Divorce and remarriage have become normal life experiences in the United States, with about 43 percent of first marriages ending in divorce within 15 years and about 75 percent of spouses remarrying at least once, though the patterns depend on social class, age, race, and gender (Bramlett & Mosher, 2001, 2002). The system transformation required in divorce and remarriage is so complex in changing the status, relationships, and membership of families that we consider each transition to require an entire additional phase for families going through them. And an entirely new paradigm of family is required for conceptualizing divorced and recoupled families. This chapter will discuss the cycle of divorce and remarriage, describing families transforming and reconstituting themselves through marriage, divorce, remarriage, and re-divorce. If we visualize a family traveling the road of life, moving from stage to stage in their developmental unfolding, we can see divorce and remarriage as interruptions that put families on a new trajectoryadding additional family life cycle stages in which the physical and emotional losses and changes must be absorbed by the multigenerational system. The family, now in two or more households, continues its forward developmen- tal progress, though in a more complex form. When either spouse becomes involved with a new partner, a second detour occurs-requiring additional family life cycle stages in which the family must handle the stress of absorbing two or three generations of new members into the system and redefining their roles and relationships with existing family members.
We all carry into our new relationships the emotional baggage of unresolved issues from important past relationships. This baggage makes us emo- tionally sensitive in the new relationships: We may put up barriers to intimacy, becoming self-protective, closed off, and afraid to make ourselves vulnerable to further hurt, or we may become expectant that the new relationships will make up for or erase past hurts. These stances complicate new relationships.
In first marriages, the baggage we bring is from our families of origin: our unresolved feelings about parents, siblings, and extended family.
In divorce and remarriage, there are at least three sets of emotional baggage:
1.From the family of origin
2.From the first marriage
3.From the process and aftermath of separa- tion, divorce, or death and the period between. marriages
To the extent that either remarried partner expects the other to relieve him or her of this baggage, the new relationship will become problematic. On the other hand, to the extent that each spouse can resolve his or her own emotional issues with significant people from the past, and manage the extremely complex structure of the present, the new relation- ship can proceed on its own merits.
Over the long haul, remarriage appears more. stressful than divorce (Ahrons, 2007), especially the father's remarriage, which underscores the impor- tance of taking a family life cycle perspective when working clinically to keep focus on the longitudinal course of family life. For poor families, separating and recoupling, often without the legal protections of marriage, become even more complex. Linda Burton and her colleagues, who have been studying such families for many years have described their brittleness and the many difficulties for families living on the edge in the changing membership and structure of recoupling (Cherlin, Burton, L. M., Hurt, T., & Purvin, 2004; Bur- ton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton & Tucker, 2009; Burton, Cherlin, Winn, Estacion, & Holder-Taylor, 2009).
As the first marriage signifies the joining of two families, so a second marriage involves the interweaving of three, four, or more families whose previous family life courses have been disrupted by death or divorce. More than half of Americans today have been, are now, or will eventually be in one or more recoupled families during their lives (Kreider, 2006). At the turn of the twenty-first century, families with stepchildren living in the house- hold constituted about 13 percent of U.S. families (Teachman & Tedrow, 2004), although, of course, this does not begin to convey the extent of recou- pled families, remarried or living together, and the number of children in multi nuclear families who spend part of their time with stepsiblings. Indeed, stepfamilies are becoming the most common familly form, and estimates are that there will soon be more multi nuclear families than first families in the United States (CDC, 2008). Estimates are that one third of children will live with a stepparent, usually a stepfather, before adulthood (Amato & Sobolewski, 2004). Half of the marriages that occur each year are remarriages. Almost 50 percent of first marriages are expected to end in divorce and the majority of divorced individuals (more men than women) remarry (Kreider, 2006). Indeed, though stepfamily relationships have been neglected in family research and are not generally as strong as first family ties, remarriage creates an enlarged pool of potential kin who may come to have very important family bonds. These numbers do not include the frequently recoupling families of the poor who can rarely afford marriage and often have changing constellations of mothers, "other- mothers" and only sometimes fathers in the picture (Burton & Hardaway, 2012).
Overall our society still does not recognize transformed and reconstituted families as part of the norm. Only recently has family research included these families and norms for forming a recoupled family are only beginning to emerge. The complexity of remarried families is reflected in our lack of positive language and kinship labels, the shifting of children's sibling positions in the new family, and society's failure to differentiate parenting from stepparenting functions. The built in ambiguity of boundaries and membership in remarried families defies simple defi- nition, and our culture lacks any established language patterns or rituals to help us handle the complex relationships of acquired family members. The kinship terms we do have, such as "stepmother," "step father." and "stepchild," have such negative connotations that they may increase the difficulties for families trying to work out these relationships. In fact, the term "step" derives from the old English word for bereavement or loss, so it is meaningful to the context in which families are reconstituted into new family constellations. Constance Ahrons calls post-divorce families "binuclear," a term that is descriptive and non stigmatizing. We have expanded this to refer to multi-nuclear families, because in recoupling there are many times when three or four or more house holds must be considered at one time.
Our society offers stepfamilies two basic models, neither of which works. The media glorifies families that act like the Brady Bunch, where every body lives together happily ever after and there are no dangling ends. The alternative narrative involves the wicked stepparents of fairy tales. Many have referred to remarried families as "blended," but, as one of Patricia Papernow's (2013) families described it, they thought they were blending but in reality it felt more like blundering. Thus, our first clinical step is to validate for stepfamilies the lack of role models and support in the paradigms of remarried families. that society has offered.
We originally chose to use the term "remarried in our work to emphasize that it is the marital bond that forms the basis for the complex rearrange- ment of several families in a new constellation, but increasingly reconstituted families are not actually marrying, or at least not marrying for a while. Still, it is the couple's bond that makes them take the trouble to go through the complexities of family reforma- tion. So we sometimes refer to them as "recoupled" families or "stepfamilies" to indicate the presence of children from past relationships as part of the remar- ried system.
Forming a remarried family is one of the most difficult developmental transitions for a family to negotiate. Giving up forever the concept of simple and clear family membership and boundaries is no easy task. It is no wonder that the unresolved losses of the previous families so often lead to premature attempts at boundary closure in a new family. In any case, car- lier losses are very likely to be reactivated by the new family formation. Indeed, Montgomery, Anderson, Hetherington, and Clingempeel, (1993) found in their longitudinal study that living together before remarriage provided a beneficial in bettween stage of adjust- ment that reduced the trauma of remarriage, just as it can in first marriages. Much therapeutic effort must be directed toward educating families about the built in complexities of the process so that they can work toward establishing a viable, flexible system that will allow them to get back on their developmental track for future life cycle phases.
It is easy to understand the wish for clear and quick resolution when one has been through the pain of a first family ending. But the instant intimacy that remarried families often hope for is impossi ble to achieve. The new relationships are harder to negotiate because they do not develop gradually, as first families do, but begin midstream, after another family's life cycle has been dislocated. Children's sibling position frequently changes, and they must cope with variable membership over several house- holds. A child may be an only child in his mother's household, but an oldest child in his father's remar- ried household, where he now has two younger step- brothers. When his mother remarries, he becomes the youngest of four with her three teenage stepchil- dren. Naturally, second families also carry the scars of first-marriage families. Neither parents, nor children, nor grandparents can forget the relationships that went before and that may still be more powerful than the new relationships. Children almost never give up their attachment to their first parent, no matter how negative that relationship was or is. Having the patience to tolerate the ambiguity of the situation and allowing each other the space and time for feel- ings about past relationships are crucial processes in forming a remarried family.
The boundary ambiguities and complexities include issues of membership, space, authority, and allocation of time. Once a remarried family is formed, it becomes forever impossible to have a clear defini- tion (if it is ever possible anyway) of who exactly is related to you how. For example, is your stepfa- ther's first cousin your cousin and are his nephews your cousins? In terms of space, do you get to have a room in your father's house when you are there only twice a week and his stepchildren are there every day? As a young adult, can you move back home with your mother and stepfather if he is the one pay- ing for the house? In terms of authority, who gets to decide whether you go to private college and your stepsiblings to public college because their parents together cannot afford private college? Who gets to make the rules for you in your father and stepmoth- er's home? And in terms of time allocation, which children get to spend more time with their father, his children or his stepchildren? An additional boundary problem arises when instant incest taboos are called for, as when several previously unrelated teenagers are suddenly expected to view each other as siblings. All these ambiguities of relationship, membership, space, authority, and time are built in and can never again be clearly defined.
In our experience, the most powerful clinical tool for helping families negotiate these complex transitions is to provide information that normal- izes their experiences. Clinically useful research findings on divorced and remarried families inte- grated in this chapter come from the work of many authors. Duberman (1975) was one of our first role models in the exploration of these issues. The lon- gitudinal research of Hetherington, Clingempeel, Montgomery, and their colleagues (Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1977, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006; Hetherington-, Cox, & Cox, 1977; Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992), carried out in a remarkably comprehensive longitudinal research on hundreds of families in a broad project over several decades (summarized in Hetherington & Kelly, 2002), has been extraordinarily helpful to us in conceptual- izing the trajectories and complex experiences of families as they evolve over the life cycle. John and Emily Visher (1979, 1988, 1991, 1996) were among the staunchest advocates for positive think- ing about stepfamilies. Connie Ahrons (Ahrons, 1981, 1994, 2005, 2007; Ahrons & Rodgers, 1987) has been expanding our understanding of divorce and remarried families for decades. Paul Glick (1984, 1989) at the Census Bureau was a generous resource to us for many years through the detailed information he had in his head about remarriage patterns. Andrew Cherlin, Frank Furstenberg, and their colleagues (Cherlin & Furstenberg, 1994; Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1994; Cherlin, 1992, 2009; Cherlin et al., 2004) have also been teaching us about the demographics of marriage, divorce, and remarriage for many years. Cliff Sager and Sager's colleagues (1983), Lillian Messinger (1978), Mary Whiteside (1978, 1982, 1989, 2006), Anne Bern- stein (1989, 1994, 1999), James Bray (Bray & Easling, 2005), Pasley and Ihinger (1995), Pasley and Ihinger-Tallman (2008), and Patricia Paper- now and her colleagues (2013) have been pioneers contributing for many years to the family therapy field's understanding of the clinical issues of remarriage. And Linda Burton and her colleagues (Burton, Purvin, & Garrett-Peters, 2009; Burton & Tucker, 2009; Burton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton et al., 2009; Cherlin et al., 2004) have carried out extraordinary ethnographic research on the cou- pling and recoupling patterns of poor families, mostly Latinas and African Americans, for more than a decade. This chapter draws on the work of these researchers and clinicians, as well as our own clinical experience over the past four decades.
Although it is extremely hard to give up the idea of the "nuclear family" by drawing a tight loy- alty boundary around household members, exclud- ing outside parents or children who reside elsewhere is neither realistic nor appropriate. It is essential to acknowledge families' actual relationships and empower them to move forward taking those reali- ties into consideration. In earlier times, when fami- lies lived in larger extended family and community enclaves, children had a whole network of adults who cared for them and helped to raise them. That is the model that helps here. Families need to develop a system with permeable but workable boundaries around the members of different households, allowing children to belong in multiple homes, to move flexibly between households and to have open lines of communication between ex-spouses, children, their parents, stepparents, grandparents, and other relatives. Indeed, extended family connections and outside connectedness may be even more impor tant for children's well-being than they are in first families.
Because parent-child bonds predate the new marital bonds, often by many years, and are there- fore initially stronger than the couple bond, remar- ried families must allow for the built-in ambiguity of roles and the differential ties based on histori- cal connections. In particular, each parent needs to accept responsibility for his or her own children and not combat or compete with the other's parent-child attachments.
Previous experience with nontraditional gender roles may increase the flexibility necessary for stepfamily organization. Forming a remarried family requires a re-visioning of traditional gender roles. We must overturn completely the notion that the stepmother, just because she is a woman, should be in charge of the home, the children, or the emotional relationships of the system. Such a view fails to respect the family's history, that is, that the parent with the historical relationship with the child is the only one who can really be the primary par- ent. Traditional gender roles, requiring women to take responsibility for the emotional well-being of the family, have placed stepmothers in an unten- able position, through the expectation that she can automatically be "mother" to children with whom she has no connection (Martin, 2009). This pits her against the children's mother, a contest she is bound to lose. The traditional rules that called for women to rear children and men to earn and manage the finances do not work well in first-marriage fami- lies. They have no chance at all in a system in which some of the children are strangers to the wife.
In addition, the finances of remarried families include sources of income and expenditure that are not in the husband's power to generate or control (e.g., alimony, child support, and earnings of the ex- wife or current wife). These issues, in addition to the primacy of children's bonds to their original parents, make traditional gender roles completely inappropri- ate for remarried families.
For poor families, there are often even more difficulties: children raised with little connection to their fathers and often living with what Burton and her colleagues refer to as "othermothers," not really stepmothers, because the roles are not that stabi- lized and formalized and where children may need to deal with a series of partners their parents con- nect with, who may or may not take on parenting roles with them (Burton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton & Tucker, 2009).
The Divorce-Remarriage Cycle
Our concept of the divorce and post-divorce emo- tional process can be thought of as a roller coaster with peaks of emotional tension at all transition points:
•At the time of the decision to separate or divorce
•When this decision is announced to family and friends
•When money and custody/visitation arrangements are discussed
•When the physical separation takes place
•When the actual legal divorce takes place When separated spouses or ex-spouses have contacted about money or children
•As each child graduates, marries, has children, separates, remaries, moves, or becomes ill
•As each spouse forms a new couple relation- ship, remarries, re-divorces, moves, becomes ill, or dies
These emotional pressure points are found in all divorcing families though, of course, not nec- essarily in this order and many take place over and over again. A general depiction of the process appears in Figure 22.1.
In general, it appears to take a minimum of 2 or 3 years for a family to adjust to this transition-if there are no cutoffs and if all the adults are work- ing at it full tilt. Families in which the emotional issues of divorce are not adequately resolved can remain stuck emotionally for years, or even for gen- erations, although several years after the divorce, if the developmental tasks of divorcing and set- tling into the post-divorce transformed family are satisfactorily accomplished, there are few, if any, observable or testable differences resulting from having been part of a divorced family (Arkowitz & Lillienfeld, 2013).
The emotions released during the divorce relate primarily to the work of retrieving oneself from the marriage. Each partner must retrieve the hopes, dreams, plans, and expectations that were invested in the spouse and in the marriage. This requires mourn- ing what is lost and dealing with hurt, anger, blame, guilt, shame, and loss in oneself, in the spouse, in the children, in the extended family, and in the friendship network.
Hetherington (1977) found that in 70 percent of divorcing couples, at least one spouse is having an affair, but only a small percent later marry, suggest- ing that another relationship may help you through but not beyond the divorce. Younger women tend to re-divorce more frequently than older women. About 47 percent of women who remarry before the age of age 25 divorce within the next 10 years (Bramlett & Mosher, 2001). Those who are older at first marriage are less likely to divorce or re-divorce, as are those with more education and economic resources. Men tend to remarry sooner and more often than women, and Whites sooner and more often than people of color. Although first wives are on the average 3 years younger than their husbands, second wives are on average 6 years younger than their husbands. The more income and education a woman has, the less likely she is to remarry. The reverse is true for men: The more income and education he has, the more likely he is to remarry, and the sooner.
In all multi-nuclear families, childrearing responsibilities must be distributed in ways that vali- date the bond between original parents and the chil- dren they have raised. Each spouse must take primary responsibility for raising and disciplining his or her own children. Ex-spouses are hopefully responsible adults who can learn to cooperate with each other for the sake of their children. New spouses hopefully begin as benign caretakers and build from there. Contraindications for post-divorce arrangements of joint or shared custody should obviously include the following:
•Mental illness in one or both parents
•A history of violence, child abuse, or neglect
•Alcohol or drug abuse
In those situations, the need for collaboration between parents, extended family, and community resources will even be more important to children's safety and well-being. But, assuming neither par- ent is abusive, mentally ill, or involved in sub- stance abuse, children generally do better if they have regular contact with both parents. The more regularly children visit their noncustodial parent, the better their adjustment is likely to be. The more effectively custodial parents can function and the less parental conflict children are exposed to, the better the children's adjustment will be. Cordial or courteous, low-intensity relationships with the ex-spouse and the ex-spouse's new marital partner work best. It helps if therapists think of all parental figures as potentially enriching the children's sup- port network.
The emotional issues of remarriage go back at least to the disintegration of the first marriage. The intensity of emotion unleashed by the life cycle dis- ruption of divorce must be dealt with over and over again before the dislocated systems are restabilized. No amount of "dealing with" the emotional difficul- ties of divorce will finish off the process once and for all, although the more emotional work is done at each step, the less intense and disruptive the sub- sequent reactivations at later stages are likely to be.
The predictable peaks of emotional tension in the transition to remarriage occur at:
•The time of serious commitment to a new relationship
•The time a plan to remarry is announced to families and friends
•The time of the actual remarriage and forma- tion of a stepfamily, which take place as the logistics of stepfamily life are put into practice.
The emotional process at the transition to remarriage involves dealing with anxiety about investment in a new marriage and a new family; deal- ing with one's own fears and those of the new spouse and the children; dealing with hostile or upset reac- tions of the children, the extended families, and the ex-spouse; struggling with the ambiguity of the new family structure, roles, and relationships; re-arousal of parental guilt and concerns about the welfare of children; and re-arousal of the old attachment to the ex-spouse (negative or positive).
Failure to deal sufficiently with the process at each point may jam it enough to prevent remarried family stabilization from ever occurring, a problem that is reflected in the high rate of re-divorce.
The most common mistakes parents make are as follows:
1. Preoccupation with themselves and neglect of their children's experience, which follows from the conflicting life cycle tasks of parenting ver- sus new couple relationships or couple conflict
2. Treating the remarriage as an event, rather than a complex process of family transformation, which will take years
3. Trying to get children to resolve the ambi- guities of multiple loyalties by cutting off one relationship to create clarity in another.
The residue of an angry and vengeful divorce can block stepfamily integration for years or forever. The re-arousal of the old emotional attachment to an ex-spouse, which characteristically surfaces at the time of remarriage and at subsequent life cycle transitions of children, is usually not understood as a predictable process and may therefore lead to denial, misinterpretation, conflict, cutoff, and emotional reac- tivity. As with adjustment to new family structures after divorce, stepfamily integration requires a mini- mum of 2 or 3 years to create a workable new structure that allows family members to move on emotionally.
 Forming a remarried family requires a different conceptual model. When there are children, they are a "package deal" with the spouse. This is, of course, always the case with in-laws as well, but not in such an immediate way, since they do not usually move in with you! At the same time, just because you fall in love with a person does not mean you automatically love their children. So how do you take on a new family in mid-journey just because they are there and part of your spouse's life? That is often the hardest part of the bargain. The first thing is to conceptualize and plan for remarriage as a long and complex pro- cess. While more advance planning would be helpful also in first marriages, it is an essential ingredient for successful remarriage, because so many family relationships must be renegotiated at the same time: these include grandparents, in-laws, former in-laws, step-grandparents and stepchildren, half-siblings, etc. (Whiteside, 2006). The presence of children from the beginning of the new relationship makes establishing an exclusive spouse-to-spouse relation ship before undertaking parenthood impossible.
The prerequisite attitudes listed in Figure 22.1 are necessary for a family to be able to work on the developmental issues of the transition process. If, as clinicians, we find ourselves struggling with the fam- ily over developmental issues before the prerequisite attitudes have been adopted, we are probably wast- ing our efforts. For example, it is very hard for a par ent to help children remain connected to ex-in-laws who were never close or supportive unless the parent has fully embraced the new model of family. Much education and discussion may be required before a client can put into effect ideas that may seem counterintuitive, aversive, or time-consuming.
The relationship of the children and steppar- ent can evolve only over time as their connection develops and as an extension of the child's bond with the original parent. Stepparents can only gradually assume a role, hopefully friendly, as the partner of the child's parent. Unless the children are young at the time of the remarriage, the parent-and-child para- digm may never apply to the new parent. This is a life cycle reality, not a failure on anyone's part. Indeed, in the "othermother" research of Linda Burton and her colleagues, poor women are often especially resentful of raising someone else's children unless they have a special proclivity, perhaps from family of origin experiences to be a parent figure (Burton & Hardaway, 2012).
Predictable Issues in Remarriage Adjustment and family integration issues with stepparents and stepchildren
The stereotypes of stepparents are deeply blaming. Most difficult of all is the role of stepmother. The problem for her is especially poignant, since she is usually the one most sensitive to the needs of others, and it will be extremely difficult for her to take a back seat while her husband struggles awkwardly in an uncomfortable situation. The fact is that she has no alternative. Women's tendency to take responsi bility for family relationships, to believe that what goes wrong is their fault and that, if they just try hard enough, they can make things work out, are the major problems for them in remarried families, since the situation carries with it built-in structural ambiguities, loyalty conflicts, guilt, and member ship problems. Societal expectations for stepmoth- ers to love and care for their stepchildren are also stronger than for stepfathers. If stepfathers help out a bit financially and do a few administrative chores, they may be viewed as an asset, even though that is not a satisfactory parental role. But the expectation for stepmothers is that they will make up to children for whatever losses they have experienced, which is, of course, impossible. Clinically, it is important to relieve them of these expectations.
