition for her efforts, either from her husband or from her stepchildren. However, if the husband is aware of these dynamics, and attempts to cope with his wife’s concerns in a positive and proactive way, his wife may find it easier to maintain a positive relationship with his children.

Unfortunately, difficulties with stepchildren often lead to marital disagreements. One wife described some typical problems that can arise when both parents have children from a previous union. She identified the major issues in her family as her stepson’s rude and inconsiderate behaviour, and her husband’s view that she tended to coddle her own son. Two years later she described how the problem had grown, saying her husband wanted her to be available for his children, but he would not contribute an equal amount of effort and concern for her children. She said he maintained a distance from her children and resented the closeness she had with them.

Not surprisingly, her husband had a very different view, describing the problem in this way:

I think because my wife became single when her son was an infant, she feels overly protective of him, and tries to protect him from life’s difficulties. Her daughter is very timid and hides in her room a lot of the time, so there is not much of a relationship between us. Her daughter also ignores my son and essentially doesn’t acknowledge his presence. This leads to a sort of tense atmosphere in the house.

Such statements reveal how issues between couples in stepfamilies are often played out through their children.

Another husband says he tends to think his wife is picking on his children, and she thinks he’s picking on her children. Their biggest recurring problem "is this feeling of favouritism and perhaps jealousy, sometimes saying, ‘You’re always favouring your children,’ and ‘You’re always babying them.’ Once we get angry with each other we’re always pulling our children into it."

Our stepfamily research suggests that both husbands and wives generally feel closer to their own children than they do to their stepchildren. But, in their relationships with their own children, wives feel more closeness and less tension than their husbands do with theirs. On the other hand, wives experience more tension with their stepchildren than husbands do with their stepchildren. Husbands also report that their feelings of emotional closeness to their children from a previous marriage tend to decrease over time, and that the tension tends to increase.

When we looked at the way parents relate to their own children, compared to their stepchildren, we found that during times of stress, parents are much more likely to compromise with their own children. In turn, their children tend to reciprocate by demonstrating their appreciation, primarily through displays of affection. However, when parents compromise on an issue with their stepchildren, the stepchildren do not reward their step-parents the way their own children do. This being the case, one might assume that, over time, step-parents may feel less willing to continue making an effort to compromise.

This does not mean that stepchildren are intentionally unappreciative of their step-parents’ efforts, however. It is equally likely that the way children respond to their parents’ behaviour is outside of their awareness, reflecting deeply ingrained patterns of parent-child interactions. Interactions early in childhood may lay down memory traces that can be activated by later interpersonal situations that determine the child’s behaviour in those situations. Stepchildren and step-parents do not have the same history, so a more deliberate effort from both parties may be required to build and maintain a congenial relationship.

Another pattern in relationships between step-parents and stepchildren is a tendency for step-parents to withdraw from their stepchildren as a way of decreasing the tension in the household. Although such a strategy may be effective in the short term, it can quickly become a self-sustaining and ultimately detrimental way of dealing with problems in the step-parent/ stepchild relationship, as shown by our study’s follow-up interviews two years after the first interviews.

A somewhat more disturbing finding is that when stepchildren do try to show affection towards their step-parents, the step-parents are unlikely to respond positively, or at least not to the same extent that they respond to affection from their own children. Unfortunately, such patterns can easily become entrenched, as stepchildren soon stop attempting to develop emotional closeness with a step-parent who seems to reject their attempts.

Although step-parents may go to great lengths to avoid conflict in their relationships with their stepchildren, some researchers believe confrontation is not nearly as corrosive to relationships in the long run as are disengagement and withdrawal. Our research supports this conclusion. In fact, verbal disagreements may even have a positive role in the development of a relationship, especially if they indicate that an active effort is being made to develop an alliance.

We found that neither conflict nor withdrawal negatively affects stepfamily relationships if they are occasional responses. But when they become habitual, they are related to poorer relationships within stepfamilies over a two-year period.

