ABSTRACT
A stepmother came to the airport with her eight year old stepdaughter. The stepdaughter was going to visit her mother. The nuclear family has a kind of model monopoly when it comes to family forms. Because of the model monopoly or the ideological code of the nuclear family, our understanding of alternative family forms is seen with the eyes of the nuclear family. In the stepfamily household, the child will reside together with one parent, and the other parent if alive will reside in another household. The challenge is to develop a knowledge and understanding of the social reality of stepfamilies without using the nuclear family as a model. In contemporary Western societies when one marries the first time, “succeeding” is very important, even though one very well knows that it is difficult to live with another person, as also the high divorce rates indicate.
