Weekend Warriors: Autonomy-Connection, Openness-Closedness, and Coping Strategies of Marital Partners in Nonresidential Stepfamilies

Introduction Cinderella is a fairytale about an innocent girl who suffers at the hands of her cruel stepmother. In contrast, the television show The Brady Bunch, a sitcom originally aired on ABC from 1969 to 1974 and run in syndication as reruns since its cancellation (Winans, 2008), depicts a blissfully happy blended stepfamily with six children able to solve any type of problem together. These examples portray extreme stepfamily situations; however, a real life stepfamily exists in a variety of structures, is characterized by numerous interpersonal tensions, and is not always easy to describe or understand. A stepfamily is created by a marriage into which either one or both spouses bring at least one child from a previous relationship (Ganong & Coleman, 2004). The number of stepfamilies in the United States has been steadily increasing. According to the United States Bureau of Census, 1,300 new stepfamilies form every day, and over 50% of United States families are remarried or re-coupled (Lofas, 2008). The average marriage in America lasts 7 years, and one out of two marriages ends in divorce, with 75% choosing remarriage (Berger, 1998). Likewise, over 40% of marriages in 2001 in England and Wales were remarriages (Pacey, 2005). Sweden leads the world divorce rate with 54.9% of new marriages ending in divorce (Americans for Divorce Reform, 2002). However, step relationships fail at the rate of two out of three, usually because of disagreement between the partners in the couple regarding the children (Lofas). Stepfamilies have existed throughout history. Remarriage has typically been considered an acceptable solution to the loss of a spouse. The new spouse replaced the deceased parent, allowing the bereaved family to move forward as a completed family unit (Ganong & Coleman, 2004). At the beginning of the 20th century, approximately one-fourth of all children in Western European and North American societies were members of a stepfamily (Berger, 1998). Today most stepfamilies form after divorce, resulting in the presence of a living nonresidential biological parent (Cohn, 2003). The new family structure created with additional stepparents is much more complex than the new family structure created with a replacement parent, possibly leading to additional problems (Ganong & Coleman). Nonresidential parents face many challenges when trying to stay connected to their children, including creating a comfortable second home for their children and establishing a working relationship with the custodial parent. The nonresidential parent is also faced with the task of carving out a new parental role. When the nonresidential parent is not able to physically interact with his or her children on a daily basis, he or she may feel emotionally disconnected (Frieman, 2003). Using a relational dialectics theoretical lens, one can see that relational life is characterized by ongoing tensions between contradictory desires. Individuals are not always able to resolve contradictions; however, they are able to manage the tensions through coordinated talk, allowing the relationship to survive (Baxter, 2004; Turner, 2003). Marital partners face internal and external dialectical tensions (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996). In regard to stepfamilies, researchers have stressed the need to move the focus beyond the residential stepfamily household to include the nonresidential parents and other nonresidential family members (Coleman, Ganong, & Fine, 2000). Researchers are beginning to focus on how stepfamily members manage dialectical tensions during interactions with nonresidential parents (Braithwaite & Baxter, 2006); however, this line of research has not been extensive. Stepfamilies are complex, fascinating, and frustrating. Although research regarding stepfamilies has increased over the past two decades, many unanswered questions remain concerning the wide variety of stepfamily relationships (Ganong & Coleman, 2004), specifically the often overlooked adult nonresidential stepfamily members. …