CHAPTER 17
REMARRIAGES AND STEPFAMILIES
I. Remarriage: Some Basic Facts
A. Today, remarriages make up approximately half of all marriage. Many remarried people are happy with
their relationships and lives. Remarriages are increasingly frequent in the United States today, compared to the middle
decades of the twentieth century. After 1975, the remarriage rate declined somewhat, for at least two reasons:
1. Many divorced persons who would have remarried in the past are now cohabiting in stepfamilies.
2. Divorce involves economic constraints and uncertainties.
B. Remarriage, Stepfamilies, and Children's Living Arrangements
1. More Americans are living with other people's children; more children are living with other than their biological
parents.
2. The percentage of children living with both biological parents has declined, while the percentage of children living
with a stepfather has increased.
3. Stepfamilies do not always result from remarriage: approximately 25% of the 3.7 million cohabiting couples in the
United States involve one adult bringing children from prior relationships.
II. Choosing Partners the Next Time: Variations on a Theme
A. Overview
1. Courtship before remarriage may differ from courtship before first marriage.
a. It may proceed more rapidly or more slowly.
b. It is likely to have an earlier, more open sexual component.
c. It may include outings with or without children.
2. It is hypothesized that the more the custodial parent's new partner displaces the child as a source of emotional
support for the parent, the greater the chance of a negative reaction of the child to the new partner.
B. Remarriage Advantages for Women and Men
1. On the whole it is argued that married life places greater stresses on women who become mothers and, at the
same time, reduces stress for men.
2. On the other hand, economists often point out that women may have more to gain financially from being married
than men do.
3. The scales are tipped in a male's favor in the remarriage market as women's remarriage rate is less than half of
men's.
4. Two factors work against women in the remarriage market.
a. Children- prospective second husbands may look on a divorced woman's family as a financial, emotional, and
psychological liability.
b. Age- women are considered less physically attractive with age and may be less interested in fulfilling traditional
gender-role expectations.
C. Homogamy in Remarriage
1. Choosing a remarriage partner differs from making a marital choice the first time in as much as there is a smaller
pool of eligibles with a wider range of any given attribute.
2. Divorced people tend more toward heterogamy than nondivorced people and remarriages are less homogamous
than first marriages with partners varying in age, educational background, and religion.
3. Because homogamy has been shown to increase the likelihood of marital stability, increases in heterogamy are
offered as partial explanations for the higher divorce rate of remarriages than for first marriages.
III. Spouses’ Happiness/Satisfaction and Stability in Remarriage
A. Happiness/Satisfaction in Remarriage
1. There is little difference in marital happiness and marital quality between first and later marriages.
a. The effect of stepchildren on marital satisfaction is minimal.
b. One way that remarital satisfaction is influenced by the wider society is through negative stereotyping of
remarriages.
c. One study that compared relationship quality between remarrieds found that high satisfaction with social support
from friends and families of origin, together with high expressiveness in partners, were more important to marital
satisfaction than whether the union was a first marriage or a remarriage.
B. The Stability of Remarriages
1. Remarriages are slightly more likely to end in divorce than are first marriages.
2. Reasons for lower overall stability of remarriages:
a. People who divorce are disproportionately from lower middle- and lower-class groups.
b. People who remarry after divorce are more accepting of divorce.
c. Remarrieds receive less social support from their families of origin and are generally less integrated with parents
and in-laws.
d. Remarriages have unique stresses such as a lack of cultural norms that can provide remarried couples with
models for appropriate behavior.
3. The most significant factor in the comparative instability of remarriages is the presence of stepchildren.
a. Double remarriages- where both partners were married before were twice as likely to break up compared to
people in first marriages.
b. Single remarriage- where only one partner has been married before does not differ significantly from first
marriages in their likelihood of divorce.
c. Although marital quality does not appear to differ between first and single or double remarriages, satisfaction with
family life is generally adversely affected.
d. In families with stepchildren, partners are more likely to report they are unhappy with the way their spouse gets
along with their children and that their marriage has a negative effect on their relationship with their children.
e. Children who exit from the home can help to resolve family tension and it has been shown that teenage children
in stepfamilies do leave home at significantly lower ages than teens from intact families.
f. Marital quality does not vary greatly between first marriages and single or double marriages. It is satisfaction with
family life that is generally affected.
C. Negative Stereotypes and Remarital Satisfaction and Stability
1. Remarital satisfaction is influenced by the wider society through the negative stereotyping of remarriages.
2. An important reason that stepfamilies may not be as stable is that, although they are increasingly prevalent,
remarried families remain a “normless norm.”
IV. Remarried Families: A Normless Norm
Our society offers members of remarried families no cultural script. Andrew Cherlin calls the remarried family an
“incomplete institution.”
A. Characteristics of Remarried Families
1. Stepfamilies are of various types.
2. There are differences between stepfamilies and first marriages with children.
B. Kin Networks in the Remarried Family
1. As remarriages form, new kin do not replace but rather add to the kin of the first marriage.
2. Language has not yet caught up with the proliferation of new family roles produced by remarriage.
3. The majority of divorced couples completely sever their ties with their ex-spouse and their ex-kin and in doing so,
abandon the prospect of collaborative childcare.
4. Although biological parents and their new spouses have high rates of co-parenting (shared decision making and
supervision of children) it is unclear whether the stepparent role should be to become a “substitute” or an "alternative"
parent.
C. Family Law and the Remarried Family
1. There are no legal provisions for many remarried family problems:
a. Balancing a husband's financial obligations to former spouses and children with current marriage.
b. Wives' obligations to husbands and children from new and former marriages.
c. Competing claims of current and former spouses for share of the estate of a deceased spouse.
