ABSTRACT
Stepfamilies continue to present challenges and opportunities to family members, professionals, and scholars. Family communication scholars understand communication as the primary, constitutive social process by which relationships are formed and enacted as families are discourse dependent, developing and negotiating identities and expectations via interaction. Stepfamily communication researchers seek understanding on how stepfamilies develop and function in qualitatively similar and distinct ways from first-marriage families. The authors highlight main threads of research on stepfamily interaction: (a) communication and stepfamily development, (b) stepfamily strengths and functional stepfamilies, (c) stepfamily discourses and challenges, and (d) communication and stepfamily roles. The authors end with conclusions and future directions including translational work and understanding interaction in understudied stepfamily relationships, step- and half-sibling relationships, extended stepfamily networks, and cohabiting stepfamilies with the goal of understanding how members navigate fluid boundaries and uncertain role expectations in these families
