ABSTRACT
A few years into the 21st century, the older members of the baby boom generation will be of retirement age, and millions of their younger counterparts will be at the brink of leaving middle age. Among this cohort of older people will be unprecedented numbers of individuals who are stepparents and a higher proportion of divorced men and women than ever before. An unknown number of older people in the United States will have middle-aged stepchildren but no genetic or adoptive children. Even more will have both stepchildren and children of their own. Of this latter group, those who married multiple times (at least 25% of those who remarry) may have children and stepchildren from several different relationships. Extrapolating from studies of divorced parents of minor age children, an estimated 50% of those who divorced (usually fathers) will have little or no contact with the adult children of those marriages (Furstenberg et al., 1983).
