ABSTRACT
The past serves as a guide for the present and as a criterion against which to judge the present. As a guide, the past is used to set both a positive and a negative model for life in the current family. Sometimes the tendency to avoid repetition of past patterns and the failure of marriage associated with them leads families to insist on adopting the opposite of what they did in the past. The past is also used as a measure against which the present is judged, either overtly or in more subtle ways. The combination of past and present is represented in names, living arrangements, and orchestration of finances. Integrated stepfamilies perceive themselves as different from non-stepfamilies, sometimes to the point of emphasizing their uniqueness and negating any similarity to intact first-remarriage families. The difference from non-stepfamilies is conceptualized by integrated families as psychological, emotional, logistic, legal, and/or economic.
