Working with stepfamilies: principles of practice

Harriette C. Johnson, Ph.D., is Assis tant Professor, School of Social Work, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York. An earlier version of this article was presented at a conference entitled "Symposium on the Family—A Chang ing Institution," sponsored by the School of Social Work Alumni As sociation, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York, January 1979. Despite the prevalence today of the connotation that it is a deviant, families that include stepparents and aberrant, or second-class form of the stepchildren, relationships among the "real" family, which consists of bio members of stepfamilies have received logical parents and their children, relatively limited attention in the proThe stigma and negative associations fessional literature. The preponderance attached to stepfamilies derive from of books that have appeared on steptwo cultural traditions: first, the families have either been "how to do "wicked stepmother" image from ar it" manuals or anecdotal accounts.1 chaic fairy-tale representations of the Accurate statistics on the number of family reconstituted after the death of adults and children who have become one parent; and second, the image of related through remarriage have not the contemporary stepfamily that is been compiled. It has been well docmost often the aftermath of divorce, umented, however, that a large and innot widowhood. Consider the ugly creasing number of marriages end in pictures of the jealous stepmother and divorce, that many of these marriages the tarnished divorcee: add the philan have produced children, and that the dering husband who abandons his fam majority of divorces are followed by ily for a home-wrecking temptress; and the remarriage of one or both partners.2 round out the myth with an image of Estimates of the number of stepfamilies the innocent victims—that is, the chil in this country range up to fifteen mildren—who must endure years of pain lion or more.3 and suffering because of their par Social workers frequently encounter ents' behavior. No wonder the result stepfamilies in a variety of settings, ing composite is the unsavory, less Although every family has features that than-whole, "reconstituted" family. In are idiosyncratic, several characthis scenario, parents are the objects of teristics of stepfamilies are inherent in blame, children are the objects of pity, the institution of the stepfamily itself, and some stigma attaches to all family Each of these phenomena is described members. in all or most of the existing works on The existing literature on step the subject. Nevertheless, practitioners families emphasizes the analysis of the sometimes fail to recognize these stepfamily as a psychological phenom situation-generated dynamics for what enon separate from its environmental they are and instead interpret them as context. With the exception of Duber being indicative of "family pathology." man, who has examined the stepfamily This article will attempt to cull from from a sociological perspective, too lit the literature the common charactie attention has been directed to the teristics of stepfamily relationships. It sociological and economic origins of is intended to provide a framework for the stepfamily.4 Stresses and tensions understanding these relationships that endemic to stepfamily relationships will be useful to practitioners in both have their roots in social conditions counseling and noncounseling situaarising from economic change and cui rions. To understand the origins of the turally conditioned beliefs and expec characteristics commonly seen in tations. The tendency to overlook these stepfamilies, it is first necessary to exorigins may result, in social work prac plore the sociological and historical tice, in a worker's making a "case" out contexts in which the present-day pheof a stepfamily—that is, in the worker's nomenon of remarriage involving chillooking for pathology and then applying dren has developed. a medical therapeutic model to treat it. Unfortunately, such an approach tends