ABSTRACT
Stepfamilies are common throughout Western, industrialized nations (Cherlin, 1992; Kiernan, 1992). In the United States, an estimated one third of all children will spend some time living with a remarried or cohabiting stepparent before they reach adulthood, and 60% of U.S. women will spend time over their life course in a stepparent household (Bumpass, Raley, & Sweet, 1995). The remarriage divorce rate is about 10% higher than the divorce rate of first marriages (Bumpass, Sweet, & Castro Martin, 1990) and serial cohabiting relationships have become more common. These demographic changes have created increasingly complicated family histories for stepfamilies (Wojtkiewicz, 1994).