Parents in successful stepfamilies have realistic expectations, and are comfortable in the knowledge that their stepfamily will always be different from a first-marriage family. Parents and children alike are more comfortable if they realize that not all relationships are equally close, and that step-parent/stepchild relationships are not generally as emotionally close as parent-child relationships. Adults’ efforts to treat all children equally may not be possible or even appropriate. What is more essential is that all members of the stepfamily continually try to be fair and kind to each other.

Also, it is important to realize that the same behaviour can have a different meaning when used with one’s stepchild than it does when used with one’s own child. Stepchildren likely feel less secure in their relationship with a step-parent and may have more difficulty coping with anger from their step-parent than from their own parent.

Step-parents need to realize that their stepchildren’s developmental stage powerfully influences their behaviour. There can be great freedom in realizing that a teenage stepchild’s occasional episode of rude, obnoxious behaviour should not be taken personally. Differentiating between adolescent issues and stepfamily issues may be difficult, but correctly identifying the source of a problem may help the step-parent to deal with it appropriately. A new stepfamily with teenage children can expect to take much longer to achieve satisfactory integration than a stepfamily with younger children. When parents realize that most stepfamilies take years to work out their differences, they may be better able to relax and let go of anxiety and tension about their relationships.

From comments made by our study participants to our interviewers, it appeared that most of the step-parents were trying very hard to be helpful and supportive to their stepchildren. Step-parenting can rightly be thought of as an exceptionally altruistic act in that step-parents generally receive little obvious compensation for their efforts. Not only is their role challenging, expensive, and often unrewarding, but also, if the stepfamily dissolves, the step-parent will likely lose any rights to their stepchild.

For these reasons, when step-parents willingly contribute their time, energy, and financial resources to help with the parenting of stepchildren, they should be honoured for their efforts. And perhaps, if they are lucky, their stepchildren will recognize their generosity.

Melady Preece, Ph.D., is a Registered Clinical Psychologist who teaches in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia. She also maintains a private practice in Vancouver, British Columbia, working with stepfamilies and others coping with stress. Dr. Preece has personal experience living and parenting in a stepfamily.

This article was based on research conducted at the University of British Columbia by Melady Preece and Anita DeLongis. Articles discussing the research in more detail have been published in Marriage and Family Review, and in an edited book entitled Emerging Perspectives on Couples Coping with Stress, published by the American Psychological Association.

Note: Identifying details in the quotations used in this article have been changed to protect the privacy of study participants.

What happens when children suddenly acquire stepsiblings through their mother’s or father’s marriage or remarriage? Ideally, the actual transition into a stepfamily happens gradually. Nevertheless, it is a major adaptation for the children. Stepsiblings, unlike half-siblings, share no biological ties, yet they must learn how to be siblings in other respects such as sharing space and parents’ attention. How well does this work, and what can facilitate the transition? In this article I try to answer such questions by drawing on my experience as a clinical social worker specializing in marriage and family therapy, and on my own research on stepfamilies.

Stepfamilies are not new, of course. The "wicked" stepmother of fairy tales is a product of the days when many women died in childbirth and widowers would quickly marry again to "replace" the mother. Often, older children in the family resented the stepmother out of loyalty to their mother. A mother is a special role that can evoke strong and sometimes conflicting emotions. To expect a woman to love and discipline children who refuse to be loved or disciplined sets her up for failure, and can cause her to feel hurt and angry, and perhaps even to show favoritism towards her own children—which might be perceived as "wicked."

It is expecting too much for a child to accept another person as "mom," especially right away, and her own children will likely feel jealous if they hear others call her that. Most of the families I interviewed for my study recommended that children not call their step-parent "mom" or "dad"; instead, the families suggest using either a different title or the step-parent’s first name. There are exceptions of course. In some families it works well for a child to call a step-parent "mom" or "dad," but usually only if enough time had passed since the breakup of the child’s parents, if the child was young when the stepfamily was formed, and if the original parent is out of the picture.