A stepmother's ambivalence about her parent- ing role tends to be particularly acute when step- children are young and remain in the custody of her husband's ex-wife. In this common situation, stepmothers tend to be less emotionally attached to the children and to feel disrupted and exploited during their visits. Meanwhile the husband's co- parenting partnership may appear to be conducted more with his ex-spouse than with her. Conflicting role expectations set mothers and stepmothers into competitive struggles over childrearing practices. It appears to be better for stepmothers to retain their work outside the home for their independence, emo- tional support, and validation. In addition to contrib- uting needed money, it makes them less available at home for the impossible job of dealing with the husband's children.
Along with finances, stepchildren are the major contributor to remarriage adjustment problems. Remarriage often leads to a renewal of custody diffi- culties in prior relationships. Families with stepchildren are much more complicated and twice as likely to divorce. Marital satisfaction is correlated with the stepparent's connection to stepchildren. Although the remarriage itself might be congenial, the presence of stepchildren often creates child-related problems that may lead the couple to separate. Some stepparents do not even consider their live-in step- child as part of the family, and stepchildren are even more likely to discount their live-in stepparents. Stepchildren are much more likely to change residence or leave home early than biological children. Children in stepfamilies may appear to have more power than children in first families, although they experience less autonomy than in the single-parent phase, where they typically have more adult privileges and responsibilities.
Stepparents need to take a slow route to parent hood, first becoming friends with their stepchildren, and only gradually assuming an active role in parent ing. It generally takes at least 2 years to become comanagers of their stepchildren with their spouses. For stepparents to compete with their stepchildren for pri- macy with their spouse is inappropriate, as if the couple and parent-child relationships were on the same hierarchical level, which, of course, they are not.
Stepfathers may get caught in the bind between rescuer and intruder, called upon to help discipline the stepchildren and then criticized by them and their mother for this intervention. Over-trying by the new parent is a major problem, often related to guilt about unresolved or unresolvable aspects of the system.
Overall, mothers, daughters, stepdaughters, and stepmothers experience more stress, less sat- isfaction, and more symptoms than fathers, sons, stepsons, and stepfathers. Stepmother-stepdaughter relationships tend to be the most difficult of all. Daughters, who are often closest to mothers in divorce, tend to have a lot of difficulty with stepfa- thers, no matter how hard the stepfather tries. Girls' stress probably reflects the fact that they feel more responsible for emotional relationships in a family and thus get caught between loyalty and protection of their mothers and conflicts with their stepmothers. While divorce appears to have more adverse effects for boys, remarriage is more disruptive for girls. Boys, who are often difficult for a single mother, may settle down after the entry of a stepfather.
Different issues arise when stepfamilies are formed after the premature death of a parent than after a divorce. Gender differences are a key factor. A new stepfather may be perceived as rescuing the family from poverty after the death of the primary wage earner, whereas children tend to view their mother as completely irreplaceable and resent any efforts of another woman to function in her role. However, young children will eventually accept a stepparent, including a stepmother, if the remaining parent can help the children to grieve for their loss before confronting them with a stepmother. When the father does remarry, he needs to help the children to accept the new person in her own right rather than collude with the children in wanting the family to continue in the same way it did when their mother was alive. On the other hand, if insufficient attention is paid to the children's grief work, they may never accept a stepmother. (For a videotape with com- mentary on a family dealing with these issues, see McGoldrick, 1996.)
Although the fact that the ex-spouse is not around to "interfere" may be an advantage, ghosts can be even more powerful, especially given peo- ple's tendency to idealize a parent who is lost prema- turely. It may be harder to recognize and deal with a triangle with a dead parent. Talking, remembering. and acknowledging the dead person's human failings and foibles help to exorcise the ghost, but none of this can be done without the active leadership of the surviving parent. Late adolescents or older children. generally resist attempts to "replace" their dead parent, and the wise stepparent will honor that position.
Violence and abuse appear to be much more common in stepfamilies than in first families (Brody, 1998), probably because of the system's structural complexity and the fact that they have not had time to develop relationship bonds, and many do not withstand the early stages of family reor- ganization. But the instability of remarried families should not be overstated. Remarried partners do not wait as long as partners in first families to leave an unhappy situation, and those who manage the early years have no greater likelihood of divorcing than in first marriages.
The stress of money
Money is a major area of conflict in remarried fami- lies. Remarriage often leads to reopening of financial battles from the divorce and to children receiving less support from their biological fathers. Traditional gender roles run completely counter to contemporary economics and to the fact that both parents usually enter remarriage with significant financial obliga- tions to the first family. Failure to pay or collect ali- mony or child support wreaks havoc in post-divorce families. A husband who is the sole wage earner in a remarried family often has to decide which set of children has top priority-his own or the stepchil- dren he lives with. These priorities are also influ- enced by his relationship with his ex-wife; if it is bad, his visits and child support payments tend to lag or even cease. A new wife may complain about the money her husband gives to his children, particularly if she does not receive the child support owed for her own children. Overall children in first families tend to receive more from their parents than chil- dren whose parents remarry. In affluent families, problems also surface around wills and how much financial assistance should be given to which adult children. Where money is concerned, blood may suddenly seem thicker than relationship.
Gays and lesbians in stepfamilies
A significant number of post-divorce families consist of a gay or lesbian couple with the children of one or both of them from a previous heterosexual marriage. These systems have all of the problems of hetero- sexual remarried systems in addition to the burdens of secrecy and isolation caused by the social stigma they have most likely experienced (Laird & Green, 1996). In extreme cases, the adults may feel that they have to try to remain closeted, even to their children, for fear of repercussions in custody or employment. There is almost always anxiety about the conse- quences of coming out to family (La Sala, 2010), the children's teachers and friends, co-workers, neigh- bors, and acquaintances. Therapists can be most helpful if, in addition to the usual therapy for remar- ried systems, they acknowledge the societal stigma that LGBT families experience and help the couple sift through their various networks to dismantle the secrecy and isolation wherever possible. Connection to supportive friends, community groups, and access to supportive literature can be extremely important.
The most complex remarried families, where both spouses bring children from previous relation- ships, tend to have the greatest difficulty establish- ing stability. All things being equal, it appears easiest if the previous spouse died, next easiest when the spouse is divorced, and hardest when the spouse has never been married, perhaps because some experi- ence with marriage appears helpful in a second mar- riage. Integration is more likely when children are not left behind by either parent, or when the new couple have a child together (although having a child to save the marriage is, of course, never a good idea). The longer the new family has together as a unit, the more likely they are to have a sense of family inte- gration. Developing a sense of belonging takes most family members 3 to 5 years, longer if there are ado- lescents. Remarried family integration appears more likely when extended family approves of or accepts the remarriage, next best when they disapprove or are negative, perhaps providing a "good enemy," and hardest when they are cutoff or indifferent.
Emotional issues: Anger, grief, pseudo-mutuality, loyalty conflicts, conflict and cutoff
Predictable feelings that come up in the process of remarriage are likely to include intense conflict, guilt, ambivalence, and anger about the previous spouse and children, denial of such feelings, and the wish to resolve the ambiguity. Remarried families are formed against a background of loss, hurt, and a sense of failure. Their "battle fatigue" often leads to a desire not to "rock the boat" this time, which leads partners to suppress doubt, conflict, and differ- ences that need to be dealt with, resulting in "pseudo- mutuality" that pretends total mutuality, covering over disagreements, and making current relation- ships all the more fragile in the long run.
Cutoffs are more common with the paternal extended family, and connections are more often strong with maternal relatives, but extended family relationships are often difficult. While children are quite prepared to have multiple sets of grandparents, uncles, and aunts, the middle generation can get caught up in conflicts, and managing relationships with such a large network of kin is complicated. Remarriage of either spouse tends to decrease contact between fathers and their non-custodial children. Divorced fathers tend to have more contact with their children if they have not remarried and even more if the mother has not remarried either. Once both parents have remar- ried, children are much less likely to have weekly con- tact with their non-custodial fathers. Remarriage of a former spouse tends to reactivate feelings of depres- sion, helplessness, anger, and anxiety, particularly for women. Men tend to be less upset by the remarriage of an ex-wife, possibly because it may release them from financial responsibility and because they are usually less central to the emotional system.
One of the hardest requirements for parents is to let their children express the full range of nega- tive and positive feelings toward all of their parents, stepparents, and half- and stepsiblings. Often par- ents want the child's whole allegiance. Children feel caught, afraid that if they do not love a new steppar- ent, they will hurt and anger one parent, but if they do love the stepparent, they are disloyal and will hurt or lose the love of the other. Another loyalty con- flict is the expectation for the new spouse to love the other's children as much as his or her own, which would be highly unlikely.
Remarriage at Various Phases of the Family Life Cycle
In general, the wider the discrepancy in family life cycle experience between the new spouses, the greater the difficulty of the transition and the longer it will take to integrate a workable new family. especially if the partners come from very different cultural backgrounds, which always increases the bridge-building necessary for a couple. A father of late adolescent and/or young adult children with a new, young wife who was never previously married should expect a rather strenuous and lengthy period of adjustment, during which he will have to juggle his emotional and financial responsibilities toward the new marriage and toward his (probably upset) children. His wife, looking forward to the roman- tic aspects of a first marriage, is likely to encounter instead the many stresses of dealing with adolescents who probably resent her, whether the children live with the couple or not.
If either spouse tries to pull the other into a life-style or attitude that denies or restricts the other spouse's family life cycle tasks or relationships with children from previous relationships, difficulties are likely to expand into serious problems. If the husband expects his new wife to undertake immediately a major role in his children's lives or to be the one who always backs down gracefully when her interests and prefer- ences clash with those of the children, serious trouble is predictable in the new marriage, as the formation of the new couple bond is continuously given second priority.
On the other hand, if the new wife tries, overtly or covertly, to cut off or loosen the tie between father and children or to take on the role of mother to them, or if she insists that her claims always get his prior attention, forcing him to choose between them, seri- ous trouble is also predictable. Variations in which the new wife claims to support her husband but embarks on a battle with his ex-wife as the source of the difficulties are equally dysfunctional.
Often the stepparent feels he or she knows what the other parent is doing wrong with his or her children and forcefully pushes these parenting ideas. Such efforts are very likely to jam the circuits for everyone the new couple, the stepparent/stepchild relationships, and extended family relationships, where people get called upon to choose up sides.
Since it is not possible either to erase or to acquire emotional experience overnight, it is useful to conceptualize the joining of partners at two dif- ferent life cycle phases as a process in which both spouses have to learn to function in several different life cycle phases simultaneously and out of their usual sequence. The new wife will have to struggle with the role of stepmother to teenagers before becoming an experienced wife or mother herself. Her husband will have to retraverse with her several phases that he has passed through before: the honeymoon, the new mar- riage with its emphasis on romance and social activities, and the birth and rearing of any new children of their own. Both need to be aware that a second passage through these phases automatically reactivates some of the intensity over issues that were problematic the first time. Attempts to "make up for" past mistakes or grievances may overload the new relationship. The focus needs to be on having the experiences again, not on undoing, redoing, or denying the past. With open discussion, mutual support, understanding, and a lot of thoughtful planning, this straddling of sev- eral phases simultaneously can provide rejuvenation for the older spouse and experience for the younger spouse that can enrich their lives. If the difficulties are not understood and dealt with, they will surface as conflict or emotional distance at each life cycle tran- sition and for each subsystem of the remarried family.
Spouses at the same life cycle phase
When remarried spouses come together at the same phase of the family life cycle, their greatest difficul- ties generally relate to whether they are at a child- bearing phase. Obviously, spouses with no children from previous marriages bring the least complexity to the new situation. Families with grown children and grandchildren on both sides have long and complex histories and will require careful thought to negoti- ate successfully. But neither of these circumstances provides nearly the degree of strain that families with young or adolescent children are likely to experience, where the roles of active parenting and stepparenting must be included in the new family. Unfortunately, the advantage of both partners having similar tasks, responsibilities, and experiences may easily drown in a competitive struggle that stems from the overload of tasks and concerns (six children are not as easy to raise or support as three), the intense emotional investment in good parenting ("My methods are bet- ter than your methods"), and the need to include both ex-spouses in the many arrangements regarding the children ("Why do you let your ex dictate our lives?").
Stepfamilies and young children
Children's struggles with the predictable issues may sur- face as school or behavior problems, withdrawal from family and peers, or acting-out behavior, all of which complicate or even obstruct the process of family reor- ganization. Indications are that preschool children, if given some time and help in mourning their previous loss, adjust most easily to a new stepfamily, while adjust- ment is most difficult for stepfamilies with teenagers. Latency age children seem to have the most difficulty resolving their feelings of divided loyalty and benefit from careful attention to their need for contact with both parents. Clearly, children of all ages suffer when there is intense conflict between their parents and benefit when they maintain civil, cooperative, co-parental relationships. If parents cannot be cooperative, tightly structur- ing the relationships is the next best alternative.
Stepfamilies with adolescents
Since the difficulties that most American families have with adolescents are legendary, it is not surprising that early adolescence seems the most difficult time for both boys and girls to adjust to their parents' remarriage. The additional complications of this phase in stepfamilies can push the stress level beyond manageable bonds. We have found the following issues common in stepfamilies at this phase.
1. Conflict between the remarried family's need to coalesce and the normal focus of adoles- cents on separation: Adolescents often resent the major shifts in their customary family pat- terns and resist learning new roles and relating to new family members when they are con- cerned with growing away from the family.
2. Stepparents get stuck if they attempt to disci- pline an adolescent stepchild.
3. Adolescents may attempt to resolve their divided loyalties by taking sides or actively playing one side against the other.
4. Sexual attraction may develop between step- siblings or stepparent and stepchild, along with adolescent difficulty in accepting the biological parent's sexuality.
The impact of remarriage in later life cycle phases
Although there is not the daily strain of having to live together with stepchildren and stepparents, remarriage at a post-childrearing phase of the life cycle requires significant readjustment of relationships throughout both family systems, which may now include in-laws and grandchildren. It is probable that grown children and grandchildren will accept a remarriage after a death of a parent more easily than after a late divorce. There is often great relief throughout the family if an older widowed parent finds a new partner and a new lease on life, whereas a later-life divorce usually arouses concern and dismay throughout the family, in part, perhaps, related to anxieties about who will care for the now single parents. But grown children may also surprise themselves and others with the intensity of their reactivity to an older parent's remarriage.
The strength of children's reactivity to a par- ent's remarriage, even after they believe that they have long ago resolved the loss or divorce of the parent(s), may overwhelm them. They may need coaching to find a way to incorporate a parent's new partner into their lives.
Adult children may fear the loss of inheritance when a parent (especially a father) remarries. They may also feel the new relationship is a betrayal of their own dead or divorced parent. Clinically, it helps to facilitate conversation about fears and expecta- tions to avoid shut down and cutoffs between adult children and their parents. The major factor in three- generational adjustment to remarriage in late middle or older age tends to be the amount of acrimony or cooperation between the ex-spouses and the adult child's degree of resolution of the death of the other parent. When the relationship is cooperative enough to permit joint attendance at important family func- tions of children and grandchildren and when holi- day arrangements can be jointly agreed upon, family acceptance of a new marriage tends to follow.
Clinical Intervention with Remarried Families
Whatever the presenting problem in a remarried family. it is essential to look laterally as well as back to previ- ous generations and to evaluate past relationships with previous spouses to determine the degree to which the family needs help to work out the patterns required by the new structure. Ongoing conflict or cutoffs with exspouses, children, parents, and grandparents will tend to overload the relationships in the remarried family and make them problematic. We consider genograms particularly essential in work with remarried families, because the structural complexity so influences the predictable triangles of these situations (McGoldrick, 2011; McGoldrick, Gerson, & Petry, 2008).
We next describe several predictable triangles in remarried families. In first-marriage families, the major problematic triangles involve the parents with any or all of the children and each parent with his or her own parents and in-laws. In the more complex structures of remarried families, we have identified six of the most common triangles and interlocking triangles presenting in multi-nuclear families. In no way do we mean to suggest by this focus that the triangles with the extended family and grandparen- tal generation are unimportant to the understanding and the therapy of remarried families. In our clinical work with remarried families, coaching of the adults on further differentiation in relation to their families of origin proceeds in tandem with work on current family problems (McGoldrick & Carter, 2001). Our experience indicates that families that are willing to work on relationships with their families of origin do better than those that are not.
Triangle between the new spouses and an ex-spouse
When a triangle focuses on conflict between new spouse and the old spouse with the partner in the middle, the usual issues are finances or sexual jeal- ousy. Underneath, it is likely that the ex-spouses have not accomplished an emotional divorce. The first step in the tricky clinical work around this triangle is for the therapist to establish a working alli- ance with the new spouse, who will otherwise sabo- tage efforts to focus on the first marriage. Efforts to work on the resolution of the divorce by seeing either the ex-spouses alone or all three in sessions together will probably create more anxiety than the system can handle. We have found that such work goes most smoothly when a spouse is coached in the presence of the new spouse to undertake steps out- side of the therapy sessions that will change his or her relationship with the ex-spouse. Along the way. the new spouse will have to learn to acknowledge the importance of that past bond to his or her spouse and to accept the fact that some degree of caring will probably always remain in the relationship, depend- ing on the length of time the first marriage lasted and whether there were children.
Triangle involving a pseudo-mutual remarried couple, an ex-spouse, and a child or children
In this triangle, the presenting problem is usually acting out or school problems with one or more chil- dren or perhaps a child's request to have custody shifted from one parent to another. The remarried couple presents itself as having no disagreements and blames either the child or the ex-spouse (or both) for the trouble. Although the request in ther- apy will be for help for the child or to manage the child's behavior, the background story will usually show intense conflict between the ex-spouses, the new spouse being totally supportive of his or her spouse in conflicts with that spouse's child. The first move in sorting out this triangle is to put the manage- ment of the child's behavior temporarily in the hands of the biological parent and get the new spouse to take a neutral position, rather than siding against the child. This move will probably calm things down, but they will usually not stay calm unless the pseudo- mutuality of the remarried couple is worked on, per- mitting differences and disagreements to be aired and resolved and permitting the child to have a rela- tionship with his or her original parent that does not automatically include the new spouse every step of the way. Finally, work will need to be done to end the battle with the ex-spouse and complete the emo- tional divorce, the lack of which is perpetuated by the intense conflict over the child or children.
Triangle involving a remarried couple in conflict over the child/children of one of them
The first of these triangles (stepmother, father, and his children), although not the most common house- hold composition, is the most problematic because of the central role the stepmother is expected to play in the lives of live-in stepchildren. If the stepmother has never been married before, and if the children's mother is alive and has a less than ideal relationship with her ex-husband, it may be an almost impossible situation. The stepmother should be helped to pull back long enough to renegotiate with both her hus- band and the children regarding what her role can realistically be. Rather than leave the stepmother and children to fight it out, the father will have to participate actively in making and enforcing what- ever rules are agreed upon. When their immedi- ate household is in order, the husband will have to work on establishing a cooperative co-parental rela- tionship with his ex-wife, or else his conflict with her will set the children off again and inevitably re-involve his new wife. If the first wife is dead, he may need to deal with his mourning for her and help his children to do the same in order to let the past go and not see his second wife as a poor replacement of his first.
When a stepmother is involved, the father needs to deliver two messages to his children:
1. Be courteous to my spouse (not "your" anything).
2. You are answering to me. You have not lost both your mother and me.
Triangle involving a pseudo-mutual remarried couple, his children, and her children
This triangle presents as a happily remarried couple with "no difficulties" except that their two sets of children fight constantly with each other. The children are usually fighting out the conflicts denied by the remarried couple either in the marriage or in the relationship with the ex-spouse(s). Since direct con- frontation of the pseudo-mutuality stiffens resistance, and since the presenting request is made in regard to the children, it is wise to begin with an exploration of the triangles involving the children and ex-spouses, focusing on the welfare of the children.
Triangle involving a parent, the biological children, and the stepchildren
As in the previous situation, this triangle may present as simple household conflict with the parent caught in the middle between his or her biological children and stepchildren. It is, in fact, quite complex, always interlocking with the triangle involving the remar- ried couple (who may have either a pseudo-mutual or a conflictual relationship) and the triangles with both ex-spouses.
Triangle involving remarried spouses and the parents of either
This triangle features the in-laws as part of the pre- senting problem, but it should be remembered that relationships with the grandparents' generation are as crucial in remarried families as they are in all other families, and their exploration should be a routine part of any evaluation. The presentation of the older generation as part of the current problem is most likely to occur if they have disapproved of the divorce and remarriage or have been actively involved in caring for their grandchildren before or during the remarriage.
Clinical Guidelines
We recommend the following general guidelines to help remarried families think of themselves as pio- neers, inventing new and workable structures:
•Give up the old model of family and accept the complexity of a new form
•Maintain flexible but workable boundaries to permit children to feel safe in shifting of household memberships
•Work for open lines of communication between all parents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren
It is surprising how often visitation decreases when either parent remarries. While the intention may be to have the child bond with the stepparent, the likelihood that strong and positive relationships will develop between children and their stepparents is diminished by a lack of relationship with the non- custodial parent. A parent's hope that the new spouse will step up and handle administrative arrangements with the ex-spouse, serious discipline issues and visi- tation arrangements are misguided at best.
The original parent should always remain in charge of the relationship with the ex-spouse and should always handle the disciplining of his or her own children. This should never be given over to the new spouse. But couples who feel worn out or frustrated with the previous partner make this mistake regularly.
