BC Council for Families

By Susan Gamache

Recent demographic information suggests that 25-30% of Canadian children have either already experienced living in a stepfamily or will likely do so before they reach adulthood. In the U.S., stepfamilies are expected to outnumber nuclear families by the year 2010. In other words, divorce and remarriage have become mainstream events.

As an experience that affects so many of us, it is vital that we learn to understand, support, and ultimately honour stepfamilies within our communities and our society.

Stepfamilies are not new; they have always played an important part in our communities. In fact, remarriage rates have changed very little over the past 200 years. Historically, stepfamilies were formed following the death of a spouse. Given that in 1850, average life expectancy was only 40 years, the average length of a marriage was, on average, less than 10 years. In the early 1800s, fully 50% of children had lost one or both parents by age 13. Remarriage was essential to the continuing well-being of the family.

With increasing life expectancy and the cultural influences following the Second World War, the nuclear family reached its peak in the 1950s. Never before had the proportion of nuclear families in our communities been so high. Ironically, the 1950s also saw divorce overtake death as the most frequent cause of the end of a marriage.

Today most stepfamilies are formed following divorce; a choice by one or both spouses to end the marriage. This difference between the stepfamilies of the 1800s and those of today means that for the first time ever, former spouses are usually alive and well rather than deceased. They may be living across the street, across town, or across the country. Similarly, more aunts, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers are also still living and participating in family relationships.

The net result is that stepfamilies today include many more people than ever before. In order for stepfamily members to live well in their family, it is important to understand and to manage many more relationships and many more types of relationships than ever before. Equally, for professionals to work respectfully and effectively with stepfamilies it is vital that the additional complexity of stepfamilies be understood and integrated into existing professional practices, most of which are based on the nuclear, or first marriage family.

Systems within systems

Professionals often describe a family as a system; a cluster or group of interrelated, dynamic relationships between two or more people that grow and change over time. Within the family system are smaller systems or sub-systems. For example, the nuclear family system includes Mom, Dad, and the kids. Within this group is the couple system (Mom and Dad in relation to each other), the parenting system (Mom and/or Dad in relation to their children), and the sibling system (the kids, as a group, in relation to the parent system). Generally there is some type of extended family system as well, which then creates other relationships between the nuclear family members and grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. The nuclear family lives within neighbourhoods and larger communities that endorse this family form. In fact, for many social institutions, the nuclear family is the only type of family that is officially recognized in policy and practice.

In its broadest sense, the stepfamily is a family group or system that includes most of the smaller systems of the nuclear family and may include many more. The stepfamily system includes the first marriage couple and children from that union (now former spouses and sole parent family systems), the new couple, stepparent-stepchild relationships, possibly two siblings systems and all possible relationships between the children, and the parental coalition (all adults involved with caring for all the children) generally across two households. The stepfamily includes the two extended families of the first marriage family plus a third and possibly a fourth extended family (stepmoms and stepdads). The stepfamily also lives within neighbourhoods and larger communities. Sadly, in contrast to the nuclear family, the stepfamily is rarely recognized by social institutions as a legitimate family form either in policy or in practice.

Couples in stepfamilies are at the hub of many of these relationships. In order for the couple to survive, they must learn what each of these relationships or systems needs to survive and thrive. When a stepfamily system is in trouble, the adults in the new couple can feel like the plate spinners from the Ed Sullivan Show. They are working as hard as they can to keep all the plates (family systems) going, yet all around them the plates are falling from their perch atop the long poles and crashing to the ground. It seems impossible to anticipate where the next crisis will come from or to know what to do when the crash comes.

In contrast, when the stepfamily system is working well, the adults can feel like confident and loving architects or managers of a new and sometimes complicated project. They know what each system needs in order to function well. The developmental transitions of family life can be anticipated. Household and relational boundaries are respected. When crises occur, as they almost always will in any family, the appropriate family member(s) can deal with them effectively and family life goes on.

The new couple

The new couple is the newest relationship system in the larger stepfamily system. This relationship is what has brought everyone together. One or both adults may have a former spouse with whom they are co-parenting, may be parents to biological children and new stepparents to their partner's children, and may also bring strong ties to extended family. As such, each adult is the bridge between all the family systems they are involved with and all the family systems to which their partner belongs.

Unlike first marriage couples with no children, new couples in stepfamilies do not have unlimited time or privacy in which to learn about the new family systems they are now a part of, nor to work out the inevitable rough spots in their own very new relationship. New partners may encounter the “biological force-field”, the sole parent family system of their new partner and his or her biological children. While it may be tempting to blame the children for the tight bonds of the sole parent family system, this heightened sense of solidarity between sole parents and children is very common and can be considered a natural adaptation to living in a sole parent system. Ultimately, the new couple must learn to consider both the new couple and the parenting relationships as “two firsts”. Creative problem solving is essential in finding ways to satisfy the needs of both of these systems.

Parenting in the stepfamily

Successful parenting in the stepfamily requires a transition from parenting in the sole parent family system to the new stepfamily household. Frequently, time in the sole parent family can create stronger, tighter bonds between biological parents and children. The challenge is to balance the continuity of what has been done up to this point, with the future of the larger group that the new couple wishes to create. The biological parent is the connector between the past, represented strongly by the children, and the future, represented by the new partner.

When the transition to stepfamily living is difficult and there is conflict between a new stepparent and stepchildren, many residential biological parents (particularly those who see themselves as easy-going or peace-keepers) wish to escape from what they perceive as being “caught in the middle”. However, since they are the common element between the new partner and the children, they are the raison d'etre of the stepparent-stepchild relationships. Without them, the stepfamily system cannot move forward.

