3 page Sociology Paper on Cohabitation, Divorce and Remarriage

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Lamanna_13e_PPT_Ch15.ppt

Chapter 15

Remarriages and Stepfamilies

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© 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied, or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

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Chapter Outline

  • Defining and Measuring Stepfamilies
  • Choosing Partners the Next Time
  • Happiness Satisfaction, and Stability in Remarriage
  • Day-to-Day Living in Stepfamilies
  • Well-Being in Stepfamilies
  • Creating Supportive Stepfamilies

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Defining and Measuring Stepfamilies

  • Today, approximately 25 percent of all marriages are remarriages for one or both partners.
  • Can be formed through legal marriage, cohabitation, marriage after childbirth, or other arrangements.

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Pathways to Stepfamily Living

  • Can originate with a birth to a married or cohabiting couple
  • Can originate from a birth to a single mother who is neither married nor cohabiting
  • Children born to married or cohabiting parents can experience parents’ divorce or union dissolution or death
  • After death or divorce of ex-partner, a parent may marry or remarry, forming a married stepfamily

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Pathways to Stepfamily Living

  • Parent can also go on to form a cohabiting union with a new partner after divorce or death or an ex-partner
  • A cohabiting stepfamily may be permanent, or it may transition to a married or remarried stepfamily
  • Multipartnered parenthood and subsequent union dissolutions and formations add even greater complexity

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Pathways to Stepfamily Living

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Various Types of Stepfamilies

  • Stepfamilies created by widowhood or divorce followed by remarriage
  • Stepfamilies created by nonmarital childbearing
  • Stepfamilies created by cohabitation
  • Children and households living in stepfamilies
  • Multiple-household stepfamilies

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Various Types of Stepfamilies

  • Stepfamilies with adult stepchildren
  • Race/ethnic diversity in stepfamilies
  • Stepfamilies with gay and lesbian parents
  • Other types of stepfamilies

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U.S. Children Under 18 Living in Stepfamilies, 2012

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A New Model of Stepfamilies

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Assumption Traditional Revised
Union type Remarriage First marriage, remarriage, cohabitation
Residence of children Co-resident, static Co-resident and nonresident; dynamic
Stage of family life cycle Child rearing; children ages 0-18 Parenting across the life course (incl. children 18+)
Race/ethnicity White All races and ethnicities
Social class Middle class All classes
Sexual orientation Heterosexual Heterosexual or homosexual

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Perceptions of Stepfamilies: Stereotypes and Stigmas

  • Stepfamilies are stigmatized in that they are perceived as being less functional and desirable than original two-parent families.
  • According to this nuclear-family model monopoly, the first-marriage family is the “real” standard for family living, with all other family forms seen as deficient alternatives.

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Choosing Partners the Next Time

  • Parents must consider their own needs as well as their childrens’.
  • Can be challenging to accept a partner who accepts children as part of the relationship.
  • Children and in-laws may be ambivalent about the new relationship.

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Dating with Children

  • Courtship may proceed much more rapidly when dating before remarriage.
  • Dating may also include outings with one or both partners’ children; or, couples may choose to keep their dating relationships and home lives separate.
  • Couples with children can struggle to determine the “right time” to introduce children to dating partners.
  • Couples with children from previous relationships sometimes “drift into” cohabitation.

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What Kinds of People Become Stepparents?

  • Men with children are much more likely than childless men to cohabit or marry a woman with children.
  • Women whose children see their nonresident fathers more often are more likely to remarry.
  • For men, marrying someone with children is generally seen as undesirable. This is somewhat less true for women.
  • Remarriage benefits women financially more than men, though both do benefit.

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Second Weddings

  • Second weddings tend to have fewer guests, few or no wedding attendants, and forgo traditions such as the tossing of the bouquet.
  • Remarriage wedding ceremonies are complicated, emotionally charged, and often awkward affairs.
  • Many children are critical of their stepparents’ wedding ceremony.

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Remarrying couples differ from first-marrying couples in their degree of homogamy. This is because choosing a remarriage partner differs from making a marital choice the first time inasmuch as there is a smaller pool of eligible on any given attribute.

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Happiness, Satisfaction, and Stability in Remarriage

  • Marital happiness and marital satisfaction are synonymous phrases that refer to the quality of the marital relationship whether or not it is permanent.
  • Marital stability refers simply to the duration of the union.

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© 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied, or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

Happiness, Satisfaction, and Stability in Remarriage

  • Research shows little difference in spouses’ overall well-being or in marital happiness between first and later unions.
  • Evidence shows that there is more equity, or fairness, in remarriages than in first marriages.
  • One study found that this appears to have more to do with an ex-wife’s less-than-satisfactory experience in her first marriage, and subsequent partner selection for remarriage.

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The Stability of Remarriages

  • Remarriages are less stable than first marriages.
  • Selection effect is prevalent.
  • Post-divorce cohabitation is positively associated with remarital instability

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The Stability of Remarriages

People who divorce are disproportionately from lower-middle- and lower-class groups, which have a higher tendency to divorce.

People who remarry after divorce are more accepting of divorce and are willing to choose divorce as a way to resolve an unsatisfactory marriage.