When there are child-focused problems, we routinely contact an ex-spouse and invite him or her to meet alone or with the children to hear our opinion of the children's problems that have been brought to our attention by the remarried family. When we inform the family of our intention to do this, we are frequently warned that the ex-spouse in question does not care, will not respond, or is crazy. Neverthe- less, our phone calls frequently locate a concerned parent who is perfectly willing to come in, although warning us that our client is the one with problems. Ex-spouses can frequently be engaged in subsequent sessions alone or with the children.
Our general goal in working with remarried families is to establish an open system with workable boundaries and to revise traditional gender roles. This goal requires that the former spouses work through the emotional divorce, which we assume is not resolved if ex-spouses are not speaking or have continuous conflicts. The goal then is to create an open, working, co-parental relationship.
The following guidelines summarize our clini- cal recommendations:
1. Take a three-generational genogram and out line previous marriages before plunging into current household problems.
2. Educate and normalize continuously, regarding the predictable patterns and processes in remarriage, keeping in mind particular difficulties related to:
a. Family members being at different life cycle stages
b. The emotionally central role of women in families and their special difficulties in moving into a new system, where much is demanded of them
c. Couples trying to maintain the myth of the intact nuclear family
3. Beware of families struggling with develop- mental tasks before they have adopted the pre- requisite attitudes for remarriage: for example, a parent pushing a child and stepparent to be close without accepting that their relationship will take time to develop.
4. Help the family gain patience to tolerate the ambiguity and not "over-try" to make things work out. This includes accepting that family ties do not develop overnight. Encourage step- parents to understand that a child's negative reactions are not to be taken personally and help them tolerate guilt, conflicted feelings, ambivalence, divided loyalties, and so on.
5. Include the new spouse in sessions in which you coach the client to resolve his or her relationship with an ex-spouse, at least in the beginning or you will increase the new spouse's paranoia about the old spouse-and take the frequent characterization of an ex- spouse as "crazy" with a grain of salt. The list of the ex-spouse's outrageous behaviors may reflect the client's provocations or retaliations.
6. When the remarriage ends a close single- parent/child relationship, the feelings of loss of that special closeness, especially for the child, have to be dealt with and will take time.
7. If the child is presented as the problem, try to involve all parents and stepparents as early as possible in therapy. If joint sessions are held, discussion should be directed toward coop- erative work to resolve the child's difficulties, never torward marital issues. Children should never have the power to decide on remarriage, custody, or visitation. It is, of course, impor- tant to inquire from children their experiences, wishes, and preferences. But the responsibility for the ultimate decisions should always rest with the adults.
8. When problems involve child-focused uproar, put the child's original parent in charge tem- porarily. When the uproar subsides, coach the parent on ways to "move over" and include his or her spouse in the system-first, as a spouse only. Warn the family that the shift to active stepparenting usually takes several years and will require the active support of the biological parent. In the case of older adoles- cents, it may be unrealistic to expect the shift ever to occur to any great degree.
9. Work to get parents to define predictable and
adequate plans for visitation and to keep up relationships with the ex-spouse's extended family, and beware of the possible "hidden agenda" in any sudden proposals to rearrange custody, visitation, or financial arrangements.
10. Include work on the spouses' families of origin as early in treatment as possible.
Divorce and remarriage have become normal life experiences in the United States, with about 43 percent of first marriages ending in divorce within 15 years and about 75 percent of spouses remarrying at least once, though the patterns depend on social class, age, race, and gender (Bramlett & Mosher, 2001, 2002). The system transformation required in divorce and remarriage is so complex in changing the status, relationships, and membership of families that we consider each transition to require an entire additional phase for families going through them. And an entirely new paradigm of family is required for conceptualizing divorced and recoupled families. This chapter will discuss the cycle of divorce and remarriage, describing families transforming and reconstituting themselves through marriage, divorce, remarriage, and re-divorce. If we visualize a family traveling the road of life, moving from stage to stage in their developmental unfolding, we can see divorce and remarriage as interruptions that put families on a new trajectoryadding additional family life cycle stages in which the physical and emotional losses and changes must be absorbed by the multigenerational system. The family, now in two or more households, continues its forward developmen- tal progress, though in a more complex form. When either spouse becomes involved with a new partner, a second detour occurs-requiring additional family life cycle stages in which the family must handle the stress of absorbing two or three generations of new members into the system and redefining their roles and relationships with existing family members.
We all carry into our new relationships the emotional baggage of unresolved issues from important past relationships. This baggage makes us emo- tionally sensitive in the new relationships: We may put up barriers to intimacy, becoming self-protective, closed off, and afraid to make ourselves vulnerable to further hurt, or we may become expectant that the new relationships will make up for or erase past hurts. These stances complicate new relationships.
In first marriages, the baggage we bring is from our families of origin: our unresolved feelings about parents, siblings, and extended family.
In divorce and remarriage, there are at least three sets of emotional baggage:
1. From the family of origin
2. From the first marriage
3. From the process and aftermath of separa- tion, divorce, or death and the period between. marriages
To the extent that either remarried partner expects the other to relieve him or her of this baggage, the new relationship will become problematic. On the other hand, to the extent that each spouse can resolve his or her own emotional issues with significant people from the past, and manage the extremely complex structure of the present, the new relation- ship can proceed on its own merits.
Over the long haul, remarriage appears more. stressful than divorce (Ahrons, 2007), especially the father's remarriage, which underscores the impor- tance of taking a family life cycle perspective when working clinically to keep focus on the longitudinal course of family life. For poor families, separating and recoupling, often without the legal protections of marriage, become even more complex. Linda Burton and her colleagues, who have been studying such families for many years have described their brittleness and the many difficulties for families living on the edge in the changing membership and structure of recoupling (Cherlin, Burton, L. M., Hurt, T., & Purvin, 2004; Bur- ton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton & Tucker, 2009; Burton, Cherlin, Winn, Estacion, & Holder-Taylor, 2009).
As the first marriage signifies the joining of two families, so a second marriage involves the interweaving of three, four, or more families whose previous family life courses have been disrupted by death or divorce. More than half of Americans today have been, are now, or will eventually be in one or more recoupled families during their lives (Kreider, 2006). At the turn of the twenty-first century, families with stepchildren living in the house- hold constituted about 13 percent of U.S. families (Teachman & Tedrow, 2004), although, of course, this does not begin to convey the extent of recou- pled families, remarried or living together, and the number of children in multi nuclear families who spend part of their time with stepsiblings. Indeed, stepfamilies are becoming the most common familly form, and estimates are that there will soon be more multi nuclear families than first families in the United States (CDC, 2008). Estimates are that one third of children will live with a stepparent, usually a stepfather, before adulthood (Amato & Sobolewski, 2004). Half of the marriages that occur each year are remarriages. Almost 50 percent of first marriages are expected to end in divorce and the majority of divorced individuals (more men than women) remarry (Kreider, 2006). Indeed, though stepfamily relationships have been neglected in family research and are not generally as strong as first family ties, remarriage creates an enlarged pool of potential kin who may come to have very important family bonds. These numbers do not include the frequently recoupling families of the poor who can rarely afford marriage and often have changing constellations of mothers, "other- mothers" and only sometimes fathers in the picture (Burton & Hardaway, 2012).
Overall our society still does not recognize transformed and reconstituted families as part of the norm. Only recently has family research included these families and norms for forming a recoupled family are only beginning to emerge. The complexity of remarried families is reflected in our lack of positive language and kinship labels, the shifting of children's sibling positions in the new family, and society's failure to differentiate parenting from stepparenting functions. The built in ambiguity of boundaries and membership in remarried families defies simple defi- nition, and our culture lacks any established language patterns or rituals to help us handle the complex relationships of acquired family members. The kinship terms we do have, such as "stepmother," "step father." and "stepchild," have such negative connotations that they may increase the difficulties for families trying to work out these relationships. In fact, the term "step" derives from the old English word for bereavement or loss, so it is meaningful to the context in which families are reconstituted into new family constellations. Constance Ahrons calls post-divorce families "binuclear," a term that is descriptive and non stigmatizing. We have expanded this to refer to multi-nuclear families, because in recoupling there are many times when three or four or more house holds must be considered at one time.
Our society offers stepfamilies two basic models, neither of which works. The media glorifies families that act like the Brady Bunch, where every body lives together happily ever after and there are no dangling ends. The alternative narrative involves the wicked stepparents of fairy tales. Many have referred to remarried families as "blended," but, as one of Patricia Papernow's (2013) families described it, they thought they were blending but in reality it felt more like blundering. Thus, our first clinical step is to validate for stepfamilies the lack of role models and support in the paradigms of remarried families. that society has offered.
We originally chose to use the term "remarried in our work to emphasize that it is the marital bond that forms the basis for the complex rearrange- ment of several families in a new constellation, but increasingly reconstituted families are not actually marrying, or at least not marrying for a while. Still, it is the couple's bond that makes them take the trouble to go through the complexities of family reforma- tion. So we sometimes refer to them as "recoupled" families or "stepfamilies" to indicate the presence of children from past relationships as part of the remar- ried system.
Forming a remarried family is one of the most difficult developmental transitions for a family to negotiate. Giving up forever the concept of simple and clear family membership and boundaries is no easy task. It is no wonder that the unresolved losses of the previous families so often lead to premature attempts at boundary closure in a new family. In any case, car- lier losses are very likely to be reactivated by the new family formation. Indeed, Montgomery, Anderson, Hetherington, and Clingempeel, (1993) found in their longitudinal study that living together before remarriage provided a beneficial in bettween stage of adjust- ment that reduced the trauma of remarriage, just as it can in first marriages. Much therapeutic effort must be directed toward educating families about the built in complexities of the process so that they can work toward establishing a viable, flexible system that will allow them to get back on their developmental track for future life cycle phases.
It is easy to understand the wish for clear and quick resolution when one has been through the pain of a first family ending. But the instant intimacy that remarried families often hope for is impossi ble to achieve. The new relationships are harder to negotiate because they do not develop gradually, as first families do, but begin midstream, after another family's life cycle has been dislocated. Children's sibling position frequently changes, and they must cope with variable membership over several house- holds. A child may be an only child in his mother's household, but an oldest child in his father's remar- ried household, where he now has two younger step- brothers. When his mother remarries, he becomes the youngest of four with her three teenage stepchil- dren. Naturally, second families also carry the scars of first-marriage families. Neither parents, nor children, nor grandparents can forget the relationships that went before and that may still be more powerful than the new relationships. Children almost never give up their attachment to their first parent, no matter how negative that relationship was or is. Having the patience to tolerate the ambiguity of the situation and allowing each other the space and time for feel- ings about past relationships are crucial processes in forming a remarried family.
The boundary ambiguities and complexities include issues of membership, space, authority, and allocation of time. Once a remarried family is formed, it becomes forever impossible to have a clear defini- tion (if it is ever possible anyway) of who exactly is related to you how. For example, is your stepfa- ther's first cousin your cousin and are his nephews your cousins? In terms of space, do you get to have a room in your father's house when you are there only twice a week and his stepchildren are there every day? As a young adult, can you move back home with your mother and stepfather if he is the one pay- ing for the house? In terms of authority, who gets to decide whether you go to private college and your stepsiblings to public college because their parents together cannot afford private college? Who gets to make the rules for you in your father and stepmoth- er's home? And in terms of time allocation, which children get to spend more time with their father, his children or his stepchildren? An additional boundary problem arises when instant incest taboos are called for, as when several previously unrelated teenagers are suddenly expected to view each other as siblings. All these ambiguities of relationship, membership, space, authority, and time are built in and can never again be clearly defined.
In our experience, the most powerful clinical tool for helping families negotiate these complex transitions is to provide information that normal- izes their experiences. Clinically useful research findings on divorced and remarried families inte- grated in this chapter come from the work of many authors. Duberman (1975) was one of our first role models in the exploration of these issues. The lon- gitudinal research of Hetherington, Clingempeel, Montgomery, and their colleagues (Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1977, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006; Hetherington-, Cox, & Cox, 1977; Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992), carried out in a remarkably comprehensive longitudinal research on hundreds of families in a broad project over several decades (summarized in Hetherington & Kelly, 2002), has been extraordinarily helpful to us in conceptual- izing the trajectories and complex experiences of families as they evolve over the life cycle. John and Emily Visher (1979, 1988, 1991, 1996) were among the staunchest advocates for positive think- ing about stepfamilies. Connie Ahrons (Ahrons, 1981, 1994, 2005, 2007; Ahrons & Rodgers, 1987) has been expanding our understanding of divorce and remarried families for decades. Paul Glick (1984, 1989) at the Census Bureau was a generous resource to us for many years through the detailed information he had in his head about remarriage patterns. Andrew Cherlin, Frank Furstenberg, and their colleagues (Cherlin & Furstenberg, 1994; Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1994; Cherlin, 1992, 2009; Cherlin et al., 2004) have also been teaching us about the demographics of marriage, divorce, and remarriage for many years. Cliff Sager and Sager's colleagues (1983), Lillian Messinger (1978), Mary Whiteside (1978, 1982, 1989, 2006), Anne Bern- stein (1989, 1994, 1999), James Bray (Bray & Easling, 2005), Pasley and Ihinger (1995), Pasley and Ihinger-Tallman (2008), and Patricia Paper- now and her colleagues (2013) have been pioneers contributing for many years to the family therapy field's understanding of the clinical issues of remarriage. And Linda Burton and her colleagues (Burton, Purvin, & Garrett-Peters, 2009; Burton & Tucker, 2009; Burton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton et al., 2009; Cherlin et al., 2004) have carried out extraordinary ethnographic research on the cou- pling and recoupling patterns of poor families, mostly Latinas and African Americans, for more than a decade. This chapter draws on the work of these researchers and clinicians, as well as our own clinical experience over the past four decades.
Although it is extremely hard to give up the idea of the "nuclear family" by drawing a tight loy- alty boundary around household members, exclud- ing outside parents or children who reside elsewhere is neither realistic nor appropriate. It is essential to acknowledge families' actual relationships and empower them to move forward taking those reali- ties into consideration. In earlier times, when fami- lies lived in larger extended family and community enclaves, children had a whole network of adults who cared for them and helped to raise them. That is the model that helps here. Families need to develop a system with permeable but workable boundaries around the members of different households, allowing children to belong in multiple homes, to move flexibly between households and to have open lines of communication between ex-spouses, children, their parents, stepparents, grandparents, and other relatives. Indeed, extended family connections and outside connectedness may be even more impor tant for children's well-being than they are in first families.
Because parent-child bonds predate the new marital bonds, often by many years, and are there- fore initially stronger than the couple bond, remar- ried families must allow for the built-in ambiguity of roles and the differential ties based on histori- cal connections. In particular, each parent needs to accept responsibility for his or her own children and not combat or compete with the other's parent-child attachments.
Previous experience with nontraditional gender roles may increase the flexibility necessary for stepfamily organization. Forming a remarried family requires a re-visioning of traditional gender roles. We must overturn completely the notion that the stepmother, just because she is a woman, should be in charge of the home, the children, or the emotional relationships of the system. Such a view fails to respect the family's history, that is, that the parent with the historical relationship with the child is the only one who can really be the primary par- ent. Traditional gender roles, requiring women to take responsibility for the emotional well-being of the family, have placed stepmothers in an unten- able position, through the expectation that she can automatically be "mother" to children with whom she has no connection (Martin, 2009). This pits her against the children's mother, a contest she is bound to lose. The traditional rules that called for women to rear children and men to earn and manage the finances do not work well in first-marriage fami- lies. They have no chance at all in a system in which some of the children are strangers to the wife.
In addition, the finances of remarried families include sources of income and expenditure that are not in the husband's power to generate or control (e.g., alimony, child support, and earnings of the ex- wife or current wife). These issues, in addition to the primacy of children's bonds to their original parents, make traditional gender roles completely inappropri- ate for remarried families.
For poor families, there are often even more difficulties: children raised with little connection to their fathers and often living with what Burton and her colleagues refer to as "othermothers," not really stepmothers, because the roles are not that stabi- lized and formalized and where children may need to deal with a series of partners their parents con- nect with, who may or may not take on parenting roles with them (Burton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton & Tucker, 2009).
The Divorce-Remarriage Cycle
Our concept of the divorce and post-divorce emo- tional process can be thought of as a roller coaster with peaks of emotional tension at all transition points:
•At the time of the decision to separate or divorce
•When this decision is announced to family and friends
•When money and custody/visitation arrangements are discussed
•When the physical separation takes place
•When the actual legal divorce takes place When separated spouses or ex-spouses have contacted about money or children
•As each child graduates, marries, has children, separates, remaries, moves, or becomes ill
•As each spouse forms a new couple relation- ship, remarries, re-divorces, moves, becomes ill, or dies
These emotional pressure points are found in all divorcing families though, of course, not nec- essarily in this order and many take place over and over again. A general depiction of the process appears in Figure 22.1.
In general, it appears to take a minimum of 2 or 3 years for a family to adjust to this transition-if there are no cutoffs and if all the adults are work- ing at it full tilt. Families in which the emotional issues of divorce are not adequately resolved can remain stuck emotionally for years, or even for gen- erations, although several years after the divorce, if the developmental tasks of divorcing and set- tling into the post-divorce transformed family are satisfactorily accomplished, there are few, if any, observable or testable differences resulting from having been part of a divorced family (Arkowitz & Lillienfeld, 2013).
The emotions released during the divorce relate primarily to the work of retrieving oneself from the marriage. Each partner must retrieve the hopes, dreams, plans, and expectations that were invested in the spouse and in the marriage. This requires mourn- ing what is lost and dealing with hurt, anger, blame, guilt, shame, and loss in oneself, in the spouse, in the children, in the extended family, and in the friendship network.
Hetherington (1977) found that in 70 percent of divorcing couples, at least one spouse is having an affair, but only a small percent later marry, suggest- ing that another relationship may help you through but not beyond the divorce. Younger women tend to re-divorce more frequently than older women. About 47 percent of women who remarry before the age of age 25 divorce within the next 10 years (Bramlett & Mosher, 2001). Those who are older at first marriage are less likely to divorce or re-divorce, as are those with more education and economic resources. Men tend to remarry sooner and more often than women, and Whites sooner and more often than people of color. Although first wives are on the average 3 years younger than their husbands, second wives are on average 6 years younger than their husbands. The more income and education a woman has, the less likely she is to remarry. The reverse is true for men: The more income and education he has, the more likely he is to remarry, and the sooner.
In all multi-nuclear families, childrearing responsibilities must be distributed in ways that vali- date the bond between original parents and the chil- dren they have raised. Each spouse must take primary responsibility for raising and disciplining his or her own children. Ex-spouses are hopefully responsible adults who can learn to cooperate with each other for the sake of their children. New spouses hopefully begin as benign caretakers and build from there. Contraindications for post-divorce arrangements of joint or shared custody should obviously include the following:
•Mental illness in one or both parents
•A history of violence, child abuse, or neglect
•Alcohol or drug abuse
In those situations, the need for collaboration between parents, extended family, and community resources will even be more important to children's safety and well-being. But, assuming neither par- ent is abusive, mentally ill, or involved in sub- stance abuse, children generally do better if they have regular contact with both parents. The more regularly children visit their noncustodial parent, the better their adjustment is likely to be. The more effectively custodial parents can function and the less parental conflict children are exposed to, the better the children's adjustment will be. Cordial or courteous, low-intensity relationships with the ex-spouse and the ex-spouse's new marital partner work best. It helps if therapists think of all parental figures as potentially enriching the children's sup- port network.
The emotional issues of remarriage go back at least to the disintegration of the first marriage. The intensity of emotion unleashed by the life cycle dis- ruption of divorce must be dealt with over and over again before the dislocated systems are restabilized. No amount of "dealing with" the emotional difficul- ties of divorce will finish off the process once and for all, although the more emotional work is done at each step, the less intense and disruptive the sub- sequent reactivations at later stages are likely to be.
The predictable peaks of emotional tension in the transition to remarriage occur at:
•The time of serious commitment to a new relationship
•The time a plan to remarry is announced to families and friends
•The time of the actual remarriage and forma- tion of a stepfamily, which take place as the logistics of stepfamily life are put into practice.
The emotional process at the transition to remarriage involves dealing with anxiety about investment in a new marriage and a new family; deal- ing with one's own fears and those of the new spouse and the children; dealing with hostile or upset reac- tions of the children, the extended families, and the ex-spouse; struggling with the ambiguity of the new family structure, roles, and relationships; re-arousal of parental guilt and concerns about the welfare of children; and re-arousal of the old attachment to the ex-spouse (negative or positive).
Failure to deal sufficiently with the process at each point may jam it enough to prevent remarried family stabilization from ever occurring, a problem that is reflected in the high rate of re-divorce.
The most common mistakes parents make are as follows:
1. Preoccupation with themselves and neglect of their children's experience, which follows from the conflicting life cycle tasks of parenting ver- sus new couple relationships or couple conflict
2. Treating the remarriage as an event, rather than a complex process of family transformation, which will take years
3. Trying to get children to resolve the ambi- guities of multiple loyalties by cutting off one relationship to create clarity in another.
The residue of an angry and vengeful divorce can block stepfamily integration for years or forever. The re-arousal of the old emotional attachment to an ex-spouse, which characteristically surfaces at the time of remarriage and at subsequent life cycle transitions of children, is usually not understood as a predictable process and may therefore lead to denial, misinterpretation, conflict, cutoff, and emotional reac- tivity. As with adjustment to new family structures after divorce, stepfamily integration requires a mini- mum of 2 or 3 years to create a workable new structure that allows family members to move on emotionally.