Getting good at parenting in the stepfamily household is essential. Prolonged, intense difficulties here can be a corrosive influence on the new couple relationship. Equally, allowing the family system of the sole parent family to be entirely reinvented for the new partner places the children at risk of alienation and eventual exclusion (emotional and/or physical) from the family - a very dangerous consequence of the loss of connection with their family. Clearly, balancing (even imperfectly) of the “two firsts” of the stepfamily household is essential to the successful stepfamily.

Former spouses

When considering the process of transforming a marital relationship to a former spouse relationship, it is very important to remember that in this area, we are all pioneers. Never before have we loved long enough to consider ending a marriage by choice before death does it for us. The choice to end a marriage is fraught with risks, both for the adults and the children. However, marriage researchers have clearly demonstrated that some troubled and conflicted marriages will not respond to therapeutic interventions or any other types of interventions for that matter. The choice not to end a highly conflicted marriage after trying everything possible to bring it back to a loving and satisfying relationship is also very risky, especially for children.

The challenge for today's former spouses who are actively involved in parenting their children, is to separate the marital conflict from the parenting relationship. For some, it is relatively easy, though rarely painless. For others, it can feel nearly impossible.

Stepfamily systems in which former spouses have been able to make this transformation can enjoy the support of additional adults, households, and resources, much like an extended family. In these systems, the adults who care for the children can form a “parental coalition” that can respond to the ups and downs of family life with grace and compassion.

Given that parenthood is a life-long commitment to our children, unresolved relationships between former spouses will continue to weigh heavily upon children as they grow and develop. Developmental milestones, such as high school graduations, weddings, or births, will be affected by the tenor of the relationship between the parents. Many former spouses do manage to create co-parenting relationships that are sufficiently resolved to allow other family members to feel comfortable. They deserve our congratulations.

Stepfamily research

Although the task of creating a well-managed stepfamily system may seem daunting, many are doing very well. In fact, after several decades of what has come to be called “deficit-comparison” research, in which stepfamilies were compared to nuclear families and interpreted as deficient family environments, family scholars have concluded that the differences in well being between nuclear families and stepfamilies are so slight that comparing families by their structure is not very helpful in understanding how well the family members are doing. The more useful question is why are some stepfamilies doing so well while others have such difficulty?

Stepfamilies as systems within larger social systems

Stepfamilies are family systems that contain many smaller systems. At the same time, stepfamilies in today's society are family systems within larger social systems. Even though most family researchers are aware that the quality of family relationships has far greater impact on our well being than the shape or structure of our family, (i.e. nuclear family, sole parent family, stepfamily), the attitudes of the general public and our social institutions are slow to change. Media and social institutions continue to cast divorced families and stepfamilies in a negative light or to ignore them altogether.

We are caught in a no-win position. Divorce and remarriage are so common as to be considered by some to be unworthy of our attention. We all know people who have experienced marital transitions or perhaps we have experienced them ourselves. Most survive it. Some thrive. So why bother doing more? Issues like racism, gender equity, or the rights of the disabled or same-sex couples are seen as higher social priorities.

However, our social institutions such as schools, hospitals, clergy, city planners, mental health, governments, etc., are very slow to integrate marital transition (divorce and remarriage) into their view of mainstream society. Policies and practices of these institutions seem to derive solely from the nuclear family model, thereby supporting the marginalization of divorced and remarried families in our communities. In fact, no social institutions sanction divorce or remarriage.

It is important to note that adopting a proactive position in the creation of programs and policies that recognize divorce and remarriage as important choices within our current social fabric does not preclude doing everything in our power to support strong and fulfilling marital relationships. Initiatives such as the Smart Marriages Conference are essential to the growing challenges in today's life-long marriages. For example, we can support good health practices and still appreciate having a hospital close by. We can work to reduce crime and still have a police force and a courthouse. Similarly, we can support strong marriages and loving families and still acknowledge that while a life-long marriage may be the right thing for some of the people some of the time, it may not be the right thing for all the people all the time.

If we consider divorce and remarriage as social phenomenon as well as a very personal process, we can then look around and begin to explore how it is that so many in our population are going through marital transitions. We can then notice that our life spans have doubled in the last 150 years and that remaining married until death do us part has become quite a different proposition. We can also notice that our lives are heavily influenced by an ever increasing pace of change. Who had heard of the Internet 10 years ago? Two of my grandparents lived for 70-80 years, yet their marriage did not have to deal with today's current social changes such as gender equity, life-long education, and a multicultural society. Clearly, the challenges to our social commitment to life long marriage are steadily increasing.

Being married “til death do us part” may not be the only way for families to remain healthy and strong. Perhaps tending to the relationships through marital separation, in post-divorce families and in stepfamilies to the very best of our ability, both individually, as a family, and as a society can be our new focus. As a society, we must take the time to clearly understand divorce and remarriage within our current social context. The well being of millions of children, adults, and families depends on it.

About the Author

Susan Gamache, MA, RCC, is a family therapist in private practice in Vancouver, BC, who specializes in working with stepfamilies. She is a
faculty member of the Stepfamily of America Training Institute and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Counselling Psychology at the University of BC. She also is also the author of Building Your Stepfamily…a Blueprint for Success, published by the BC Council for Families.

This article first appeared in Family Connections (Summer 1999), published by the BC Council for Families.