ABSTRACT
The ability to tolerate painful affect, without resorting to primitive defenses such as denial or a flight into activity, is a mark of mature functioning. Being a parent calls for this ability, and being a parent in special circumstances may require it even more. Parents of handicapped or ill children, adoptive parents, and stepparents share the circumstance that aspects of their child’s life and their life as parents are more complex, and in some ways more difficult or painful, than corresponding aspects of other families’ lives. This chapter will describe certain challenges to the ability of adoptive and stepparents to maintain emotional equilibrium. (Foster parents share similar challenges, but their more limited commitment in terms of elapsed time with the child and legal responsibility may mitigate the severity of the stress they experience; foster parenting will not be referred to explicitly below, although the discussion could easily be generalized to include it.)