Today, stepfamilies are most often formed after divorce, not death. The divorce rate, which spiked from 1960 to 1990, has leveled off and even dropped a bit, and is lower in Canada than in the United States. Nevertheless, Statistics Canada estimates that 36% of Canadian couples married in 1998 will eventually end up in divorce court, and that nearly 7% of Canadian children under the age of 15 were living in a stepfamily in 1998-99. Anne-Marie Ambert of York University notes that the highest rate of divorce happens at year five of marriage, and that perhaps half of all divorces involve dependent children. Many divorced parents eventually remarry, forming a stepfamily. Dr. Ambert says about 70% of divorced men and 58% of divorced women remarry in Canada, excluding Quebec where many prefer to cohabit.

As common as stepfamilies have become in North America, they are different from biologically based families. When these differences are recognized, potential problems can be decreased. Instead of trying to replicate a biologically based family and failing, it is better to develop and cherish a new way of being a family.

If it is difficult to integrate a new parent into a family, it is also difficult to bring in a new child. Patience is needed in both cases because becoming a family takes time. Expecting instant love is unrealistic. In my study, one stepmother said that what helped her family adjust was her decision to give up the idea that they would be a "picture-postcard family." She had expected her stepson to see her as his mother, and to confide his feelings to her just as her biological son did. But, since the stepson was already a teenager, and since he lived with his mother half the time, this was an unreasonable expectation. When I interviewed her, the stepmother said accepting that her family would be different from her picture-postcard ideal saved her marriage. And reducing her expectations about how her stepson would relate to her freed him to gradually accept both her and her son on his own terms.

I don’t use the term "blended family" because it adds to the unrealistic expectation that a newly formed family will just automatically blend together. In fact, the blending will be slow and may never be complete. Step-parents and stepsiblings need time to develop new relationships, and they need time to mourn the losses they’ve experienced through death or divorce. Children also need to maintain their relationships with non-custodial parents and with grandparents and other relatives (except of course in cases of violence or cruelty).

In a family interviewed for my study, the father said he had remarried with no idea of how hard it would be. Soon after his wife died from a prolonged illness, this father of four had married a close family friend with two children of her own. He believed the marriage would be good for his children because they had known the woman and her children for years. He said it took two years after the marriage for things to settle down, which is consistent with findings from other studies. When he expressed surprise at how hard it had been, his eight-year-old son looked up at him and said, "It was just too soon, dad, just too soon."

Generally, then, it is best for stepfamilies to allow time for relationships to develop naturally, and not to force them. It is unrealistic for step-parents to feel that they should love stepchildren they have known for only a year or two to the same degree that they love children born into their family. Similarly, it is unrealistic to expect a child to feel as close to a new stepsibling as he or she feels to a sibling they’ve always known. This expectation can cause guilt that can breed resentment.

When stepsiblings have no shared history, the bond between them is naturally weaker than between those with a shared history. Developing special traditions or activities to strengthen the bond and build shared experiences is therefore essential.

A special difficulty that may arise between stepsiblings is jealousy over the amount of time each gets to spend with the parents. A child in a single-parent household often develops a special closeness to the parent. It’s hard enough to suddenly have to share that parent with their new spouse, but to also share them with other children can be extra difficult. Of course, biological siblings compete for parental attention too, but such rivalry can be more intense between stepsiblings.

Some stepsiblings grow to be very close to each other and some don’t—which is true of any siblings—so it’s important not to make too much of ordinary rivalry. Parents can try to reduce the rivalry by not only arranging family activities aimed at developing shared experiences, but also allowing time for each child to have one-on-one experiences with their biological parent. It’s easier to share parents most of the time if that special relationship is maintained through, for example, occasional shopping trips, movies, or games alone with mom or dad. For a younger child, having a special story time alone with their parent can serve the same purpose.