 Forming a remarried family requires a different conceptual model. When there are children, they are a "package deal" with the spouse. This is, of course, always the case with in-laws as well, but not in such an immediate way, since they do not usually move in with you! At the same time, just because you fall in love with a person does not mean you automatically love their children. So how do you take on a new family in mid-journey just because they are there and part of your spouse's life? That is often the hardest part of the bargain. The first thing is to conceptualize and plan for remarriage as a long and complex pro- cess. While more advance planning would be helpful also in first marriages, it is an essential ingredient for successful remarriage, because so many family relationships must be renegotiated at the same time: these include grandparents, in-laws, former in-laws, step-grandparents and stepchildren, half-siblings, etc. (Whiteside, 2006). The presence of children from the beginning of the new relationship makes establishing an exclusive spouse-to-spouse relation ship before undertaking parenthood impossible.
The prerequisite attitudes listed in Figure 22.1 are necessary for a family to be able to work on the developmental issues of the transition process. If, as clinicians, we find ourselves struggling with the fam- ily over developmental issues before the prerequisite attitudes have been adopted, we are probably wast- ing our efforts. For example, it is very hard for a par ent to help children remain connected to ex-in-laws who were never close or supportive unless the parent has fully embraced the new model of family. Much education and discussion may be required before a client can put into effect ideas that may seem counterintuitive, aversive, or time-consuming.
The relationship of the children and steppar- ent can evolve only over time as their connection develops and as an extension of the child's bond with the original parent. Stepparents can only gradually assume a role, hopefully friendly, as the partner of the child's parent. Unless the children are young at the time of the remarriage, the parent-and-child para- digm may never apply to the new parent. This is a life cycle reality, not a failure on anyone's part. Indeed, in the "othermother" research of Linda Burton and her colleagues, poor women are often especially resentful of raising someone else's children unless they have a special proclivity, perhaps from family of origin experiences to be a parent figure (Burton & Hardaway, 2012).
Predictable Issues in Remarriage Adjustment and family integration issues with stepparents and stepchildren
The stereotypes of stepparents are deeply blaming. Most difficult of all is the role of stepmother. The problem for her is especially poignant, since she is usually the one most sensitive to the needs of others, and it will be extremely difficult for her to take a back seat while her husband struggles awkwardly in an uncomfortable situation. The fact is that she has no alternative. Women's tendency to take responsi bility for family relationships, to believe that what goes wrong is their fault and that, if they just try hard enough, they can make things work out, are the major problems for them in remarried families, since the situation carries with it built-in structural ambiguities, loyalty conflicts, guilt, and member ship problems. Societal expectations for stepmoth- ers to love and care for their stepchildren are also stronger than for stepfathers. If stepfathers help out a bit financially and do a few administrative chores, they may be viewed as an asset, even though that is not a satisfactory parental role. But the expectation for stepmothers is that they will make up to children for whatever losses they have experienced, which is, of course, impossible. Clinically, it is important to relieve them of these expectations.
A stepmother's ambivalence about her parent- ing role tends to be particularly acute when step- children are young and remain in the custody of her husband's ex-wife. In this common situation, stepmothers tend to be less emotionally attached to the children and to feel disrupted and exploited during their visits. Meanwhile the husband's co- parenting partnership may appear to be conducted more with his ex-spouse than with her. Conflicting role expectations set mothers and stepmothers into competitive struggles over childrearing practices. It appears to be better for stepmothers to retain their work outside the home for their independence, emo- tional support, and validation. In addition to contrib- uting needed money, it makes them less available at home for the impossible job of dealing with the husband's children.
Along with finances, stepchildren are the major contributor to remarriage adjustment problems. Remarriage often leads to a renewal of custody diffi- culties in prior relationships. Families with stepchildren are much more complicated and twice as likely to divorce. Marital satisfaction is correlated with the stepparent's connection to stepchildren. Although the remarriage itself might be congenial, the presence of stepchildren often creates child-related problems that may lead the couple to separate. Some stepparents do not even consider their live-in step- child as part of the family, and stepchildren are even more likely to discount their live-in stepparents. Stepchildren are much more likely to change residence or leave home early than biological children. Children in stepfamilies may appear to have more power than children in first families, although they experience less autonomy than in the single-parent phase, where they typically have more adult privileges and responsibilities.
Stepparents need to take a slow route to parent hood, first becoming friends with their stepchildren, and only gradually assuming an active role in parent ing. It generally takes at least 2 years to become comanagers of their stepchildren with their spouses. For stepparents to compete with their stepchildren for pri- macy with their spouse is inappropriate, as if the couple and parent-child relationships were on the same hierarchical level, which, of course, they are not.
Stepfathers may get caught in the bind between rescuer and intruder, called upon to help discipline the stepchildren and then criticized by them and their mother for this intervention. Over-trying by the new parent is a major problem, often related to guilt about unresolved or unresolvable aspects of the system.
Overall, mothers, daughters, stepdaughters, and stepmothers experience more stress, less sat- isfaction, and more symptoms than fathers, sons, stepsons, and stepfathers. Stepmother-stepdaughter relationships tend to be the most difficult of all. Daughters, who are often closest to mothers in divorce, tend to have a lot of difficulty with stepfa- thers, no matter how hard the stepfather tries. Girls' stress probably reflects the fact that they feel more responsible for emotional relationships in a family and thus get caught between loyalty and protection of their mothers and conflicts with their stepmothers. While divorce appears to have more adverse effects for boys, remarriage is more disruptive for girls. Boys, who are often difficult for a single mother, may settle down after the entry of a stepfather.
Different issues arise when stepfamilies are formed after the premature death of a parent than after a divorce. Gender differences are a key factor. A new stepfather may be perceived as rescuing the family from poverty after the death of the primary wage earner, whereas children tend to view their mother as completely irreplaceable and resent any efforts of another woman to function in her role. However, young children will eventually accept a stepparent, including a stepmother, if the remaining parent can help the children to grieve for their loss before confronting them with a stepmother. When the father does remarry, he needs to help the children to accept the new person in her own right rather than collude with the children in wanting the family to continue in the same way it did when their mother was alive. On the other hand, if insufficient attention is paid to the children's grief work, they may never accept a stepmother. (For a videotape with com- mentary on a family dealing with these issues, see McGoldrick, 1996.)
Although the fact that the ex-spouse is not around to "interfere" may be an advantage, ghosts can be even more powerful, especially given peo- ple's tendency to idealize a parent who is lost prema- turely. It may be harder to recognize and deal with a triangle with a dead parent. Talking, remembering. and acknowledging the dead person's human failings and foibles help to exorcise the ghost, but none of this can be done without the active leadership of the surviving parent. Late adolescents or older children. generally resist attempts to "replace" their dead parent, and the wise stepparent will honor that position.
Violence and abuse appear to be much more common in stepfamilies than in first families (Brody, 1998), probably because of the system's structural complexity and the fact that they have not had time to develop relationship bonds, and many do not withstand the early stages of family reor- ganization. But the instability of remarried families should not be overstated. Remarried partners do not wait as long as partners in first families to leave an unhappy situation, and those who manage the early years have no greater likelihood of divorcing than in first marriages.
The stress of money
Money is a major area of conflict in remarried fami- lies. Remarriage often leads to reopening of financial battles from the divorce and to children receiving less support from their biological fathers. Traditional gender roles run completely counter to contemporary economics and to the fact that both parents usually enter remarriage with significant financial obliga- tions to the first family. Failure to pay or collect ali- mony or child support wreaks havoc in post-divorce families. A husband who is the sole wage earner in a remarried family often has to decide which set of children has top priority-his own or the stepchil- dren he lives with. These priorities are also influ- enced by his relationship with his ex-wife; if it is bad, his visits and child support payments tend to lag or even cease. A new wife may complain about the money her husband gives to his children, particularly if she does not receive the child support owed for her own children. Overall children in first families tend to receive more from their parents than chil- dren whose parents remarry. In affluent families, problems also surface around wills and how much financial assistance should be given to which adult children. Where money is concerned, blood may suddenly seem thicker than relationship.
Gays and lesbians in stepfamilies
A significant number of post-divorce families consist of a gay or lesbian couple with the children of one or both of them from a previous heterosexual marriage. These systems have all of the problems of hetero- sexual remarried systems in addition to the burdens of secrecy and isolation caused by the social stigma they have most likely experienced (Laird & Green, 1996). In extreme cases, the adults may feel that they have to try to remain closeted, even to their children, for fear of repercussions in custody or employment. There is almost always anxiety about the conse- quences of coming out to family (La Sala, 2010), the children's teachers and friends, co-workers, neigh- bors, and acquaintances. Therapists can be most helpful if, in addition to the usual therapy for remar- ried systems, they acknowledge the societal stigma that LGBT families experience and help the couple sift through their various networks to dismantle the secrecy and isolation wherever possible. Connection to supportive friends, community groups, and access to supportive literature can be extremely important.
The most complex remarried families, where both spouses bring children from previous relation- ships, tend to have the greatest difficulty establish- ing stability. All things being equal, it appears easiest if the previous spouse died, next easiest when the spouse is divorced, and hardest when the spouse has never been married, perhaps because some experi- ence with marriage appears helpful in a second mar- riage. Integration is more likely when children are not left behind by either parent, or when the new couple have a child together (although having a child to save the marriage is, of course, never a good idea). The longer the new family has together as a unit, the more likely they are to have a sense of family inte- gration. Developing a sense of belonging takes most family members 3 to 5 years, longer if there are ado- lescents. Remarried family integration appears more likely when extended family approves of or accepts the remarriage, next best when they disapprove or are negative, perhaps providing a "good enemy," and hardest when they are cutoff or indifferent.
Emotional issues: Anger, grief, pseudo-mutuality, loyalty conflicts, conflict and cutoff
Predictable feelings that come up in the process of remarriage are likely to include intense conflict, guilt, ambivalence, and anger about the previous spouse and children, denial of such feelings, and the wish to resolve the ambiguity. Remarried families are formed against a background of loss, hurt, and a sense of failure. Their "battle fatigue" often leads to a desire not to "rock the boat" this time, which leads partners to suppress doubt, conflict, and differ- ences that need to be dealt with, resulting in "pseudo- mutuality" that pretends total mutuality, covering over disagreements, and making current relation- ships all the more fragile in the long run.
Cutoffs are more common with the paternal extended family, and connections are more often strong with maternal relatives, but extended family relationships are often difficult. While children are quite prepared to have multiple sets of grandparents, uncles, and aunts, the middle generation can get caught up in conflicts, and managing relationships with such a large network of kin is complicated. Remarriage of either spouse tends to decrease contact between fathers and their non-custodial children. Divorced fathers tend to have more contact with their children if they have not remarried and even more if the mother has not remarried either. Once both parents have remar- ried, children are much less likely to have weekly con- tact with their non-custodial fathers. Remarriage of a former spouse tends to reactivate feelings of depres- sion, helplessness, anger, and anxiety, particularly for women. Men tend to be less upset by the remarriage of an ex-wife, possibly because it may release them from financial responsibility and because they are usually less central to the emotional system.
One of the hardest requirements for parents is to let their children express the full range of nega- tive and positive feelings toward all of their parents, stepparents, and half- and stepsiblings. Often par- ents want the child's whole allegiance. Children feel caught, afraid that if they do not love a new steppar- ent, they will hurt and anger one parent, but if they do love the stepparent, they are disloyal and will hurt or lose the love of the other. Another loyalty con- flict is the expectation for the new spouse to love the other's children as much as his or her own, which would be highly unlikely.
Remarriage at Various Phases of the Family Life Cycle
In general, the wider the discrepancy in family life cycle experience between the new spouses, the greater the difficulty of the transition and the longer it will take to integrate a workable new family. especially if the partners come from very different cultural backgrounds, which always increases the bridge-building necessary for a couple. A father of late adolescent and/or young adult children with a new, young wife who was never previously married should expect a rather strenuous and lengthy period of adjustment, during which he will have to juggle his emotional and financial responsibilities toward the new marriage and toward his (probably upset) children. His wife, looking forward to the roman- tic aspects of a first marriage, is likely to encounter instead the many stresses of dealing with adolescents who probably resent her, whether the children live with the couple or not.
If either spouse tries to pull the other into a life-style or attitude that denies or restricts the other spouse's family life cycle tasks or relationships with children from previous relationships, difficulties are likely to expand into serious problems. If the husband expects his new wife to undertake immediately a major role in his children's lives or to be the one who always backs down gracefully when her interests and prefer- ences clash with those of the children, serious trouble is predictable in the new marriage, as the formation of the new couple bond is continuously given second priority.
On the other hand, if the new wife tries, overtly or covertly, to cut off or loosen the tie between father and children or to take on the role of mother to them, or if she insists that her claims always get his prior attention, forcing him to choose between them, seri- ous trouble is also predictable. Variations in which the new wife claims to support her husband but embarks on a battle with his ex-wife as the source of the difficulties are equally dysfunctional.
Often the stepparent feels he or she knows what the other parent is doing wrong with his or her children and forcefully pushes these parenting ideas. Such efforts are very likely to jam the circuits for everyone the new couple, the stepparent/stepchild relationships, and extended family relationships, where people get called upon to choose up sides.
Since it is not possible either to erase or to acquire emotional experience overnight, it is useful to conceptualize the joining of partners at two dif- ferent life cycle phases as a process in which both spouses have to learn to function in several different life cycle phases simultaneously and out of their usual sequence. The new wife will have to struggle with the role of stepmother to teenagers before becoming an experienced wife or mother herself. Her husband will have to retraverse with her several phases that he has passed through before: the honeymoon, the new mar- riage with its emphasis on romance and social activities, and the birth and rearing of any new children of their own. Both need to be aware that a second passage through these phases automatically reactivates some of the intensity over issues that were problematic the first time. Attempts to "make up for" past mistakes or grievances may overload the new relationship. The focus needs to be on having the experiences again, not on undoing, redoing, or denying the past. With open discussion, mutual support, understanding, and a lot of thoughtful planning, this straddling of sev- eral phases simultaneously can provide rejuvenation for the older spouse and experience for the younger spouse that can enrich their lives. If the difficulties are not understood and dealt with, they will surface as conflict or emotional distance at each life cycle tran- sition and for each subsystem of the remarried family.
Spouses at the same life cycle phase
When remarried spouses come together at the same phase of the family life cycle, their greatest difficul- ties generally relate to whether they are at a child- bearing phase. Obviously, spouses with no children from previous marriages bring the least complexity to the new situation. Families with grown children and grandchildren on both sides have long and complex histories and will require careful thought to negoti- ate successfully. But neither of these circumstances provides nearly the degree of strain that families with young or adolescent children are likely to experience, where the roles of active parenting and stepparenting must be included in the new family. Unfortunately, the advantage of both partners having similar tasks, responsibilities, and experiences may easily drown in a competitive struggle that stems from the overload of tasks and concerns (six children are not as easy to raise or support as three), the intense emotional investment in good parenting ("My methods are bet- ter than your methods"), and the need to include both ex-spouses in the many arrangements regarding the children ("Why do you let your ex dictate our lives?").
Stepfamilies and young children
Children's struggles with the predictable issues may sur- face as school or behavior problems, withdrawal from family and peers, or acting-out behavior, all of which complicate or even obstruct the process of family reor- ganization. Indications are that preschool children, if given some time and help in mourning their previous loss, adjust most easily to a new stepfamily, while adjust- ment is most difficult for stepfamilies with teenagers. Latency age children seem to have the most difficulty resolving their feelings of divided loyalty and benefit from careful attention to their need for contact with both parents. Clearly, children of all ages suffer when there is intense conflict between their parents and benefit when they maintain civil, cooperative, co-parental relationships. If parents cannot be cooperative, tightly structur- ing the relationships is the next best alternative.
Stepfamilies with adolescents
Since the difficulties that most American families have with adolescents are legendary, it is not surprising that early adolescence seems the most difficult time for both boys and girls to adjust to their parents' remarriage. The additional complications of this phase in stepfamilies can push the stress level beyond manageable bonds. We have found the following issues common in stepfamilies at this phase.
1. Conflict between the remarried family's need to coalesce and the normal focus of adoles- cents on separation: Adolescents often resent the major shifts in their customary family pat- terns and resist learning new roles and relating to new family members when they are con- cerned with growing away from the family.
2. Stepparents get stuck if they attempt to disci- pline an adolescent stepchild.
3. Adolescents may attempt to resolve their divided loyalties by taking sides or actively playing one side against the other.
4. Sexual attraction may develop between step- siblings or stepparent and stepchild, along with adolescent difficulty in accepting the biological parent's sexuality.
The impact of remarriage in later life cycle phases
Although there is not the daily strain of having to live together with stepchildren and stepparents, remarriage at a post-childrearing phase of the life cycle requires significant readjustment of relationships throughout both family systems, which may now include in-laws and grandchildren. It is probable that grown children and grandchildren will accept a remarriage after a death of a parent more easily than after a late divorce. There is often great relief throughout the family if an older widowed parent finds a new partner and a new lease on life, whereas a later-life divorce usually arouses concern and dismay throughout the family, in part, perhaps, related to anxieties about who will care for the now single parents. But grown children may also surprise themselves and others with the intensity of their reactivity to an older parent's remarriage.
The strength of children's reactivity to a par- ent's remarriage, even after they believe that they have long ago resolved the loss or divorce of the parent(s), may overwhelm them. They may need coaching to find a way to incorporate a parent's new partner into their lives.
Adult children may fear the loss of inheritance when a parent (especially a father) remarries. They may also feel the new relationship is a betrayal of their own dead or divorced parent. Clinically, it helps to facilitate conversation about fears and expecta- tions to avoid shut down and cutoffs between adult children and their parents. The major factor in three- generational adjustment to remarriage in late middle or older age tends to be the amount of acrimony or cooperation between the ex-spouses and the adult child's degree of resolution of the death of the other parent. When the relationship is cooperative enough to permit joint attendance at important family func- tions of children and grandchildren and when holi- day arrangements can be jointly agreed upon, family acceptance of a new marriage tends to follow.
Clinical Intervention with Remarried Families
Whatever the presenting problem in a remarried family. it is essential to look laterally as well as back to previ- ous generations and to evaluate past relationships with previous spouses to determine the degree to which the family needs help to work out the patterns required by the new structure. Ongoing conflict or cutoffs with exspouses, children, parents, and grandparents will tend to overload the relationships in the remarried family and make them problematic. We consider genograms particularly essential in work with remarried families, because the structural complexity so influences the predictable triangles of these situations (McGoldrick, 2011; McGoldrick, Gerson, & Petry, 2008).
We next describe several predictable triangles in remarried families. In first-marriage families, the major problematic triangles involve the parents with any or all of the children and each parent with his or her own parents and in-laws. In the more complex structures of remarried families, we have identified six of the most common triangles and interlocking triangles presenting in multi-nuclear families. In no way do we mean to suggest by this focus that the triangles with the extended family and grandparen- tal generation are unimportant to the understanding and the therapy of remarried families. In our clinical work with remarried families, coaching of the adults on further differentiation in relation to their families of origin proceeds in tandem with work on current family problems (McGoldrick & Carter, 2001). Our experience indicates that families that are willing to work on relationships with their families of origin do better than those that are not.
Triangle between the new spouses and an ex-spouse
When a triangle focuses on conflict between new spouse and the old spouse with the partner in the middle, the usual issues are finances or sexual jeal- ousy. Underneath, it is likely that the ex-spouses have not accomplished an emotional divorce. The first step in the tricky clinical work around this triangle is for the therapist to establish a working alli- ance with the new spouse, who will otherwise sabo- tage efforts to focus on the first marriage. Efforts to work on the resolution of the divorce by seeing either the ex-spouses alone or all three in sessions together will probably create more anxiety than the system can handle. We have found that such work goes most smoothly when a spouse is coached in the presence of the new spouse to undertake steps out- side of the therapy sessions that will change his or her relationship with the ex-spouse. Along the way. the new spouse will have to learn to acknowledge the importance of that past bond to his or her spouse and to accept the fact that some degree of caring will probably always remain in the relationship, depend- ing on the length of time the first marriage lasted and whether there were children.
Triangle involving a pseudo-mutual remarried couple, an ex-spouse, and a child or children
In this triangle, the presenting problem is usually acting out or school problems with one or more chil- dren or perhaps a child's request to have custody shifted from one parent to another. The remarried couple presents itself as having no disagreements and blames either the child or the ex-spouse (or both) for the trouble. Although the request in ther- apy will be for help for the child or to manage the child's behavior, the background story will usually show intense conflict between the ex-spouses, the new spouse being totally supportive of his or her spouse in conflicts with that spouse's child. The first move in sorting out this triangle is to put the manage- ment of the child's behavior temporarily in the hands of the biological parent and get the new spouse to take a neutral position, rather than siding against the child. This move will probably calm things down, but they will usually not stay calm unless the pseudo- mutuality of the remarried couple is worked on, per- mitting differences and disagreements to be aired and resolved and permitting the child to have a rela- tionship with his or her original parent that does not automatically include the new spouse every step of the way. Finally, work will need to be done to end the battle with the ex-spouse and complete the emo- tional divorce, the lack of which is perpetuated by the intense conflict over the child or children.
