0 a family that is formed by two people and the child or children of one or both of them from a previous relationship:
Some will remain lone parents; many will remarry after a period of cohabitation and become a step-family .
Parents and step-parents are increasingly writing about step-family life in an attempt both to warn parents and inform practitioners.
"When I got a new stepfamily," she notes, "suddenly my home life was more chaotic than my work life."
They say it takes four to seven years before you bond as a stepfamily and identify your own roles and how you fit in.
What is clear is that neither the word ' stepfamily ' nor the use of the step-stem is being embraced by our respondents.
The contemporary stepfamily : making links with fostering and adoption.
Indeed, the relationships and families were highly diverse and this may account, to some extent, for the lack of use of the word stepfamily.
Membership in a stepfamily was associated with a slightly increased likelihood of psychopathology, but this was the case regardless of relationship constellation.
