ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author considers some of the ways that “reordered” families interrelate, both practically and emotionally, with families that have both preceded them and continue to develop alongside them, and the complex and often conflicting positions that men as fathers and stepfathers can find themselves in. The author conversations with Eddie, nearly twenty years ago, raised questions not only about stepfathers, but also about contemporary expectations surrounding the role of father. Outer conflicts around what a father or a stepfather should be doing can be regularly voiced, and inner conflicts might also be held by a father himself at the level of personal guilt created by his own competing wishes and desires. The question of a stepfather’s attunement to stepchildren is a difficult feature of step-family living, specially where maintaining good relationships with his children from a first relationship is his highest preoccupation.