Triangle involving a remarried couple in conflict over the child/children of one of them
The first of these triangles (stepmother, father, and his children), although not the most common house- hold composition, is the most problematic because of the central role the stepmother is expected to play in the lives of live-in stepchildren. If the stepmother has never been married before, and if the children's mother is alive and has a less than ideal relationship with her ex-husband, it may be an almost impossible situation. The stepmother should be helped to pull back long enough to renegotiate with both her hus- band and the children regarding what her role can realistically be. Rather than leave the stepmother and children to fight it out, the father will have to participate actively in making and enforcing what- ever rules are agreed upon. When their immedi- ate household is in order, the husband will have to work on establishing a cooperative co-parental rela- tionship with his ex-wife, or else his conflict with her will set the children off again and inevitably re-involve his new wife. If the first wife is dead, he may need to deal with his mourning for her and help his children to do the same in order to let the past go and not see his second wife as a poor replacement of his first.
When a stepmother is involved, the father needs to deliver two messages to his children:
1. Be courteous to my spouse (not "your" anything).
2. You are answering to me. You have not lost both your mother and me.
Triangle involving a pseudo-mutual remarried couple, his children, and her children
This triangle presents as a happily remarried couple with "no difficulties" except that their two sets of children fight constantly with each other. The children are usually fighting out the conflicts denied by the remarried couple either in the marriage or in the relationship with the ex-spouse(s). Since direct con- frontation of the pseudo-mutuality stiffens resistance, and since the presenting request is made in regard to the children, it is wise to begin with an exploration of the triangles involving the children and ex-spouses, focusing on the welfare of the children.
Triangle involving a parent, the biological children, and the stepchildren
As in the previous situation, this triangle may present as simple household conflict with the parent caught in the middle between his or her biological children and stepchildren. It is, in fact, quite complex, always interlocking with the triangle involving the remar- ried couple (who may have either a pseudo-mutual or a conflictual relationship) and the triangles with both ex-spouses.
Triangle involving remarried spouses and the parents of either
This triangle features the in-laws as part of the pre- senting problem, but it should be remembered that relationships with the grandparents' generation are as crucial in remarried families as they are in all other families, and their exploration should be a routine part of any evaluation. The presentation of the older generation as part of the current problem is most likely to occur if they have disapproved of the divorce and remarriage or have been actively involved in caring for their grandchildren before or during the remarriage.
Clinical Guidelines
We recommend the following general guidelines to help remarried families think of themselves as pio- neers, inventing new and workable structures:
•Give up the old model of family and accept the complexity of a new form
•Maintain flexible but workable boundaries to permit children to feel safe in shifting of household memberships
•Work for open lines of communication between all parents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren
It is surprising how often visitation decreases when either parent remarries. While the intention may be to have the child bond with the stepparent, the likelihood that strong and positive relationships will develop between children and their stepparents is diminished by a lack of relationship with the non- custodial parent. A parent's hope that the new spouse will step up and handle administrative arrangements with the ex-spouse, serious discipline issues and visi- tation arrangements are misguided at best.
The original parent should always remain in charge of the relationship with the ex-spouse and should always handle the disciplining of his or her own children. This should never be given over to the new spouse. But couples who feel worn out or frustrated with the previous partner make this mistake regularly.
When there are child-focused problems, we routinely contact an ex-spouse and invite him or her to meet alone or with the children to hear our opinion of the children's problems that have been brought to our attention by the remarried family. When we inform the family of our intention to do this, we are frequently warned that the ex-spouse in question does not care, will not respond, or is crazy. Neverthe- less, our phone calls frequently locate a concerned parent who is perfectly willing to come in, although warning us that our client is the one with problems. Ex-spouses can frequently be engaged in subsequent sessions alone or with the children.
Our general goal in working with remarried families is to establish an open system with workable boundaries and to revise traditional gender roles. This goal requires that the former spouses work through the emotional divorce, which we assume is not resolved if ex-spouses are not speaking or have continuous conflicts. The goal then is to create an open, working, co-parental relationship.
The following guidelines summarize our clini- cal recommendations:
1.Take a three-generational genogram and out line previous marriages before plunging into current household problems.
2.Educate and normalize continuously, regarding the predictable patterns and processes in remarriage, keeping in mind particular difficulties related to:
a.Family members being at different life cycle stages
b.The emotionally central role of women in families and their special difficulties in moving into a new system, where much is demanded of them
c.Couples trying to maintain the myth of the intact nuclear family
3.Beware of families struggling with develop- mental tasks before they have adopted the pre- requisite attitudes for remarriage: for example, a parent pushing a child and stepparent to be close without accepting that their relationship will take time to develop.
4.Help the family gain patience to tolerate the ambiguity and not "over-try" to make things work out. This includes accepting that family ties do not develop overnight. Encourage step- parents to understand that a child's negative reactions are not to be taken personally and help them tolerate guilt, conflicted feelings, ambivalence, divided loyalties, and so on.
5.Include the new spouse in sessions in which you coach the client to resolve his or her relationship with an ex-spouse, at least in the beginning or you will increase the new spouse's paranoia about the old spouse-and take the frequent characterization of an ex- spouse as "crazy" with a grain of salt. The list of the ex-spouse's outrageous behaviors may reflect the client's provocations or retaliations.
6.When the remarriage ends a close single- parent/child relationship, the feelings of loss of that special closeness, especially for the child, have to be dealt with and will take time.
7.If the child is presented as the problem, try to involve all parents and stepparents as early as possible in therapy. If joint sessions are held, discussion should be directed toward coop- erative work to resolve the child's difficulties, never torward marital issues. Children should never have the power to decide on remarriage, custody, or visitation. It is, of course, impor- tant to inquire from children their experiences, wishes, and preferences. But the responsibility for the ultimate decisions should always rest with the adults.
8.When problems involve child-focused uproar, put the child's original parent in charge tem- porarily. When the uproar subsides, coach the parent on ways to "move over" and include his or her spouse in the system-first, as a spouse only. Warn the family that the shift to active stepparenting usually takes several years and will require the active support of the biological parent. In the case of older adoles- cents, it may be unrealistic to expect the shift ever to occur to any great degree.
9.Work to get parents to define predictable and adequate plans for visitation and to keep up relationships with the ex-spouse's extended family, and beware of the possible "hidden agenda" in any sudden proposals to rearrange custody, visitation, or financial arrangements.
10.Include work on the spouses' families of origin as early in treatment as possible.
Divorce and remarriage have become normal life experiences in the United States, with about 43 percent of first marriages ending in divorce within 15 years and about 75 percent of spouses remarrying at least once, though the patterns depend on social class, age, race, and gender (Bramlett & Mosher, 2001, 2002). The system transformation required in divorce and remarriage is so complex in changing the status, relationships, and membership of families that we consider each transition to require an entire additional phase for families going through them. And an entirely new paradigm of family is required for conceptualizing divorced and recoupled families. This chapter will discuss the cycle of divorce and remarriage, describing families transforming and reconstituting themselves through marriage, divorce, remarriage, and re-divorce. If we visualize a family traveling the road of life, moving from stage to stage in their developmental unfolding, we can see divorce and remarriage as interruptions that put families on a new trajectoryadding additional family life cycle stages in which the physical and emotional losses and changes must be absorbed by the multigenerational system. The family, now in two or more households, continues its forward developmen- tal progress, though in a more complex form. When either spouse becomes involved with a new partner, a second detour occurs-requiring additional family life cycle stages in which the family must handle the stress of absorbing two or three generations of new members into the system and redefining their roles and relationships with existing family members.
We all carry into our new relationships the emotional baggage of unresolved issues from important past relationships. This baggage makes us emo- tionally sensitive in the new relationships: We may put up barriers to intimacy, becoming self-protective, closed off, and afraid to make ourselves vulnerable to further hurt, or we may become expectant that the new relationships will make up for or erase past hurts. These stances complicate new relationships.
In first marriages, the baggage we bring is from our families of origin: our unresolved feelings about parents, siblings, and extended family.
In divorce and remarriage, there are at least three sets of emotional baggage:
1.From the family of origin
2.From the first marriage
3.From the process and aftermath of separa- tion, divorce, or death and the period between. marriages
To the extent that either remarried partner expects the other to relieve him or her of this baggage, the new relationship will become problematic. On the other hand, to the extent that each spouse can resolve his or her own emotional issues with significant people from the past, and manage the extremely complex structure of the present, the new relation- ship can proceed on its own merits.
Over the long haul, remarriage appears more. stressful than divorce (Ahrons, 2007), especially the father's remarriage, which underscores the impor- tance of taking a family life cycle perspective when working clinically to keep focus on the longitudinal course of family life. For poor families, separating and recoupling, often without the legal protections of marriage, become even more complex. Linda Burton and her colleagues, who have been studying such families for many years have described their brittleness and the many difficulties for families living on the edge in the changing membership and structure of recoupling (Cherlin, Burton, L. M., Hurt, T., & Purvin, 2004; Bur- ton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton & Tucker, 2009; Burton, Cherlin, Winn, Estacion, & Holder-Taylor, 2009).
As the first marriage signifies the joining of two families, so a second marriage involves the interweaving of three, four, or more families whose previous family life courses have been disrupted by death or divorce. More than half of Americans today have been, are now, or will eventually be in one or more recoupled families during their lives (Kreider, 2006). At the turn of the twenty-first century, families with stepchildren living in the house- hold constituted about 13 percent of U.S. families (Teachman & Tedrow, 2004), although, of course, this does not begin to convey the extent of recou- pled families, remarried or living together, and the number of children in multi nuclear families who spend part of their time with stepsiblings. Indeed, stepfamilies are becoming the most common familly form, and estimates are that there will soon be more multi nuclear families than first families in the United States (CDC, 2008). Estimates are that one third of children will live with a stepparent, usually a stepfather, before adulthood (Amato & Sobolewski, 2004). Half of the marriages that occur each year are remarriages. Almost 50 percent of first marriages are expected to end in divorce and the majority of divorced individuals (more men than women) remarry (Kreider, 2006). Indeed, though stepfamily relationships have been neglected in family research and are not generally as strong as first family ties, remarriage creates an enlarged pool of potential kin who may come to have very important family bonds. These numbers do not include the frequently recoupling families of the poor who can rarely afford marriage and often have changing constellations of mothers, "other- mothers" and only sometimes fathers in the picture (Burton & Hardaway, 2012).
Overall our society still does not recognize transformed and reconstituted families as part of the norm. Only recently has family research included these families and norms for forming a recoupled family are only beginning to emerge. The complexity of remarried families is reflected in our lack of positive language and kinship labels, the shifting of children's sibling positions in the new family, and society's failure to differentiate parenting from stepparenting functions. The built in ambiguity of boundaries and membership in remarried families defies simple defi- nition, and our culture lacks any established language patterns or rituals to help us handle the complex relationships of acquired family members. The kinship terms we do have, such as "stepmother," "step father." and "stepchild," have such negative connotations that they may increase the difficulties for families trying to work out these relationships. In fact, the term "step" derives from the old English word for bereavement or loss, so it is meaningful to the context in which families are reconstituted into new family constellations. Constance Ahrons calls post-divorce families "binuclear," a term that is descriptive and non stigmatizing. We have expanded this to refer to multi-nuclear families, because in recoupling there are many times when three or four or more house holds must be considered at one time.
Our society offers stepfamilies two basic models, neither of which works. The media glorifies families that act like the Brady Bunch, where every body lives together happily ever after and there are no dangling ends. The alternative narrative involves the wicked stepparents of fairy tales. Many have referred to remarried families as "blended," but, as one of Patricia Papernow's (2013) families described it, they thought they were blending but in reality it felt more like blundering. Thus, our first clinical step is to validate for stepfamilies the lack of role models and support in the paradigms of remarried families. that society has offered.
We originally chose to use the term "remarried in our work to emphasize that it is the marital bond that forms the basis for the complex rearrange- ment of several families in a new constellation, but increasingly reconstituted families are not actually marrying, or at least not marrying for a while. Still, it is the couple's bond that makes them take the trouble to go through the complexities of family reforma- tion. So we sometimes refer to them as "recoupled" families or "stepfamilies" to indicate the presence of children from past relationships as part of the remar- ried system.
Forming a remarried family is one of the most difficult developmental transitions for a family to negotiate. Giving up forever the concept of simple and clear family membership and boundaries is no easy task. It is no wonder that the unresolved losses of the previous families so often lead to premature attempts at boundary closure in a new family. In any case, car- lier losses are very likely to be reactivated by the new family formation. Indeed, Montgomery, Anderson, Hetherington, and Clingempeel, (1993) found in their longitudinal study that living together before remarriage provided a beneficial in bettween stage of adjust- ment that reduced the trauma of remarriage, just as it can in first marriages. Much therapeutic effort must be directed toward educating families about the built in complexities of the process so that they can work toward establishing a viable, flexible system that will allow them to get back on their developmental track for future life cycle phases.
It is easy to understand the wish for clear and quick resolution when one has been through the pain of a first family ending. But the instant intimacy that remarried families often hope for is impossi ble to achieve. The new relationships are harder to negotiate because they do not develop gradually, as first families do, but begin midstream, after another family's life cycle has been dislocated. Children's sibling position frequently changes, and they must cope with variable membership over several house- holds. A child may be an only child in his mother's household, but an oldest child in his father's remar- ried household, where he now has two younger step- brothers. When his mother remarries, he becomes the youngest of four with her three teenage stepchil- dren. Naturally, second families also carry the scars of first-marriage families. Neither parents, nor children, nor grandparents can forget the relationships that went before and that may still be more powerful than the new relationships. Children almost never give up their attachment to their first parent, no matter how negative that relationship was or is. Having the patience to tolerate the ambiguity of the situation and allowing each other the space and time for feel- ings about past relationships are crucial processes in forming a remarried family.
The boundary ambiguities and complexities include issues of membership, space, authority, and allocation of time. Once a remarried family is formed, it becomes forever impossible to have a clear defini- tion (if it is ever possible anyway) of who exactly is related to you how. For example, is your stepfa- ther's first cousin your cousin and are his nephews your cousins? In terms of space, do you get to have a room in your father's house when you are there only twice a week and his stepchildren are there every day? As a young adult, can you move back home with your mother and stepfather if he is the one pay- ing for the house? In terms of authority, who gets to decide whether you go to private college and your stepsiblings to public college because their parents together cannot afford private college? Who gets to make the rules for you in your father and stepmoth- er's home? And in terms of time allocation, which children get to spend more time with their father, his children or his stepchildren? An additional boundary problem arises when instant incest taboos are called for, as when several previously unrelated teenagers are suddenly expected to view each other as siblings. All these ambiguities of relationship, membership, space, authority, and time are built in and can never again be clearly defined.
In our experience, the most powerful clinical tool for helping families negotiate these complex transitions is to provide information that normal- izes their experiences. Clinically useful research findings on divorced and remarried families inte- grated in this chapter come from the work of many authors. Duberman (1975) was one of our first role models in the exploration of these issues. The lon- gitudinal research of Hetherington, Clingempeel, Montgomery, and their colleagues (Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1977, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006; Hetherington-, Cox, & Cox, 1977; Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992), carried out in a remarkably comprehensive longitudinal research on hundreds of families in a broad project over several decades (summarized in Hetherington & Kelly, 2002), has been extraordinarily helpful to us in conceptual- izing the trajectories and complex experiences of families as they evolve over the life cycle. John and Emily Visher (1979, 1988, 1991, 1996) were among the staunchest advocates for positive think- ing about stepfamilies. Connie Ahrons (Ahrons, 1981, 1994, 2005, 2007; Ahrons & Rodgers, 1987) has been expanding our understanding of divorce and remarried families for decades. Paul Glick (1984, 1989) at the Census Bureau was a generous resource to us for many years through the detailed information he had in his head about remarriage patterns. Andrew Cherlin, Frank Furstenberg, and their colleagues (Cherlin & Furstenberg, 1994; Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1994; Cherlin, 1992, 2009; Cherlin et al., 2004) have also been teaching us about the demographics of marriage, divorce, and remarriage for many years. Cliff Sager and Sager's colleagues (1983), Lillian Messinger (1978), Mary Whiteside (1978, 1982, 1989, 2006), Anne Bern- stein (1989, 1994, 1999), James Bray (Bray & Easling, 2005), Pasley and Ihinger (1995), Pasley and Ihinger-Tallman (2008), and Patricia Paper- now and her colleagues (2013) have been pioneers contributing for many years to the family therapy field's understanding of the clinical issues of remarriage. And Linda Burton and her colleagues (Burton, Purvin, & Garrett-Peters, 2009; Burton & Tucker, 2009; Burton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton et al., 2009; Cherlin et al., 2004) have carried out extraordinary ethnographic research on the cou- pling and recoupling patterns of poor families, mostly Latinas and African Americans, for more than a decade. This chapter draws on the work of these researchers and clinicians, as well as our own clinical experience over the past four decades.
Although it is extremely hard to give up the idea of the "nuclear family" by drawing a tight loy- alty boundary around household members, exclud- ing outside parents or children who reside elsewhere is neither realistic nor appropriate. It is essential to acknowledge families' actual relationships and empower them to move forward taking those reali- ties into consideration. In earlier times, when fami- lies lived in larger extended family and community enclaves, children had a whole network of adults who cared for them and helped to raise them. That is the model that helps here. Families need to develop a system with permeable but workable boundaries around the members of different households, allowing children to belong in multiple homes, to move flexibly between households and to have open lines of communication between ex-spouses, children, their parents, stepparents, grandparents, and other relatives. Indeed, extended family connections and outside connectedness may be even more impor tant for children's well-being than they are in first families.
Because parent-child bonds predate the new marital bonds, often by many years, and are there- fore initially stronger than the couple bond, remar- ried families must allow for the built-in ambiguity of roles and the differential ties based on histori- cal connections. In particular, each parent needs to accept responsibility for his or her own children and not combat or compete with the other's parent-child attachments.
Previous experience with nontraditional gender roles may increase the flexibility necessary for stepfamily organization. Forming a remarried family requires a re-visioning of traditional gender roles. We must overturn completely the notion that the stepmother, just because she is a woman, should be in charge of the home, the children, or the emotional relationships of the system. Such a view fails to respect the family's history, that is, that the parent with the historical relationship with the child is the only one who can really be the primary par- ent. Traditional gender roles, requiring women to take responsibility for the emotional well-being of the family, have placed stepmothers in an unten- able position, through the expectation that she can automatically be "mother" to children with whom she has no connection (Martin, 2009). This pits her against the children's mother, a contest she is bound to lose. The traditional rules that called for women to rear children and men to earn and manage the finances do not work well in first-marriage fami- lies. They have no chance at all in a system in which some of the children are strangers to the wife.
In addition, the finances of remarried families include sources of income and expenditure that are not in the husband's power to generate or control (e.g., alimony, child support, and earnings of the ex- wife or current wife). These issues, in addition to the primacy of children's bonds to their original parents, make traditional gender roles completely inappropri- ate for remarried families.
For poor families, there are often even more difficulties: children raised with little connection to their fathers and often living with what Burton and her colleagues refer to as "othermothers," not really stepmothers, because the roles are not that stabi- lized and formalized and where children may need to deal with a series of partners their parents con- nect with, who may or may not take on parenting roles with them (Burton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton & Tucker, 2009).
The Divorce-Remarriage Cycle
Our concept of the divorce and post-divorce emo- tional process can be thought of as a roller coaster with peaks of emotional tension at all transition points:
•At the time of the decision to separate or divorce
•When this decision is announced to family and friends
•When money and custody/visitation arrangements are discussed
•When the physical separation takes place
•When the actual legal divorce takes place When separated spouses or ex-spouses have contacted about money or children
•As each child graduates, marries, has children, separates, remaries, moves, or becomes ill
•As each spouse forms a new couple relation- ship, remarries, re-divorces, moves, becomes ill, or dies
These emotional pressure points are found in all divorcing families though, of course, not nec- essarily in this order and many take place over and over again. A general depiction of the process appears in Figure 22.1.
In general, it appears to take a minimum of 2 or 3 years for a family to adjust to this transition-if there are no cutoffs and if all the adults are work- ing at it full tilt. Families in which the emotional issues of divorce are not adequately resolved can remain stuck emotionally for years, or even for gen- erations, although several years after the divorce, if the developmental tasks of divorcing and set- tling into the post-divorce transformed family are satisfactorily accomplished, there are few, if any, observable or testable differences resulting from having been part of a divorced family (Arkowitz & Lillienfeld, 2013).
The emotions released during the divorce relate primarily to the work of retrieving oneself from the marriage. Each partner must retrieve the hopes, dreams, plans, and expectations that were invested in the spouse and in the marriage. This requires mourn- ing what is lost and dealing with hurt, anger, blame, guilt, shame, and loss in oneself, in the spouse, in the children, in the extended family, and in the friendship network.
Hetherington (1977) found that in 70 percent of divorcing couples, at least one spouse is having an affair, but only a small percent later marry, suggest- ing that another relationship may help you through but not beyond the divorce. Younger women tend to re-divorce more frequently than older women. About 47 percent of women who remarry before the age of age 25 divorce within the next 10 years (Bramlett & Mosher, 2001). Those who are older at first marriage are less likely to divorce or re-divorce, as are those with more education and economic resources. Men tend to remarry sooner and more often than women, and Whites sooner and more often than people of color. Although first wives are on the average 3 years younger than their husbands, second wives are on average 6 years younger than their husbands. The more income and education a woman has, the less likely she is to remarry. The reverse is true for men: The more income and education he has, the more likely he is to remarry, and the sooner.
