ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses some of the difficulties, while also reflecting on the positives of new and reconstituted families. It discusses divorce and its impact on parents and teenagers, limiting the harm of family breakdown, step-parents and new partners, and lone parents. The chapter focuses on the STAGE framework and its implications for divorce and the changing family. The chapter explores some of the steps that parents can take to help young people adjust to the change in family circumstances. Where step-parents and new partners are concerned, age is almost certainly a key element in determining the role of a new adult appearing in the family. Lone parents have particular challenges to face. One of these has to do with fulfilling both roles at once. The chapter concludes with a note about the positives that can stem from divorce or from being in a reconstituted family.
