ABSTRACT
One of the fastest growing family types in every advanced industrial nation has been the stepfamily. In order to better understand the special problems that stepfamilies pose, it is necessary to delve into the fundamental biosocial nature of human family life. The decline of marriage and the increase of divorce are, of course, the major contributors to the recent growth of stepfamilies. The nuclear family that predominated in the United States from the early 1800s through the 1950s probably represented, for most married women, a significant life improvement. The low birth rates and small average family sizes found in urban-industrial societies, therefore, may be considered an adaptive reproductive strategy. Through the institutionalization of cultural norms and sanctions, complex societies have become heavily devoted to socially controlling male and female sexual strategies. Paternal certainty may be an important, and is certainly a relatively unexamined, evolutionary insight to bear in mind when analyzing social conditions in modern societies.
