| One in ten families in the UK is a stepfamily and the figure is rising, with more than two million children in stepfamilies. |
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| When children only spend one weekend in two with their father and his new wife, is this really a stepfamily? |
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| Instead, you need to focus on individuals, estimating what proportion of fathers, mothers, and children spend part of their life in a stepfamily. |
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| Only one stepfamily in six includes a father, his children, and a stepmother without children of her own. |
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| She also looks at stressors that can cause marriage problems for stepfamily couples. |
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| Not only are they more common, but life in today's stepfamily is considerably different than it was, say, fifty years ago. |
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| What are the special challenges of marriage and parenthood in a stepfamily? |
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| A mother and stepmother herself, her interest in the stepfamily is not merely academic! |
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| The likelihood of this happening varies from one type of stepfamily to another. |
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| The children who are present when the stepfamily comes into existence clearly belong to a stepfamily-they live with a stepparent. |
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| We found that neither conflict nor withdrawal negatively affects stepfamily relationships if they are occasional responses. |
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| Two stepfamily configurations are the biological mother and her spouse or partner, and the biological father and his spouse or partner. |
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| So why do we get the impression that the stepfamily experience is much more widespread than this? |
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| Husbands were happiest when they felt powerful within the stepfamily as an integral and efficacious group member, when their role was clear in their own minds, and when their wives were happy with the marital relationship. |
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| No longer is it unheard of for a child to have a second experience of lone-parent life after a parent and stepparent break up, followed perhaps by a second stepfamily. |
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| Not only is their role challenging, expensive, and often unrewarding, but also, if the stepfamily dissolves, the step-parent will likely lose any rights to their stepchild. |
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| Learn to be a family A stepfamily that involves, at its most complicated, the incorporation of children from both parents' previous relationships is effectively the melding of two biological families into one. |
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| Based on Charles Perrault's story, Cinderella follows the changing fortunes of young Ella, who finds herself at the mercy of a jealous and cruel new stepfamily when her merchant father passes away. |
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| Is this one reason why having a child within a stepfamily, although it adds further complexity to an already complicated system, is associated with greater stepfamily stability? |
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| But should this family count as a stepfamily in any case? |
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| Parents in successful stepfamilies have realistic expectations, and are comfortable in the knowledge that their stepfamily will always be different from a first-marriage family. |
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| Differentiating between adolescent issues and stepfamily issues may be difficult, but correctly identifying the source of a problem may help the step-parent to deal with it appropriately. |
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| Structure implies solidity or permanence, and leads implicitly to the idea that children spend their lives in a given family type: intact, lone-parent or stepfamily. |
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| This way she can daydream about that heady night of breaking class barriers while doing her chores as second-class citizen in her stepfamily. |
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| Her mother is dead, her brother Felix is taken away and soon there is a stepfamily that treats her very badly. |
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