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The Stability of Remarriages

Remarrieds receive less social support from their families of origin and are less integrated with parents and in-laws.

Remarriages present some stresses on a couple that are not inherent in first marriages.

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Day-to-Day Living in Stepfamilies

  • Society offers members of stepfamilies an underdeveloped script.
  • Noting the cultural ambiguity of stepfamily relationships, social scientist Andrew Cherlin thirty years ago called the remarried family an incomplete institution.

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Boundary Ambiguity in Stepfamilies

  • Boundary ambiguity is any discrepancy in spouses’ or partners’ reports of shared children and/or stepchildren.
  • Boundary ambiguity was present among 25 percent of couples with stepchildren; higher among couples with nonresident stepchildren than with resident stepchildren.

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Boundary Ambiguity in Four Family Forms

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Family Form Boundary Ambiguity (%)
Two-biological-parent family 0.6
Single-mother family 11.6
Married stepparent family 30.2
Cohabiting stepparent family 65.9

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The Stepfamily System

  • Family Systems Theory
  • Family systems theory emphasizes interdependence in family relationships.
  • Because stepfamily members are often uncertain about how they should behave toward one another, they tend to look to other family members for cues.

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The Stepfamily System

  • Triadic Communication
  • Family dynamics can sometimes become set.
  • Triads can be linked, outsider, adult-coalition, complete.

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Perceived Types of Triadic Communication Structures in Stepfamilies

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The Stepfamily System

  • Visitation schedules can create disruptions.
  • Stepsiblings may not get along.
  • Children may not want stepfamilies to “work out,” hoping original parents will reunite.
  • Dripolator and percolator effects come into play.

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The Stepfamily System

  • Stepfamily Roles
  • There is no cultural script to show members of stepfamilies how to play their roles.
  • Role ambiguity is a significant issue in stepfamilies.

© 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied, or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

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The Stepfamily System

  • Relatively low role ambiguity has been associated with higher remarital satisfaction, especially for wives, and with greater parenting satisfaction, especially for stepfathers.
  • The roles of stepchild and stepparent are not well defined, clearly understood, or fully agreed upon by stepfamily members.

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The Stepfamily System

The Stepfather Role

  • Stepfathers who adopt their stepchildren tend to be more involved with them than those who don’t.
  • Close ties to stepfathers are more likely to develop when the adolescent has close ties to the mother before the stepfather entered the family.
  • Discipline is likely to be a tricky area.

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The Stepfamily System

The Stepmother Role

Stepmother trap

  • On the one hand, society seems to expect almost mythical loving relationships between stepmothers and children.
  • On the other hand, they are stigmatized and seen as cruel, vain, selfish, competitive, and even abusive.

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Stepfamily Relationships

  • Between stepparents and stepchildren
  • Between biological parents and children
  • Between full, step-, and half-siblings
  • Stepparents’ decisions about having children
  • Relationships with grandparents

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Financial Arrangements in Stepfamilies

  • Money problems arise from two sources: financial obligations from first marriages and stepparent role ambiguity.
  • Common-pot system or two-pot system are adopted by most stepfamilies.

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Legal Issues in Stepfamilies

  • Because family law assumes that all marriages are first marriages, few legal provisions exist for remarried family challenges.
  • Laws have not kept pace with the “fragmentation of fatherhood.”
  • Most states consider stepparents and stepchildren “legal strangers.”
  • Some legal issues can be averted if a stepparent legally adopts a stepchild, but this is often impossible.

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Well-Being in Stepfamilies

  • Members of nontraditional families (not living in a married, two-parent household) generally do not fare as well on a range of economic and social and emotional variables.

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Well-Being in Stepfamilies

  • The Well-Being of Parents and Stepparents
  • Parents have lower levels of happiness and life satisfaction and higher levels of psychological distress than nonparents.
  • Outcomes are worse for stepmothers than stepfathers.

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© 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied, or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

Well-Being in Stepfamilies

  • The Well-Being of Children
  • The majority of children in remarried households show few, if any, negative outcomes.
  • Not all children living in stepfamilies are stepchildren.
  • Stepparents make fewer investments in their children’s health than biological parents.

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Creating Supportive Stepfamilies

  • Creating a supportive stepfamily is not automatic.
  • The Stepfamily Cycle does not unfold in a neat and precise way, and it can take anywhere from 4 to 12 years to complete.

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7 Stage Model of Stepfamily Development

Fantasy—adults expect a quick adjustment while children expect that the stepparent will disappear and their parents will be reunited.

Immersion—tension-producing conflict emerges between the stepfamily’s two biological “subunits.”

Awareness—family members realize that their early fantasies are not becoming reality.

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7 Stage Model of Stepfamily Development

Mobilization—family members initiate efforts toward change.

Action—remarried adults decide to form a solid alliance, family boundaries are better clarified, and there is more positive stepparent–stepchild interaction.

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7 Stage Model of Stepfamily Development

Contact—the stepparent becomes a significant adult family figure, and the couple assumes more control.

Resolution—the stepfamily achieves integration and appreciates its unique identity as a stepfamily.

© 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied, or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.

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