In all multi-nuclear families, childrearing responsibilities must be distributed in ways that vali- date the bond between original parents and the chil- dren they have raised. Each spouse must take primary responsibility for raising and disciplining his or her own children. Ex-spouses are hopefully responsible adults who can learn to cooperate with each other for the sake of their children. New spouses hopefully begin as benign caretakers and build from there. Contraindications for post-divorce arrangements of joint or shared custody should obviously include the following:
•Mental illness in one or both parents
•A history of violence, child abuse, or neglect
•Alcohol or drug abuse
In those situations, the need for collaboration between parents, extended family, and community resources will even be more important to children's safety and well-being. But, assuming neither par- ent is abusive, mentally ill, or involved in sub- stance abuse, children generally do better if they have regular contact with both parents. The more regularly children visit their noncustodial parent, the better their adjustment is likely to be. The more effectively custodial parents can function and the less parental conflict children are exposed to, the better the children's adjustment will be. Cordial or courteous, low-intensity relationships with the ex-spouse and the ex-spouse's new marital partner work best. It helps if therapists think of all parental figures as potentially enriching the children's sup- port network.
The emotional issues of remarriage go back at least to the disintegration of the first marriage. The intensity of emotion unleashed by the life cycle dis- ruption of divorce must be dealt with over and over again before the dislocated systems are restabilized. No amount of "dealing with" the emotional difficul- ties of divorce will finish off the process once and for all, although the more emotional work is done at each step, the less intense and disruptive the sub- sequent reactivations at later stages are likely to be.
The predictable peaks of emotional tension in the transition to remarriage occur at:
•The time of serious commitment to a new relationship
•The time a plan to remarry is announced to families and friends
•The time of the actual remarriage and forma- tion of a stepfamily, which take place as the logistics of stepfamily life are put into practice.
The emotional process at the transition to remarriage involves dealing with anxiety about investment in a new marriage and a new family; deal- ing with one's own fears and those of the new spouse and the children; dealing with hostile or upset reac- tions of the children, the extended families, and the ex-spouse; struggling with the ambiguity of the new family structure, roles, and relationships; re-arousal of parental guilt and concerns about the welfare of children; and re-arousal of the old attachment to the ex-spouse (negative or positive).
Failure to deal sufficiently with the process at each point may jam it enough to prevent remarried family stabilization from ever occurring, a problem that is reflected in the high rate of re-divorce.
The most common mistakes parents make are as follows:
1. Preoccupation with themselves and neglect of their children's experience, which follows from the conflicting life cycle tasks of parenting ver- sus new couple relationships or couple conflict
2. Treating the remarriage as an event, rather than a complex process of family transformation, which will take years
3. Trying to get children to resolve the ambi- guities of multiple loyalties by cutting off one relationship to create clarity in another.
The residue of an angry and vengeful divorce can block stepfamily integration for years or forever. The re-arousal of the old emotional attachment to an ex-spouse, which characteristically surfaces at the time of remarriage and at subsequent life cycle transitions of children, is usually not understood as a predictable process and may therefore lead to denial, misinterpretation, conflict, cutoff, and emotional reac- tivity. As with adjustment to new family structures after divorce, stepfamily integration requires a mini- mum of 2 or 3 years to create a workable new structure that allows family members to move on emotionally.
 Forming a remarried family requires a different conceptual model. When there are children, they are a "package deal" with the spouse. This is, of course, always the case with in-laws as well, but not in such an immediate way, since they do not usually move in with you! At the same time, just because you fall in love with a person does not mean you automatically love their children. So how do you take on a new family in mid-journey just because they are there and part of your spouse's life? That is often the hardest part of the bargain. The first thing is to conceptualize and plan for remarriage as a long and complex pro- cess. While more advance planning would be helpful also in first marriages, it is an essential ingredient for successful remarriage, because so many family relationships must be renegotiated at the same time: these include grandparents, in-laws, former in-laws, step-grandparents and stepchildren, half-siblings, etc. (Whiteside, 2006). The presence of children from the beginning of the new relationship makes establishing an exclusive spouse-to-spouse relation ship before undertaking parenthood impossible.
The prerequisite attitudes listed in Figure 22.1 are necessary for a family to be able to work on the developmental issues of the transition process. If, as clinicians, we find ourselves struggling with the fam- ily over developmental issues before the prerequisite attitudes have been adopted, we are probably wast- ing our efforts. For example, it is very hard for a par ent to help children remain connected to ex-in-laws who were never close or supportive unless the parent has fully embraced the new model of family. Much education and discussion may be required before a client can put into effect ideas that may seem counterintuitive, aversive, or time-consuming.
The relationship of the children and steppar- ent can evolve only over time as their connection develops and as an extension of the child's bond with the original parent. Stepparents can only gradually assume a role, hopefully friendly, as the partner of the child's parent. Unless the children are young at the time of the remarriage, the parent-and-child para- digm may never apply to the new parent. This is a life cycle reality, not a failure on anyone's part. Indeed, in the "othermother" research of Linda Burton and her colleagues, poor women are often especially resentful of raising someone else's children unless they have a special proclivity, perhaps from family of origin experiences to be a parent figure (Burton & Hardaway, 2012).
Predictable Issues in Remarriage Adjustment and family integration issues with stepparents and stepchildren
The stereotypes of stepparents are deeply blaming. Most difficult of all is the role of stepmother. The problem for her is especially poignant, since she is usually the one most sensitive to the needs of others, and it will be extremely difficult for her to take a back seat while her husband struggles awkwardly in an uncomfortable situation. The fact is that she has no alternative. Women's tendency to take responsi bility for family relationships, to believe that what goes wrong is their fault and that, if they just try hard enough, they can make things work out, are the major problems for them in remarried families, since the situation carries with it built-in structural ambiguities, loyalty conflicts, guilt, and member ship problems. Societal expectations for stepmoth- ers to love and care for their stepchildren are also stronger than for stepfathers. If stepfathers help out a bit financially and do a few administrative chores, they may be viewed as an asset, even though that is not a satisfactory parental role. But the expectation for stepmothers is that they will make up to children for whatever losses they have experienced, which is, of course, impossible. Clinically, it is important to relieve them of these expectations.
A stepmother's ambivalence about her parent- ing role tends to be particularly acute when step- children are young and remain in the custody of her husband's ex-wife. In this common situation, stepmothers tend to be less emotionally attached to the children and to feel disrupted and exploited during their visits. Meanwhile the husband's co- parenting partnership may appear to be conducted more with his ex-spouse than with her. Conflicting role expectations set mothers and stepmothers into competitive struggles over childrearing practices. It appears to be better for stepmothers to retain their work outside the home for their independence, emo- tional support, and validation. In addition to contrib- uting needed money, it makes them less available at home for the impossible job of dealing with the husband's children.
Along with finances, stepchildren are the major contributor to remarriage adjustment problems. Remarriage often leads to a renewal of custody diffi- culties in prior relationships. Families with stepchildren are much more complicated and twice as likely to divorce. Marital satisfaction is correlated with the stepparent's connection to stepchildren. Although the remarriage itself might be congenial, the presence of stepchildren often creates child-related problems that may lead the couple to separate. Some stepparents do not even consider their live-in step- child as part of the family, and stepchildren are even more likely to discount their live-in stepparents. Stepchildren are much more likely to change residence or leave home early than biological children. Children in stepfamilies may appear to have more power than children in first families, although they experience less autonomy than in the single-parent phase, where they typically have more adult privileges and responsibilities.
Stepparents need to take a slow route to parent hood, first becoming friends with their stepchildren, and only gradually assuming an active role in parent ing. It generally takes at least 2 years to become comanagers of their stepchildren with their spouses. For stepparents to compete with their stepchildren for pri- macy with their spouse is inappropriate, as if the couple and parent-child relationships were on the same hierarchical level, which, of course, they are not.
Stepfathers may get caught in the bind between rescuer and intruder, called upon to help discipline the stepchildren and then criticized by them and their mother for this intervention. Over-trying by the new parent is a major problem, often related to guilt about unresolved or unresolvable aspects of the system.
Overall, mothers, daughters, stepdaughters, and stepmothers experience more stress, less sat- isfaction, and more symptoms than fathers, sons, stepsons, and stepfathers. Stepmother-stepdaughter relationships tend to be the most difficult of all. Daughters, who are often closest to mothers in divorce, tend to have a lot of difficulty with stepfa- thers, no matter how hard the stepfather tries. Girls' stress probably reflects the fact that they feel more responsible for emotional relationships in a family and thus get caught between loyalty and protection of their mothers and conflicts with their stepmothers. While divorce appears to have more adverse effects for boys, remarriage is more disruptive for girls. Boys, who are often difficult for a single mother, may settle down after the entry of a stepfather.
Different issues arise when stepfamilies are formed after the premature death of a parent than after a divorce. Gender differences are a key factor. A new stepfather may be perceived as rescuing the family from poverty after the death of the primary wage earner, whereas children tend to view their mother as completely irreplaceable and resent any efforts of another woman to function in her role. However, young children will eventually accept a stepparent, including a stepmother, if the remaining parent can help the children to grieve for their loss before confronting them with a stepmother. When the father does remarry, he needs to help the children to accept the new person in her own right rather than collude with the children in wanting the family to continue in the same way it did when their mother was alive. On the other hand, if insufficient attention is paid to the children's grief work, they may never accept a stepmother. (For a videotape with com- mentary on a family dealing with these issues, see McGoldrick, 1996.)
Although the fact that the ex-spouse is not around to "interfere" may be an advantage, ghosts can be even more powerful, especially given peo- ple's tendency to idealize a parent who is lost prema- turely. It may be harder to recognize and deal with a triangle with a dead parent. Talking, remembering. and acknowledging the dead person's human failings and foibles help to exorcise the ghost, but none of this can be done without the active leadership of the surviving parent. Late adolescents or older children. generally resist attempts to "replace" their dead parent, and the wise stepparent will honor that position.
Violence and abuse appear to be much more common in stepfamilies than in first families (Brody, 1998), probably because of the system's structural complexity and the fact that they have not had time to develop relationship bonds, and many do not withstand the early stages of family reor- ganization. But the instability of remarried families should not be overstated. Remarried partners do not wait as long as partners in first families to leave an unhappy situation, and those who manage the early years have no greater likelihood of divorcing than in first marriages.
The stress of money
Money is a major area of conflict in remarried fami- lies. Remarriage often leads to reopening of financial battles from the divorce and to children receiving less support from their biological fathers. Traditional gender roles run completely counter to contemporary economics and to the fact that both parents usually enter remarriage with significant financial obliga- tions to the first family. Failure to pay or collect ali- mony or child support wreaks havoc in post-divorce families. A husband who is the sole wage earner in a remarried family often has to decide which set of children has top priority-his own or the stepchil- dren he lives with. These priorities are also influ- enced by his relationship with his ex-wife; if it is bad, his visits and child support payments tend to lag or even cease. A new wife may complain about the money her husband gives to his children, particularly if she does not receive the child support owed for her own children. Overall children in first families tend to receive more from their parents than chil- dren whose parents remarry. In affluent families, problems also surface around wills and how much financial assistance should be given to which adult children. Where money is concerned, blood may suddenly seem thicker than relationship.
Gays and lesbians in stepfamilies
A significant number of post-divorce families consist of a gay or lesbian couple with the children of one or both of them from a previous heterosexual marriage. These systems have all of the problems of hetero- sexual remarried systems in addition to the burdens of secrecy and isolation caused by the social stigma they have most likely experienced (Laird & Green, 1996). In extreme cases, the adults may feel that they have to try to remain closeted, even to their children, for fear of repercussions in custody or employment. There is almost always anxiety about the conse- quences of coming out to family (La Sala, 2010), the children's teachers and friends, co-workers, neigh- bors, and acquaintances. Therapists can be most helpful if, in addition to the usual therapy for remar- ried systems, they acknowledge the societal stigma that LGBT families experience and help the couple sift through their various networks to dismantle the secrecy and isolation wherever possible. Connection to supportive friends, community groups, and access to supportive literature can be extremely important.
The most complex remarried families, where both spouses bring children from previous relation- ships, tend to have the greatest difficulty establish- ing stability. All things being equal, it appears easiest if the previous spouse died, next easiest when the spouse is divorced, and hardest when the spouse has never been married, perhaps because some experi- ence with marriage appears helpful in a second mar- riage. Integration is more likely when children are not left behind by either parent, or when the new couple have a child together (although having a child to save the marriage is, of course, never a good idea). The longer the new family has together as a unit, the more likely they are to have a sense of family inte- gration. Developing a sense of belonging takes most family members 3 to 5 years, longer if there are ado- lescents. Remarried family integration appears more likely when extended family approves of or accepts the remarriage, next best when they disapprove or are negative, perhaps providing a "good enemy," and hardest when they are cutoff or indifferent.
Emotional issues: Anger, grief, pseudo-mutuality, loyalty conflicts, conflict and cutoff
Predictable feelings that come up in the process of remarriage are likely to include intense conflict, guilt, ambivalence, and anger about the previous spouse and children, denial of such feelings, and the wish to resolve the ambiguity. Remarried families are formed against a background of loss, hurt, and a sense of failure. Their "battle fatigue" often leads to a desire not to "rock the boat" this time, which leads partners to suppress doubt, conflict, and differ- ences that need to be dealt with, resulting in "pseudo- mutuality" that pretends total mutuality, covering over disagreements, and making current relation- ships all the more fragile in the long run.
Cutoffs are more common with the paternal extended family, and connections are more often strong with maternal relatives, but extended family relationships are often difficult. While children are quite prepared to have multiple sets of grandparents, uncles, and aunts, the middle generation can get caught up in conflicts, and managing relationships with such a large network of kin is complicated. Remarriage of either spouse tends to decrease contact between fathers and their non-custodial children. Divorced fathers tend to have more contact with their children if they have not remarried and even more if the mother has not remarried either. Once both parents have remar- ried, children are much less likely to have weekly con- tact with their non-custodial fathers. Remarriage of a former spouse tends to reactivate feelings of depres- sion, helplessness, anger, and anxiety, particularly for women. Men tend to be less upset by the remarriage of an ex-wife, possibly because it may release them from financial responsibility and because they are usually less central to the emotional system.
One of the hardest requirements for parents is to let their children express the full range of nega- tive and positive feelings toward all of their parents, stepparents, and half- and stepsiblings. Often par- ents want the child's whole allegiance. Children feel caught, afraid that if they do not love a new steppar- ent, they will hurt and anger one parent, but if they do love the stepparent, they are disloyal and will hurt or lose the love of the other. Another loyalty con- flict is the expectation for the new spouse to love the other's children as much as his or her own, which would be highly unlikely.
Remarriage at Various Phases of the Family Life Cycle
In general, the wider the discrepancy in family life cycle experience between the new spouses, the greater the difficulty of the transition and the longer it will take to integrate a workable new family. especially if the partners come from very different cultural backgrounds, which always increases the bridge-building necessary for a couple. A father of late adolescent and/or young adult children with a new, young wife who was never previously married should expect a rather strenuous and lengthy period of adjustment, during which he will have to juggle his emotional and financial responsibilities toward the new marriage and toward his (probably upset) children. His wife, looking forward to the roman- tic aspects of a first marriage, is likely to encounter instead the many stresses of dealing with adolescents who probably resent her, whether the children live with the couple or not.
If either spouse tries to pull the other into a life-style or attitude that denies or restricts the other spouse's family life cycle tasks or relationships with children from previous relationships, difficulties are likely to expand into serious problems. If the husband expects his new wife to undertake immediately a major role in his children's lives or to be the one who always backs down gracefully when her interests and prefer- ences clash with those of the children, serious trouble is predictable in the new marriage, as the formation of the new couple bond is continuously given second priority.
On the other hand, if the new wife tries, overtly or covertly, to cut off or loosen the tie between father and children or to take on the role of mother to them, or if she insists that her claims always get his prior attention, forcing him to choose between them, seri- ous trouble is also predictable. Variations in which the new wife claims to support her husband but embarks on a battle with his ex-wife as the source of the difficulties are equally dysfunctional.
Often the stepparent feels he or she knows what the other parent is doing wrong with his or her children and forcefully pushes these parenting ideas. Such efforts are very likely to jam the circuits for everyone the new couple, the stepparent/stepchild relationships, and extended family relationships, where people get called upon to choose up sides.
Since it is not possible either to erase or to acquire emotional experience overnight, it is useful to conceptualize the joining of partners at two dif- ferent life cycle phases as a process in which both spouses have to learn to function in several different life cycle phases simultaneously and out of their usual sequence. The new wife will have to struggle with the role of stepmother to teenagers before becoming an experienced wife or mother herself. Her husband will have to retraverse with her several phases that he has passed through before: the honeymoon, the new mar- riage with its emphasis on romance and social activities, and the birth and rearing of any new children of their own. Both need to be aware that a second passage through these phases automatically reactivates some of the intensity over issues that were problematic the first time. Attempts to "make up for" past mistakes or grievances may overload the new relationship. The focus needs to be on having the experiences again, not on undoing, redoing, or denying the past. With open discussion, mutual support, understanding, and a lot of thoughtful planning, this straddling of sev- eral phases simultaneously can provide rejuvenation for the older spouse and experience for the younger spouse that can enrich their lives. If the difficulties are not understood and dealt with, they will surface as conflict or emotional distance at each life cycle tran- sition and for each subsystem of the remarried family.
Spouses at the same life cycle phase
When remarried spouses come together at the same phase of the family life cycle, their greatest difficul- ties generally relate to whether they are at a child- bearing phase. Obviously, spouses with no children from previous marriages bring the least complexity to the new situation. Families with grown children and grandchildren on both sides have long and complex histories and will require careful thought to negoti- ate successfully. But neither of these circumstances provides nearly the degree of strain that families with young or adolescent children are likely to experience, where the roles of active parenting and stepparenting must be included in the new family. Unfortunately, the advantage of both partners having similar tasks, responsibilities, and experiences may easily drown in a competitive struggle that stems from the overload of tasks and concerns (six children are not as easy to raise or support as three), the intense emotional investment in good parenting ("My methods are bet- ter than your methods"), and the need to include both ex-spouses in the many arrangements regarding the children ("Why do you let your ex dictate our lives?").
Stepfamilies and young children
Children's struggles with the predictable issues may sur- face as school or behavior problems, withdrawal from family and peers, or acting-out behavior, all of which complicate or even obstruct the process of family reor- ganization. Indications are that preschool children, if given some time and help in mourning their previous loss, adjust most easily to a new stepfamily, while adjust- ment is most difficult for stepfamilies with teenagers. Latency age children seem to have the most difficulty resolving their feelings of divided loyalty and benefit from careful attention to their need for contact with both parents. Clearly, children of all ages suffer when there is intense conflict between their parents and benefit when they maintain civil, cooperative, co-parental relationships. If parents cannot be cooperative, tightly structur- ing the relationships is the next best alternative.
Stepfamilies with adolescents
Since the difficulties that most American families have with adolescents are legendary, it is not surprising that early adolescence seems the most difficult time for both boys and girls to adjust to their parents' remarriage. The additional complications of this phase in stepfamilies can push the stress level beyond manageable bonds. We have found the following issues common in stepfamilies at this phase.
1. Conflict between the remarried family's need to coalesce and the normal focus of adoles- cents on separation: Adolescents often resent the major shifts in their customary family pat- terns and resist learning new roles and relating to new family members when they are con- cerned with growing away from the family.
2. Stepparents get stuck if they attempt to disci- pline an adolescent stepchild.
3. Adolescents may attempt to resolve their divided loyalties by taking sides or actively playing one side against the other.
4. Sexual attraction may develop between step- siblings or stepparent and stepchild, along with adolescent difficulty in accepting the biological parent's sexuality.
The impact of remarriage in later life cycle phases
Although there is not the daily strain of having to live together with stepchildren and stepparents, remarriage at a post-childrearing phase of the life cycle requires significant readjustment of relationships throughout both family systems, which may now include in-laws and grandchildren. It is probable that grown children and grandchildren will accept a remarriage after a death of a parent more easily than after a late divorce. There is often great relief throughout the family if an older widowed parent finds a new partner and a new lease on life, whereas a later-life divorce usually arouses concern and dismay throughout the family, in part, perhaps, related to anxieties about who will care for the now single parents. But grown children may also surprise themselves and others with the intensity of their reactivity to an older parent's remarriage.
The strength of children's reactivity to a par- ent's remarriage, even after they believe that they have long ago resolved the loss or divorce of the parent(s), may overwhelm them. They may need coaching to find a way to incorporate a parent's new partner into their lives.
Adult children may fear the loss of inheritance when a parent (especially a father) remarries. They may also feel the new relationship is a betrayal of their own dead or divorced parent. Clinically, it helps to facilitate conversation about fears and expecta- tions to avoid shut down and cutoffs between adult children and their parents. The major factor in three- generational adjustment to remarriage in late middle or older age tends to be the amount of acrimony or cooperation between the ex-spouses and the adult child's degree of resolution of the death of the other parent. When the relationship is cooperative enough to permit joint attendance at important family func- tions of children and grandchildren and when holi- day arrangements can be jointly agreed upon, family acceptance of a new marriage tends to follow.
