Becoming A Stepfamily: Patterns of Development in Remarried Families 
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"Traditionally, a stepfamily is the family one acquires when a parent enters a new marriage, whether the parent was widowed or divorced. For example, if one's mother dies and one's father marries another woman, the new woman is one's stepmother. The counseling slogan "Stepfamilies are born out of loss" applies to such a case. In modern stepfamilies, there is recognition that the biological parents may never have married. Unless one bioparent of a stepchild is deceased, typical nuclear stepfamilies do not live in one house, consisting of three or more parents, biological and otherwise. It's also possible, in a less strict sense, that the new mate chooses the role of full- or part-time caregiver without marital commitment. |
In a simple stepfamily, only one stepparent has a prior child or children. Usually this is thought of in terms of minors, but the children of a stepfamily can also be adults. Stepbrothers and stepsisters exist in a blended or complex stepfamily. In any case, any subsequent children fathered through the new marriage are one's half-siblings instead of stepsiblings, being related through one blood line, that of the one biological parent. Having a new child does not change the identity of stepfamily, nor does legal stepchild adoption.
In her book, Becoming a Stepfamily
, Patricia Papernow (1993) suggests that each stepfamily goes through seven distinct stages of development, which can be divided into the Early, Middle, and Late stages. The early stages consist of the Fantasy, Immersion, and Awareness stages. In the Fantasy stage, both children and parents are typically "stuck" in their fantasies or wishes for what their family could be like.
The developmental task for this stage is for each member to articulate their wants and needs. In the Immersion stage, the family is typically struggling to live out the fantasy of a "perfect" blended family. In this stage, it is critical for the "insider spouse" (i.e. the biological parent who typically forms the emotional hub of the family) to understand that the feelings of the "outsider spouse" and children are real. The task of this stage is to persist in the struggle to become aware of the various experiences. This stage is followed by the Awareness stage, in which the family gathers information about what the new family looks like (e.g., roles, traditions, "family culture") and how each member feels about it. The tasks of this stage are twofold: individual and joint. The individual task is for each member to begin to put words to the feelings they are experiencing, and to voice their needs to other family members. The joint task is for family members to begin to transcend the "experiential gaps" and to try to form an understanding of other members' roles and experiences.
This information found: Wikipedia Encylopedia
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