Sharing space and needing privacy are related issues that must be addressed when merging two families. Often, one set of children—usually the father’s—lives with the family only part-time. These children may feel that they don’t belong in the newly formed family, since they may not have any space of their own. Meanwhile, the "full-time" children may resent sharing their space when the other children come to stay. Although, realistically, most stepfamilies can’t provide separate bedrooms for each of the children, it’s still important to give them as much privacy as possible. At the very least, all children need their own place to keep their things, even if it’s only a drawer, a desk, or a sectioned-off part of a closet.

Each family must work out how to share space in its own way, according to the amount of space available, the number of children, and each child’s characteristics, such as sex and age. In some families, children from the same parents share a room; in other families, it works best to divide along gender lines. If space is tight, possible solutions include turning a den or family room into a part-time bedroom, using a room divider for more privacy, or even building an addition, if the budget can stretch that far. The important thing is for the parents to recognize their children’s need for privacy, to know that there might be sexual tension between older stepsiblings, and to address privacy issues with a plan of some sort.

In many stepfamilies, the children come and go regularly between the two households of their biological parents. In some of these households, one set of children leaves every weekend, and the other set comes to stay. For example, mom’s kids might be there during the week, and dad’s kids on weekends. The good thing about this plan is that all the children receive plenty of parental attention. The downside is that the two sets of children never have time together to bond, and the parents never have that much-needed weekend alone. Another plan is to have both sets of children at the same time, with regular child-free days. For many, a mixture of the two plans works best.

Every family wrestles with money questions from time to time but, for stepfamilies, money can be an especially complex issue with no easy solution. Some stepfamilies share all their financial resources. Others find it important to keep the money separate with individual accounts, each parent paying their own children’s expenses and a share of the household expenses. Most of the families in my study pool their money, but some feel that separating their money actually helps keep the family together.

The traditional role division where the man is the breadwinner and the woman is the nurturer is often not feasible for stepfamilies. Just as it is difficult for a woman to nurture and discipline children if they don’t accept her as their nurturer or

One particularly sticky issue comes up when some children in the family receive more money and gifts than their stepsiblings because their non-residential parents or grandparents have greater assets than those of the other children. I have interviewed families where some children had college accounts, expensive clothes and toys, and private schools and lessons that the other children could not have. Of course, such inequity does create jealousy but, since it tends to be a fact of stepfamily life, it needs to be discussed and accepted.

Parents should talk to their children about how families all have different rules and different amounts of money, and how, when two families merge, some of those differences will live on within their house. Just as the discipline and rules may be different for the two sets of children in the house (at least at first), the material goods may be different too, given that they do not share all the same relatives.

As long as children feel that there is some fairness within the new family, they can usually accept that their stepsiblings may have more coming in from relatives outside of the household.

Just as children learn to accept that mom’s house may have different rules and resources from dad’s house, they can also accept differences within a household.

Complex stepfamilies, where both the husband and the wife bring children into the new union, are the most difficult to manage. There is consensus among the families I interviewed, as well as most researchers and therapists, that the first two years are the toughest, and that if issues get ironed out during those years, things do get better.

While step-parents and stepsiblings cannot expect instant love, respect for each other is indispensable and should be enforced with rules such as no name-calling or bullying. Usually it’s best for the biological parent to be in charge of disciplining and nurturing their own offspring—especially at first—freeing the step-parent to gradually develop a relationship with their stepchildren that is not meant to replicate the parent-child relationship. By making plans, holding family discussions, and acknowledging the issues at hand, most stepfamilies do go on to have a satisfying family life, and many stepsiblings develop close and loving relationships.

Patricia Kelley, Ph.D., is a Professor at the University of Iowa School of Social Work, a Licensed Social Worker, a Board Diplomate in Clinical Social Work, and a clinical member and approved supervisor for the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. She is also the author of Developing Healthy Stepfamilies: Twenty Families Tell Their Stories (New York: Haworth Press, 1995).

For more information on divorce in Canada, visit the Web site of the Vanier Institute of the Family (www.vifamily.ca). Click on "Virtual Library," and then "Contemporary Family Trends." One of the many papers available free is "Divorce: Facts, Causes, and Consequences" (revised edition 2005) by Anne-Marie Ambert.

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