Clinical Intervention with Remarried Families
Whatever the presenting problem in a remarried family. it is essential to look laterally as well as back to previ- ous generations and to evaluate past relationships with previous spouses to determine the degree to which the family needs help to work out the patterns required by the new structure. Ongoing conflict or cutoffs with exspouses, children, parents, and grandparents will tend to overload the relationships in the remarried family and make them problematic. We consider genograms particularly essential in work with remarried families, because the structural complexity so influences the predictable triangles of these situations (McGoldrick, 2011; McGoldrick, Gerson, & Petry, 2008).
We next describe several predictable triangles in remarried families. In first-marriage families, the major problematic triangles involve the parents with any or all of the children and each parent with his or her own parents and in-laws. In the more complex structures of remarried families, we have identified six of the most common triangles and interlocking triangles presenting in multi-nuclear families. In no way do we mean to suggest by this focus that the triangles with the extended family and grandparen- tal generation are unimportant to the understanding and the therapy of remarried families. In our clinical work with remarried families, coaching of the adults on further differentiation in relation to their families of origin proceeds in tandem with work on current family problems (McGoldrick & Carter, 2001). Our experience indicates that families that are willing to work on relationships with their families of origin do better than those that are not.
Triangle between the new spouses and an ex-spouse
When a triangle focuses on conflict between new spouse and the old spouse with the partner in the middle, the usual issues are finances or sexual jeal- ousy. Underneath, it is likely that the ex-spouses have not accomplished an emotional divorce. The first step in the tricky clinical work around this triangle is for the therapist to establish a working alli- ance with the new spouse, who will otherwise sabo- tage efforts to focus on the first marriage. Efforts to work on the resolution of the divorce by seeing either the ex-spouses alone or all three in sessions together will probably create more anxiety than the system can handle. We have found that such work goes most smoothly when a spouse is coached in the presence of the new spouse to undertake steps out- side of the therapy sessions that will change his or her relationship with the ex-spouse. Along the way. the new spouse will have to learn to acknowledge the importance of that past bond to his or her spouse and to accept the fact that some degree of caring will probably always remain in the relationship, depend- ing on the length of time the first marriage lasted and whether there were children.
Triangle involving a pseudo-mutual remarried couple, an ex-spouse, and a child or children
In this triangle, the presenting problem is usually acting out or school problems with one or more chil- dren or perhaps a child's request to have custody shifted from one parent to another. The remarried couple presents itself as having no disagreements and blames either the child or the ex-spouse (or both) for the trouble. Although the request in ther- apy will be for help for the child or to manage the child's behavior, the background story will usually show intense conflict between the ex-spouses, the new spouse being totally supportive of his or her spouse in conflicts with that spouse's child. The first move in sorting out this triangle is to put the manage- ment of the child's behavior temporarily in the hands of the biological parent and get the new spouse to take a neutral position, rather than siding against the child. This move will probably calm things down, but they will usually not stay calm unless the pseudo- mutuality of the remarried couple is worked on, per- mitting differences and disagreements to be aired and resolved and permitting the child to have a rela- tionship with his or her original parent that does not automatically include the new spouse every step of the way. Finally, work will need to be done to end the battle with the ex-spouse and complete the emo- tional divorce, the lack of which is perpetuated by the intense conflict over the child or children.
Triangle involving a remarried couple in conflict over the child/children of one of them
The first of these triangles (stepmother, father, and his children), although not the most common house- hold composition, is the most problematic because of the central role the stepmother is expected to play in the lives of live-in stepchildren. If the stepmother has never been married before, and if the children's mother is alive and has a less than ideal relationship with her ex-husband, it may be an almost impossible situation. The stepmother should be helped to pull back long enough to renegotiate with both her hus- band and the children regarding what her role can realistically be. Rather than leave the stepmother and children to fight it out, the father will have to participate actively in making and enforcing what- ever rules are agreed upon. When their immedi- ate household is in order, the husband will have to work on establishing a cooperative co-parental rela- tionship with his ex-wife, or else his conflict with her will set the children off again and inevitably re-involve his new wife. If the first wife is dead, he may need to deal with his mourning for her and help his children to do the same in order to let the past go and not see his second wife as a poor replacement of his first.
When a stepmother is involved, the father needs to deliver two messages to his children:
1. Be courteous to my spouse (not "your" anything).
2. You are answering to me. You have not lost both your mother and me.
Triangle involving a pseudo-mutual remarried couple, his children, and her children
This triangle presents as a happily remarried couple with "no difficulties" except that their two sets of children fight constantly with each other. The children are usually fighting out the conflicts denied by the remarried couple either in the marriage or in the relationship with the ex-spouse(s). Since direct con- frontation of the pseudo-mutuality stiffens resistance, and since the presenting request is made in regard to the children, it is wise to begin with an exploration of the triangles involving the children and ex-spouses, focusing on the welfare of the children.
Triangle involving a parent, the biological children, and the stepchildren
As in the previous situation, this triangle may present as simple household conflict with the parent caught in the middle between his or her biological children and stepchildren. It is, in fact, quite complex, always interlocking with the triangle involving the remar- ried couple (who may have either a pseudo-mutual or a conflictual relationship) and the triangles with both ex-spouses.
Triangle involving remarried spouses and the parents of either
This triangle features the in-laws as part of the pre- senting problem, but it should be remembered that relationships with the grandparents' generation are as crucial in remarried families as they are in all other families, and their exploration should be a routine part of any evaluation. The presentation of the older generation as part of the current problem is most likely to occur if they have disapproved of the divorce and remarriage or have been actively involved in caring for their grandchildren before or during the remarriage.
Clinical Guidelines
We recommend the following general guidelines to help remarried families think of themselves as pio- neers, inventing new and workable structures:
•Give up the old model of family and accept the complexity of a new form
•Maintain flexible but workable boundaries to permit children to feel safe in shifting of household memberships
•Work for open lines of communication between all parents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren
It is surprising how often visitation decreases when either parent remarries. While the intention may be to have the child bond with the stepparent, the likelihood that strong and positive relationships will develop between children and their stepparents is diminished by a lack of relationship with the non- custodial parent. A parent's hope that the new spouse will step up and handle administrative arrangements with the ex-spouse, serious discipline issues and visi- tation arrangements are misguided at best.
The original parent should always remain in charge of the relationship with the ex-spouse and should always handle the disciplining of his or her own children. This should never be given over to the new spouse. But couples who feel worn out or frustrated with the previous partner make this mistake regularly.
When there are child-focused problems, we routinely contact an ex-spouse and invite him or her to meet alone or with the children to hear our opinion of the children's problems that have been brought to our attention by the remarried family. When we inform the family of our intention to do this, we are frequently warned that the ex-spouse in question does not care, will not respond, or is crazy. Neverthe- less, our phone calls frequently locate a concerned parent who is perfectly willing to come in, although warning us that our client is the one with problems. Ex-spouses can frequently be engaged in subsequent sessions alone or with the children.
Our general goal in working with remarried families is to establish an open system with workable boundaries and to revise traditional gender roles. This goal requires that the former spouses work through the emotional divorce, which we assume is not resolved if ex-spouses are not speaking or have continuous conflicts. The goal then is to create an open, working, co-parental relationship.
The following guidelines summarize our clini- cal recommendations:
1. Take a three-generational genogram and out line previous marriages before plunging into current household problems.
2. Educate and normalize continuously, regarding the predictable patterns and processes in remarriage, keeping in mind particular difficulties related to:
a. Family members being at different life cycle stages
b. The emotionally central role of women in families and their special difficulties in moving into a new system, where much is demanded of them
c. Couples trying to maintain the myth of the intact nuclear family
3. Beware of families struggling with develop- mental tasks before they have adopted the pre- requisite attitudes for remarriage: for example, a parent pushing a child and stepparent to be close without accepting that their relationship will take time to develop.
4. Help the family gain patience to tolerate the ambiguity and not "over-try" to make things work out. This includes accepting that family ties do not develop overnight. Encourage step- parents to understand that a child's negative reactions are not to be taken personally and help them tolerate guilt, conflicted feelings, ambivalence, divided loyalties, and so on.
5. Include the new spouse in sessions in which you coach the client to resolve his or her relationship with an ex-spouse, at least in the beginning or you will increase the new spouse's paranoia about the old spouse-and take the frequent characterization of an ex- spouse as "crazy" with a grain of salt. The list of the ex-spouse's outrageous behaviors may reflect the client's provocations or retaliations.
6. When the remarriage ends a close single- parent/child relationship, the feelings of loss of that special closeness, especially for the child, have to be dealt with and will take time.
7. If the child is presented as the problem, try to involve all parents and stepparents as early as possible in therapy. If joint sessions are held, discussion should be directed toward coop- erative work to resolve the child's difficulties, never torward marital issues. Children should never have the power to decide on remarriage, custody, or visitation. It is, of course, impor- tant to inquire from children their experiences, wishes, and preferences. But the responsibility for the ultimate decisions should always rest with the adults.
8. When problems involve child-focused uproar, put the child's original parent in charge tem- porarily. When the uproar subsides, coach the parent on ways to "move over" and include his or her spouse in the system-first, as a spouse only. Warn the family that the shift to active stepparenting usually takes several years and will require the active support of the biological parent. In the case of older adoles- cents, it may be unrealistic to expect the shift ever to occur to any great degree.
9. Work to get parents to define predictable and
adequate plans for visitation and to keep up relationships with the ex-spouse's extended family, and beware of the possible "hidden agenda" in any sudden proposals to rearrange custody, visitation, or financial arrangements.
10. Include work on the spouses' families of origin as early in treatment as possible.
Divorce and remarriage have become normal life experiences in the United States, with about 43 percent of first marriages ending in divorce within 15 years and about 75 percent of spouses remarrying at least once, though the patterns depend on social class, age, race, and gender (Bramlett & Mosher, 2001, 2002). The system transformation required in divorce and remarriage is so complex in changing the status, relationships, and membership of families that we consider each transition to require an entire additional phase for families going through them. And an entirely new paradigm of family is required for conceptualizing divorced and recoupled families. This chapter will discuss the cycle of divorce and remarriage, describing families transforming and reconstituting themselves through marriage, divorce, remarriage, and re-divorce. If we visualize a family traveling the road of life, moving from stage to stage in their developmental unfolding, we can see divorce and remarriage as interruptions that put families on a new trajectoryadding additional family life cycle stages in which the physical and emotional losses and changes must be absorbed by the multigenerational system. The family, now in two or more households, continues its forward developmen- tal progress, though in a more complex form. When either spouse becomes involved with a new partner, a second detour occurs-requiring additional family life cycle stages in which the family must handle the stress of absorbing two or three generations of new members into the system and redefining their roles and relationships with existing family members.
We all carry into our new relationships the emotional baggage of unresolved issues from important past relationships. This baggage makes us emo- tionally sensitive in the new relationships: We may put up barriers to intimacy, becoming self-protective, closed off, and afraid to make ourselves vulnerable to further hurt, or we may become expectant that the new relationships will make up for or erase past hurts. These stances complicate new relationships.
In first marriages, the baggage we bring is from our families of origin: our unresolved feelings about parents, siblings, and extended family.
In divorce and remarriage, there are at least three sets of emotional baggage:
1. From the family of origin
2. From the first marriage
3. From the process and aftermath of separa- tion, divorce, or death and the period between. marriages
To the extent that either remarried partner expects the other to relieve him or her of this baggage, the new relationship will become problematic. On the other hand, to the extent that each spouse can resolve his or her own emotional issues with significant people from the past, and manage the extremely complex structure of the present, the new relation- ship can proceed on its own merits.
Over the long haul, remarriage appears more. stressful than divorce (Ahrons, 2007), especially the father's remarriage, which underscores the impor- tance of taking a family life cycle perspective when working clinically to keep focus on the longitudinal course of family life. For poor families, separating and recoupling, often without the legal protections of marriage, become even more complex. Linda Burton and her colleagues, who have been studying such families for many years have described their brittleness and the many difficulties for families living on the edge in the changing membership and structure of recoupling (Cherlin, Burton, L. M., Hurt, T., & Purvin, 2004; Bur- ton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton & Tucker, 2009; Burton, Cherlin, Winn, Estacion, & Holder-Taylor, 2009).
As the first marriage signifies the joining of two families, so a second marriage involves the interweaving of three, four, or more families whose previous family life courses have been disrupted by death or divorce. More than half of Americans today have been, are now, or will eventually be in one or more recoupled families during their lives (Kreider, 2006). At the turn of the twenty-first century, families with stepchildren living in the house- hold constituted about 13 percent of U.S. families (Teachman & Tedrow, 2004), although, of course, this does not begin to convey the extent of recou- pled families, remarried or living together, and the number of children in multi nuclear families who spend part of their time with stepsiblings. Indeed, stepfamilies are becoming the most common familly form, and estimates are that there will soon be more multi nuclear families than first families in the United States (CDC, 2008). Estimates are that one third of children will live with a stepparent, usually a stepfather, before adulthood (Amato & Sobolewski, 2004). Half of the marriages that occur each year are remarriages. Almost 50 percent of first marriages are expected to end in divorce and the majority of divorced individuals (more men than women) remarry (Kreider, 2006). Indeed, though stepfamily relationships have been neglected in family research and are not generally as strong as first family ties, remarriage creates an enlarged pool of potential kin who may come to have very important family bonds. These numbers do not include the frequently recoupling families of the poor who can rarely afford marriage and often have changing constellations of mothers, "other- mothers" and only sometimes fathers in the picture (Burton & Hardaway, 2012).
Overall our society still does not recognize transformed and reconstituted families as part of the norm. Only recently has family research included these families and norms for forming a recoupled family are only beginning to emerge. The complexity of remarried families is reflected in our lack of positive language and kinship labels, the shifting of children's sibling positions in the new family, and society's failure to differentiate parenting from stepparenting functions. The built in ambiguity of boundaries and membership in remarried families defies simple defi- nition, and our culture lacks any established language patterns or rituals to help us handle the complex relationships of acquired family members. The kinship terms we do have, such as "stepmother," "step father." and "stepchild," have such negative connotations that they may increase the difficulties for families trying to work out these relationships. In fact, the term "step" derives from the old English word for bereavement or loss, so it is meaningful to the context in which families are reconstituted into new family constellations. Constance Ahrons calls post-divorce families "binuclear," a term that is descriptive and non stigmatizing. We have expanded this to refer to multi-nuclear families, because in recoupling there are many times when three or four or more house holds must be considered at one time.
Our society offers stepfamilies two basic models, neither of which works. The media glorifies families that act like the Brady Bunch, where every body lives together happily ever after and there are no dangling ends. The alternative narrative involves the wicked stepparents of fairy tales. Many have referred to remarried families as "blended," but, as one of Patricia Papernow's (2013) families described it, they thought they were blending but in reality it felt more like blundering. Thus, our first clinical step is to validate for stepfamilies the lack of role models and support in the paradigms of remarried families. that society has offered.
We originally chose to use the term "remarried in our work to emphasize that it is the marital bond that forms the basis for the complex rearrange- ment of several families in a new constellation, but increasingly reconstituted families are not actually marrying, or at least not marrying for a while. Still, it is the couple's bond that makes them take the trouble to go through the complexities of family reforma- tion. So we sometimes refer to them as "recoupled" families or "stepfamilies" to indicate the presence of children from past relationships as part of the remar- ried system.
Forming a remarried family is one of the most difficult developmental transitions for a family to negotiate. Giving up forever the concept of simple and clear family membership and boundaries is no easy task. It is no wonder that the unresolved losses of the previous families so often lead to premature attempts at boundary closure in a new family. In any case, car- lier losses are very likely to be reactivated by the new family formation. Indeed, Montgomery, Anderson, Hetherington, and Clingempeel, (1993) found in their longitudinal study that living together before remarriage provided a beneficial in bettween stage of adjust- ment that reduced the trauma of remarriage, just as it can in first marriages. Much therapeutic effort must be directed toward educating families about the built in complexities of the process so that they can work toward establishing a viable, flexible system that will allow them to get back on their developmental track for future life cycle phases.
It is easy to understand the wish for clear and quick resolution when one has been through the pain of a first family ending. But the instant intimacy that remarried families often hope for is impossi ble to achieve. The new relationships are harder to negotiate because they do not develop gradually, as first families do, but begin midstream, after another family's life cycle has been dislocated. Children's sibling position frequently changes, and they must cope with variable membership over several house- holds. A child may be an only child in his mother's household, but an oldest child in his father's remar- ried household, where he now has two younger step- brothers. When his mother remarries, he becomes the youngest of four with her three teenage stepchil- dren. Naturally, second families also carry the scars of first-marriage families. Neither parents, nor children, nor grandparents can forget the relationships that went before and that may still be more powerful than the new relationships. Children almost never give up their attachment to their first parent, no matter how negative that relationship was or is. Having the patience to tolerate the ambiguity of the situation and allowing each other the space and time for feel- ings about past relationships are crucial processes in forming a remarried family.
The boundary ambiguities and complexities include issues of membership, space, authority, and allocation of time. Once a remarried family is formed, it becomes forever impossible to have a clear defini- tion (if it is ever possible anyway) of who exactly is related to you how. For example, is your stepfa- ther's first cousin your cousin and are his nephews your cousins? In terms of space, do you get to have a room in your father's house when you are there only twice a week and his stepchildren are there every day? As a young adult, can you move back home with your mother and stepfather if he is the one pay- ing for the house? In terms of authority, who gets to decide whether you go to private college and your stepsiblings to public college because their parents together cannot afford private college? Who gets to make the rules for you in your father and stepmoth- er's home? And in terms of time allocation, which children get to spend more time with their father, his children or his stepchildren? An additional boundary problem arises when instant incest taboos are called for, as when several previously unrelated teenagers are suddenly expected to view each other as siblings. All these ambiguities of relationship, membership, space, authority, and time are built in and can never again be clearly defined.
In our experience, the most powerful clinical tool for helping families negotiate these complex transitions is to provide information that normal- izes their experiences. Clinically useful research findings on divorced and remarried families inte- grated in this chapter come from the work of many authors. Duberman (1975) was one of our first role models in the exploration of these issues. The lon- gitudinal research of Hetherington, Clingempeel, Montgomery, and their colleagues (Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1977, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006; Hetherington-, Cox, & Cox, 1977; Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992), carried out in a remarkably comprehensive longitudinal research on hundreds of families in a broad project over several decades (summarized in Hetherington & Kelly, 2002), has been extraordinarily helpful to us in conceptual- izing the trajectories and complex experiences of families as they evolve over the life cycle. John and Emily Visher (1979, 1988, 1991, 1996) were among the staunchest advocates for positive think- ing about stepfamilies. Connie Ahrons (Ahrons, 1981, 1994, 2005, 2007; Ahrons & Rodgers, 1987) has been expanding our understanding of divorce and remarried families for decades. Paul Glick (1984, 1989) at the Census Bureau was a generous resource to us for many years through the detailed information he had in his head about remarriage patterns. Andrew Cherlin, Frank Furstenberg, and their colleagues (Cherlin & Furstenberg, 1994; Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1994; Cherlin, 1992, 2009; Cherlin et al., 2004) have also been teaching us about the demographics of marriage, divorce, and remarriage for many years. Cliff Sager and Sager's colleagues (1983), Lillian Messinger (1978), Mary Whiteside (1978, 1982, 1989, 2006), Anne Bern- stein (1989, 1994, 1999), James Bray (Bray & Easling, 2005), Pasley and Ihinger (1995), Pasley and Ihinger-Tallman (2008), and Patricia Paper- now and her colleagues (2013) have been pioneers contributing for many years to the family therapy field's understanding of the clinical issues of remarriage. And Linda Burton and her colleagues (Burton, Purvin, & Garrett-Peters, 2009; Burton & Tucker, 2009; Burton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton et al., 2009; Cherlin et al., 2004) have carried out extraordinary ethnographic research on the cou- pling and recoupling patterns of poor families, mostly Latinas and African Americans, for more than a decade. This chapter draws on the work of these researchers and clinicians, as well as our own clinical experience over the past four decades.
Although it is extremely hard to give up the idea of the "nuclear family" by drawing a tight loy- alty boundary around household members, exclud- ing outside parents or children who reside elsewhere is neither realistic nor appropriate. It is essential to acknowledge families' actual relationships and empower them to move forward taking those reali- ties into consideration. In earlier times, when fami- lies lived in larger extended family and community enclaves, children had a whole network of adults who cared for them and helped to raise them. That is the model that helps here. Families need to develop a system with permeable but workable boundaries around the members of different households, allowing children to belong in multiple homes, to move flexibly between households and to have open lines of communication between ex-spouses, children, their parents, stepparents, grandparents, and other relatives. Indeed, extended family connections and outside connectedness may be even more impor tant for children's well-being than they are in first families.
Because parent-child bonds predate the new marital bonds, often by many years, and are there- fore initially stronger than the couple bond, remar- ried families must allow for the built-in ambiguity of roles and the differential ties based on histori- cal connections. In particular, each parent needs to accept responsibility for his or her own children and not combat or compete with the other's parent-child attachments.
Previous experience with nontraditional gender roles may increase the flexibility necessary for stepfamily organization. Forming a remarried family requires a re-visioning of traditional gender roles. We must overturn completely the notion that the stepmother, just because she is a woman, should be in charge of the home, the children, or the emotional relationships of the system. Such a view fails to respect the family's history, that is, that the parent with the historical relationship with the child is the only one who can really be the primary par- ent. Traditional gender roles, requiring women to take responsibility for the emotional well-being of the family, have placed stepmothers in an unten- able position, through the expectation that she can automatically be "mother" to children with whom she has no connection (Martin, 2009). This pits her against the children's mother, a contest she is bound to lose. The traditional rules that called for women to rear children and men to earn and manage the finances do not work well in first-marriage fami- lies. They have no chance at all in a system in which some of the children are strangers to the wife.