2. Remarried persons may be reluctant to commit all of their economic resources to a second marriage.
3. Legal restrictions regarding incest are inadequate for stepfamilies.
4. In some states, stepparents do not have the authority to see the school records of stepchildren or make medical
decisions for them.
5. There is no provision that preserves stepparent-stepchild relations when death or divorce sever the marital tie.
V. Children’s Well-Being in Stepfamilies
A. Research findings vary with regard to children’s well-being in stepfamilies.
1. Some research suggests that family structure is not important.
2. Some research has found that stepchildren have more problems in comparison with their in-tact-family
counterparts.
B. Interpreting the Data
1. Just as social scientists debate whether the family is “in decline,” they disagree on how to interpret findings about
stepchildren’s well-being.
2. The vast majority of social scientists reject the idea that stepfamily formation should be discouraged.
VI. Stepparenting: A Challenge in Remarriage
A. Some Reasons Stepparenting is Difficult
1. Overview
a. For a remarried couple, stepchildren and finances are the greatest problems.
b. About half of women who remarry have children, especially if there were no children from the previous marriage.
c. Women in remarried families do not have children just to validate the relationship.
d. The children a couple have from their new marriage seem to be associated with both increased happiness and
stability.
e. Although research finds little difference in self-esteem, problem behaviors, or intelligence between children in
stepfamilies and those in intact families, there are difficulties.
2. Financial Strains
a. Often money problems arise because of obligations left over from first marriages.
b. Stepfamilies have lower incomes than do other married couples, and they are less educated.
c. Disproportionately more second wives are employed outside the home.
d. Second wives are often resentful of money obligations that must go to the first wife and children.
e. Other common money problems are that some women stash money in case of a second divorce, and some men
refuse to revise their wills and insurance policies to include second families.
3. Role Ambiguity
a. Roles of stepparent and stepchild are neither defined nor clearly understood.
b. Legally, the stepparent is a nonparent with no prescribed rights or duties.
c. Uncertainties arise when role of parent is shared between stepparent and the noncustodial natural parent.
d. Relatively low role ambiguity has been associated with higher remarital satisfaction, especially for wives, and with
greater parenting satisfaction, especially for stepfathers.
e. Often children do not love biological and stepparents the same way and discipline becomes a consistent source
of family conflict.
f. Adolescent stepchildren may have considerable family power. Better coparental relations between ex-spouses
have been associated with greater adolescent power. Perhaps active contact with the noncustodial parent gives the
adolescent the option of an alternative home. Adolescent power is less when stepfathers support the family, have
children of their own from a previous marriage, and have been in the remarried family for many years.
4. Stepchildren's Hostility
a. Children often harbor fantasies that their biological parents will reunite. Children who want their natural parents to
remarry may feel that sabotaging the new relationship will help make that happen.
b. For a young teenager, a remarriage may be more difficult to accept than a divorce. Often during puberty,
children expect their parents to be more sexually conservative.
B. Stepmothers
1. The role of stepmother is thought by clinicians and parents to be more difficult than that of stepfather.
2. Stepmothers tend to be stressed, anxious, and depressed compared to other mothers and stepfathers.
3. Conflicting expectations come with the stepmother role, and relations between stepmothers and daughters seem
particularly troubled.
4. When women are married to noncustodial stepfathers who see their children regularly, they become “part-time”
stepmothers who often feel left out by the father's relationship with his children and resentful of his continued
relationship with his ex-wife.
5. The stepmother trap- on one hand stepmothers are expected to have loving relationships with stepchildren; on
the other they are seen as cruel, vain, and selfish.
C. Stepfathers
1. Overview
a. New husbands may have positive and negative reactions to stepchildren that range from admiration to fright to
contempt.
b. Stepchildren tend to be well adjusted and to get along with their stepfathers as well as other children do with their
natural fathers.
c. Stepfathers tend to view themselves as less effective than natural fathers view themselves.
d. Mothers and stepchildren share a common history that does not include a new stepfather.
e. Living arrangements, especially if a stepfather moves into the family home, can make him feel “left out”
f. Stepfathers have less power than adolescents when they move into the mother-child home.
2. The Hidden Agenda
a. Here a mother or her stepchildren, or both, may have expectations about what the stepfather will do but may not
think to give the new husband a clear picture of what those expectations are.
b. A stepfather may have a hidden agenda of his own (i.e., that children need discipline).
c. Stepfathers tend to be more distant and detached than stepmothers. Clinicians suggest that these detached
behaviors are essential for improved relationships with stepchildren, especially during the early years of a remarriage.
d. Discipline problems facing stepfathers include having two parents instead of one to establish house rules, the
holdover influence of the biological father, and the negotiation of a child's responsibility and participation in decision
making that was likely to have increased when living in a single-parent family.
VII. Creating Supportive Stepfamilies
A. Creating a supportive stepfamily is not automatic, partly because getting remarried typically involves other
stress-inducing changes as well. One stepfamily scholar has suggested a seven-stage model of stepfamily
development:
1. fantasy
2. immersion
3. awareness
4. mobilization
5. action
6. contact
7. resolution
B. Therapists agree that creating a supportive stepfamily takes time – from four to seven years – and is one
the most difficult tasks that families can face.
1. A principal challenge in creating supportive stepfamilies stems from society’s nuclear-family model
monopoly.
2. Counselors remind remarrieds not to forget their couple relationships.
2. Like other marriage agreements, remarriage agreements should be revised as situations and partners change.