Stepfamilies

Abstract

Family life in Britain is changing daily to include more stepfamilies, which have widely differing structures with varying histories, losses, transitions and economic circumstances. Of the one in five children who currently experience separation before they are 16, over half will live in a stepfamily at some point in their lives. Of the 150 000 couples with children who divorced each year at the end of the 1980s, a further 35 000 had a subsequent divorce. For some children we need to think of step-parenting within wider processes of transition, which include relationship changes of many kinds. The National Stepfamily Association have calculated that if current trends of divorce, cohabitation, remarriage and birth continue, there will be around 2.5 million children and young adults growing up in a stepfamily by the year 2000. The true pattern of re-ordering of partnership and family life is hard to chart, since many couples second or third time around prefer to cohabit rather than to marry.