In addition, the finances of remarried families include sources of income and expenditure that are not in the husband's power to generate or control (e.g., alimony, child support, and earnings of the ex- wife or current wife). These issues, in addition to the primacy of children's bonds to their original parents, make traditional gender roles completely inappropri- ate for remarried families.
For poor families, there are often even more difficulties: children raised with little connection to their fathers and often living with what Burton and her colleagues refer to as "othermothers," not really stepmothers, because the roles are not that stabi- lized and formalized and where children may need to deal with a series of partners their parents con- nect with, who may or may not take on parenting roles with them (Burton & Hardaway, 2012; Burton & Tucker, 2009).
The Divorce-Remarriage Cycle
Our concept of the divorce and post-divorce emo- tional process can be thought of as a roller coaster with peaks of emotional tension at all transition points:
•At the time of the decision to separate or divorce
•When this decision is announced to family and friends
•When money and custody/visitation arrangements are discussed
•When the physical separation takes place
•When the actual legal divorce takes place When separated spouses or ex-spouses have contacted about money or children
•As each child graduates, marries, has children, separates, remaries, moves, or becomes ill
•As each spouse forms a new couple relation- ship, remarries, re-divorces, moves, becomes ill, or dies
These emotional pressure points are found in all divorcing families though, of course, not nec- essarily in this order and many take place over and over again. A general depiction of the process appears in Figure 22.1.
In general, it appears to take a minimum of 2 or 3 years for a family to adjust to this transition-if there are no cutoffs and if all the adults are work- ing at it full tilt. Families in which the emotional issues of divorce are not adequately resolved can remain stuck emotionally for years, or even for gen- erations, although several years after the divorce, if the developmental tasks of divorcing and set- tling into the post-divorce transformed family are satisfactorily accomplished, there are few, if any, observable or testable differences resulting from having been part of a divorced family (Arkowitz & Lillienfeld, 2013).
The emotions released during the divorce relate primarily to the work of retrieving oneself from the marriage. Each partner must retrieve the hopes, dreams, plans, and expectations that were invested in the spouse and in the marriage. This requires mourn- ing what is lost and dealing with hurt, anger, blame, guilt, shame, and loss in oneself, in the spouse, in the children, in the extended family, and in the friendship network.
Hetherington (1977) found that in 70 percent of divorcing couples, at least one spouse is having an affair, but only a small percent later marry, suggest- ing that another relationship may help you through but not beyond the divorce. Younger women tend to re-divorce more frequently than older women. About 47 percent of women who remarry before the age of age 25 divorce within the next 10 years (Bramlett & Mosher, 2001). Those who are older at first marriage are less likely to divorce or re-divorce, as are those with more education and economic resources. Men tend to remarry sooner and more often than women, and Whites sooner and more often than people of color. Although first wives are on the average 3 years younger than their husbands, second wives are on average 6 years younger than their husbands. The more income and education a woman has, the less likely she is to remarry. The reverse is true for men: The more income and education he has, the more likely he is to remarry, and the sooner.
In all multi-nuclear families, childrearing responsibilities must be distributed in ways that vali- date the bond between original parents and the chil- dren they have raised. Each spouse must take primary responsibility for raising and disciplining his or her own children. Ex-spouses are hopefully responsible adults who can learn to cooperate with each other for the sake of their children. New spouses hopefully begin as benign caretakers and build from there. Contraindications for post-divorce arrangements of joint or shared custody should obviously include the following:
•Mental illness in one or both parents
•A history of violence, child abuse, or neglect
•Alcohol or drug abuse
In those situations, the need for collaboration between parents, extended family, and community resources will even be more important to children's safety and well-being. But, assuming neither par- ent is abusive, mentally ill, or involved in sub- stance abuse, children generally do better if they have regular contact with both parents. The more regularly children visit their noncustodial parent, the better their adjustment is likely to be. The more effectively custodial parents can function and the less parental conflict children are exposed to, the better the children's adjustment will be. Cordial or courteous, low-intensity relationships with the ex-spouse and the ex-spouse's new marital partner work best. It helps if therapists think of all parental figures as potentially enriching the children's sup- port network.
The emotional issues of remarriage go back at least to the disintegration of the first marriage. The intensity of emotion unleashed by the life cycle dis- ruption of divorce must be dealt with over and over again before the dislocated systems are restabilized. No amount of "dealing with" the emotional difficul- ties of divorce will finish off the process once and for all, although the more emotional work is done at each step, the less intense and disruptive the sub- sequent reactivations at later stages are likely to be.
The predictable peaks of emotional tension in the transition to remarriage occur at:
•The time of serious commitment to a new relationship
•The time a plan to remarry is announced to families and friends
•The time of the actual remarriage and forma- tion of a stepfamily, which take place as the logistics of stepfamily life are put into practice.
The emotional process at the transition to remarriage involves dealing with anxiety about investment in a new marriage and a new family; deal- ing with one's own fears and those of the new spouse and the children; dealing with hostile or upset reac- tions of the children, the extended families, and the ex-spouse; struggling with the ambiguity of the new family structure, roles, and relationships; re-arousal of parental guilt and concerns about the welfare of children; and re-arousal of the old attachment to the ex-spouse (negative or positive).
Failure to deal sufficiently with the process at each point may jam it enough to prevent remarried family stabilization from ever occurring, a problem that is reflected in the high rate of re-divorce.
The most common mistakes parents make are as follows:
1. Preoccupation with themselves and neglect of their children's experience, which follows from the conflicting life cycle tasks of parenting ver- sus new couple relationships or couple conflict
2. Treating the remarriage as an event, rather than a complex process of family transformation, which will take years
3. Trying to get children to resolve the ambi- guities of multiple loyalties by cutting off one relationship to create clarity in another.
The residue of an angry and vengeful divorce can block stepfamily integration for years or forever. The re-arousal of the old emotional attachment to an ex-spouse, which characteristically surfaces at the time of remarriage and at subsequent life cycle transitions of children, is usually not understood as a predictable process and may therefore lead to denial, misinterpretation, conflict, cutoff, and emotional reac- tivity. As with adjustment to new family structures after divorce, stepfamily integration requires a mini- mum of 2 or 3 years to create a workable new structure that allows family members to move on emotionally.
 Forming a remarried family requires a different conceptual model. When there are children, they are a "package deal" with the spouse. This is, of course, always the case with in-laws as well, but not in such an immediate way, since they do not usually move in with you! At the same time, just because you fall in love with a person does not mean you automatically love their children. So how do you take on a new family in mid-journey just because they are there and part of your spouse's life? That is often the hardest part of the bargain. The first thing is to conceptualize and plan for remarriage as a long and complex pro- cess. While more advance planning would be helpful also in first marriages, it is an essential ingredient for successful remarriage, because so many family relationships must be renegotiated at the same time: these include grandparents, in-laws, former in-laws, step-grandparents and stepchildren, half-siblings, etc. (Whiteside, 2006). The presence of children from the beginning of the new relationship makes establishing an exclusive spouse-to-spouse relation ship before undertaking parenthood impossible.
The prerequisite attitudes listed in Figure 22.1 are necessary for a family to be able to work on the developmental issues of the transition process. If, as clinicians, we find ourselves struggling with the fam- ily over developmental issues before the prerequisite attitudes have been adopted, we are probably wast- ing our efforts. For example, it is very hard for a par ent to help children remain connected to ex-in-laws who were never close or supportive unless the parent has fully embraced the new model of family. Much education and discussion may be required before a client can put into effect ideas that may seem counterintuitive, aversive, or time-consuming.
The relationship of the children and steppar- ent can evolve only over time as their connection develops and as an extension of the child's bond with the original parent. Stepparents can only gradually assume a role, hopefully friendly, as the partner of the child's parent. Unless the children are young at the time of the remarriage, the parent-and-child para- digm may never apply to the new parent. This is a life cycle reality, not a failure on anyone's part. Indeed, in the "othermother" research of Linda Burton and her colleagues, poor women are often especially resentful of raising someone else's children unless they have a special proclivity, perhaps from family of origin experiences to be a parent figure (Burton & Hardaway, 2012).
Predictable Issues in Remarriage Adjustment and family integration issues with stepparents and stepchildren
The stereotypes of stepparents are deeply blaming. Most difficult of all is the role of stepmother. The problem for her is especially poignant, since she is usually the one most sensitive to the needs of others, and it will be extremely difficult for her to take a back seat while her husband struggles awkwardly in an uncomfortable situation. The fact is that she has no alternative. Women's tendency to take responsi bility for family relationships, to believe that what goes wrong is their fault and that, if they just try hard enough, they can make things work out, are the major problems for them in remarried families, since the situation carries with it built-in structural ambiguities, loyalty conflicts, guilt, and member ship problems. Societal expectations for stepmoth- ers to love and care for their stepchildren are also stronger than for stepfathers. If stepfathers help out a bit financially and do a few administrative chores, they may be viewed as an asset, even though that is not a satisfactory parental role. But the expectation for stepmothers is that they will make up to children for whatever losses they have experienced, which is, of course, impossible. Clinically, it is important to relieve them of these expectations.
A stepmother's ambivalence about her parent- ing role tends to be particularly acute when step- children are young and remain in the custody of her husband's ex-wife. In this common situation, stepmothers tend to be less emotionally attached to the children and to feel disrupted and exploited during their visits. Meanwhile the husband's co- parenting partnership may appear to be conducted more with his ex-spouse than with her. Conflicting role expectations set mothers and stepmothers into competitive struggles over childrearing practices. It appears to be better for stepmothers to retain their work outside the home for their independence, emo- tional support, and validation. In addition to contrib- uting needed money, it makes them less available at home for the impossible job of dealing with the husband's children.
Along with finances, stepchildren are the major contributor to remarriage adjustment problems. Remarriage often leads to a renewal of custody diffi- culties in prior relationships. Families with stepchildren are much more complicated and twice as likely to divorce. Marital satisfaction is correlated with the stepparent's connection to stepchildren. Although the remarriage itself might be congenial, the presence of stepchildren often creates child-related problems that may lead the couple to separate. Some stepparents do not even consider their live-in step- child as part of the family, and stepchildren are even more likely to discount their live-in stepparents. Stepchildren are much more likely to change residence or leave home early than biological children. Children in stepfamilies may appear to have more power than children in first families, although they experience less autonomy than in the single-parent phase, where they typically have more adult privileges and responsibilities.
Stepparents need to take a slow route to parent hood, first becoming friends with their stepchildren, and only gradually assuming an active role in parent ing. It generally takes at least 2 years to become comanagers of their stepchildren with their spouses. For stepparents to compete with their stepchildren for pri- macy with their spouse is inappropriate, as if the couple and parent-child relationships were on the same hierarchical level, which, of course, they are not.
Stepfathers may get caught in the bind between rescuer and intruder, called upon to help discipline the stepchildren and then criticized by them and their mother for this intervention. Over-trying by the new parent is a major problem, often related to guilt about unresolved or unresolvable aspects of the system.
Overall, mothers, daughters, stepdaughters, and stepmothers experience more stress, less sat- isfaction, and more symptoms than fathers, sons, stepsons, and stepfathers. Stepmother-stepdaughter relationships tend to be the most difficult of all. Daughters, who are often closest to mothers in divorce, tend to have a lot of difficulty with stepfa- thers, no matter how hard the stepfather tries. Girls' stress probably reflects the fact that they feel more responsible for emotional relationships in a family and thus get caught between loyalty and protection of their mothers and conflicts with their stepmothers. While divorce appears to have more adverse effects for boys, remarriage is more disruptive for girls. Boys, who are often difficult for a single mother, may settle down after the entry of a stepfather.
Different issues arise when stepfamilies are formed after the premature death of a parent than after a divorce. Gender differences are a key factor. A new stepfather may be perceived as rescuing the family from poverty after the death of the primary wage earner, whereas children tend to view their mother as completely irreplaceable and resent any efforts of another woman to function in her role. However, young children will eventually accept a stepparent, including a stepmother, if the remaining parent can help the children to grieve for their loss before confronting them with a stepmother. When the father does remarry, he needs to help the children to accept the new person in her own right rather than collude with the children in wanting the family to continue in the same way it did when their mother was alive. On the other hand, if insufficient attention is paid to the children's grief work, they may never accept a stepmother. (For a videotape with com- mentary on a family dealing with these issues, see McGoldrick, 1996.)
Although the fact that the ex-spouse is not around to "interfere" may be an advantage, ghosts can be even more powerful, especially given peo- ple's tendency to idealize a parent who is lost prema- turely. It may be harder to recognize and deal with a triangle with a dead parent. Talking, remembering. and acknowledging the dead person's human failings and foibles help to exorcise the ghost, but none of this can be done without the active leadership of the surviving parent. Late adolescents or older children. generally resist attempts to "replace" their dead parent, and the wise stepparent will honor that position.
Violence and abuse appear to be much more common in stepfamilies than in first families (Brody, 1998), probably because of the system's structural complexity and the fact that they have not had time to develop relationship bonds, and many do not withstand the early stages of family reor- ganization. But the instability of remarried families should not be overstated. Remarried partners do not wait as long as partners in first families to leave an unhappy situation, and those who manage the early years have no greater likelihood of divorcing than in first marriages.
The stress of money
Money is a major area of conflict in remarried fami- lies. Remarriage often leads to reopening of financial battles from the divorce and to children receiving less support from their biological fathers. Traditional gender roles run completely counter to contemporary economics and to the fact that both parents usually enter remarriage with significant financial obliga- tions to the first family. Failure to pay or collect ali- mony or child support wreaks havoc in post-divorce families. A husband who is the sole wage earner in a remarried family often has to decide which set of children has top priority-his own or the stepchil- dren he lives with. These priorities are also influ- enced by his relationship with his ex-wife; if it is bad, his visits and child support payments tend to lag or even cease. A new wife may complain about the money her husband gives to his children, particularly if she does not receive the child support owed for her own children. Overall children in first families tend to receive more from their parents than chil- dren whose parents remarry. In affluent families, problems also surface around wills and how much financial assistance should be given to which adult children. Where money is concerned, blood may suddenly seem thicker than relationship.
Gays and lesbians in stepfamilies
A significant number of post-divorce families consist of a gay or lesbian couple with the children of one or both of them from a previous heterosexual marriage. These systems have all of the problems of hetero- sexual remarried systems in addition to the burdens of secrecy and isolation caused by the social stigma they have most likely experienced (Laird & Green, 1996). In extreme cases, the adults may feel that they have to try to remain closeted, even to their children, for fear of repercussions in custody or employment. There is almost always anxiety about the conse- quences of coming out to family (La Sala, 2010), the children's teachers and friends, co-workers, neigh- bors, and acquaintances. Therapists can be most helpful if, in addition to the usual therapy for remar- ried systems, they acknowledge the societal stigma that LGBT families experience and help the couple sift through their various networks to dismantle the secrecy and isolation wherever possible. Connection to supportive friends, community groups, and access to supportive literature can be extremely important.
The most complex remarried families, where both spouses bring children from previous relation- ships, tend to have the greatest difficulty establish- ing stability. All things being equal, it appears easiest if the previous spouse died, next easiest when the spouse is divorced, and hardest when the spouse has never been married, perhaps because some experi- ence with marriage appears helpful in a second mar- riage. Integration is more likely when children are not left behind by either parent, or when the new couple have a child together (although having a child to save the marriage is, of course, never a good idea). The longer the new family has together as a unit, the more likely they are to have a sense of family inte- gration. Developing a sense of belonging takes most family members 3 to 5 years, longer if there are ado- lescents. Remarried family integration appears more likely when extended family approves of or accepts the remarriage, next best when they disapprove or are negative, perhaps providing a "good enemy," and hardest when they are cutoff or indifferent.
Emotional issues: Anger, grief, pseudo-mutuality, loyalty conflicts, conflict and cutoff
Predictable feelings that come up in the process of remarriage are likely to include intense conflict, guilt, ambivalence, and anger about the previous spouse and children, denial of such feelings, and the wish to resolve the ambiguity. Remarried families are formed against a background of loss, hurt, and a sense of failure. Their "battle fatigue" often leads to a desire not to "rock the boat" this time, which leads partners to suppress doubt, conflict, and differ- ences that need to be dealt with, resulting in "pseudo- mutuality" that pretends total mutuality, covering over disagreements, and making current relation- ships all the more fragile in the long run.
Cutoffs are more common with the paternal extended family, and connections are more often strong with maternal relatives, but extended family relationships are often difficult. While children are quite prepared to have multiple sets of grandparents, uncles, and aunts, the middle generation can get caught up in conflicts, and managing relationships with such a large network of kin is complicated. Remarriage of either spouse tends to decrease contact between fathers and their non-custodial children. Divorced fathers tend to have more contact with their children if they have not remarried and even more if the mother has not remarried either. Once both parents have remar- ried, children are much less likely to have weekly con- tact with their non-custodial fathers. Remarriage of a former spouse tends to reactivate feelings of depres- sion, helplessness, anger, and anxiety, particularly for women. Men tend to be less upset by the remarriage of an ex-wife, possibly because it may release them from financial responsibility and because they are usually less central to the emotional system.
One of the hardest requirements for parents is to let their children express the full range of nega- tive and positive feelings toward all of their parents, stepparents, and half- and stepsiblings. Often par- ents want the child's whole allegiance. Children feel caught, afraid that if they do not love a new steppar- ent, they will hurt and anger one parent, but if they do love the stepparent, they are disloyal and will hurt or lose the love of the other. Another loyalty con- flict is the expectation for the new spouse to love the other's children as much as his or her own, which would be highly unlikely.
Remarriage at Various Phases of the Family Life Cycle
In general, the wider the discrepancy in family life cycle experience between the new spouses, the greater the difficulty of the transition and the longer it will take to integrate a workable new family. especially if the partners come from very different cultural backgrounds, which always increases the bridge-building necessary for a couple. A father of late adolescent and/or young adult children with a new, young wife who was never previously married should expect a rather strenuous and lengthy period of adjustment, during which he will have to juggle his emotional and financial responsibilities toward the new marriage and toward his (probably upset) children. His wife, looking forward to the roman- tic aspects of a first marriage, is likely to encounter instead the many stresses of dealing with adolescents who probably resent her, whether the children live with the couple or not.
If either spouse tries to pull the other into a life-style or attitude that denies or restricts the other spouse's family life cycle tasks or relationships with children from previous relationships, difficulties are likely to expand into serious problems. If the husband expects his new wife to undertake immediately a major role in his children's lives or to be the one who always backs down gracefully when her interests and prefer- ences clash with those of the children, serious trouble is predictable in the new marriage, as the formation of the new couple bond is continuously given second priority.
On the other hand, if the new wife tries, overtly or covertly, to cut off or loosen the tie between father and children or to take on the role of mother to them, or if she insists that her claims always get his prior attention, forcing him to choose between them, seri- ous trouble is also predictable. Variations in which the new wife claims to support her husband but embarks on a battle with his ex-wife as the source of the difficulties are equally dysfunctional.
Often the stepparent feels he or she knows what the other parent is doing wrong with his or her children and forcefully pushes these parenting ideas. Such efforts are very likely to jam the circuits for everyone the new couple, the stepparent/stepchild relationships, and extended family relationships, where people get called upon to choose up sides.
Since it is not possible either to erase or to acquire emotional experience overnight, it is useful to conceptualize the joining of partners at two dif- ferent life cycle phases as a process in which both spouses have to learn to function in several different life cycle phases simultaneously and out of their usual sequence. The new wife will have to struggle with the role of stepmother to teenagers before becoming an experienced wife or mother herself. Her husband will have to retraverse with her several phases that he has passed through before: the honeymoon, the new mar- riage with its emphasis on romance and social activities, and the birth and rearing of any new children of their own. Both need to be aware that a second passage through these phases automatically reactivates some of the intensity over issues that were problematic the first time. Attempts to "make up for" past mistakes or grievances may overload the new relationship. The focus needs to be on having the experiences again, not on undoing, redoing, or denying the past. With open discussion, mutual support, understanding, and a lot of thoughtful planning, this straddling of sev- eral phases simultaneously can provide rejuvenation for the older spouse and experience for the younger spouse that can enrich their lives. If the difficulties are not understood and dealt with, they will surface as conflict or emotional distance at each life cycle tran- sition and for each subsystem of the remarried family.
Spouses at the same life cycle phase
When remarried spouses come together at the same phase of the family life cycle, their greatest difficul- ties generally relate to whether they are at a child- bearing phase. Obviously, spouses with no children from previous marriages bring the least complexity to the new situation. Families with grown children and grandchildren on both sides have long and complex histories and will require careful thought to negoti- ate successfully. But neither of these circumstances provides nearly the degree of strain that families with young or adolescent children are likely to experience, where the roles of active parenting and stepparenting must be included in the new family. Unfortunately, the advantage of both partners having similar tasks, responsibilities, and experiences may easily drown in a competitive struggle that stems from the overload of tasks and concerns (six children are not as easy to raise or support as three), the intense emotional investment in good parenting ("My methods are bet- ter than your methods"), and the need to include both ex-spouses in the many arrangements regarding the children ("Why do you let your ex dictate our lives?").
Stepfamilies and young children
Children's struggles with the predictable issues may sur- face as school or behavior problems, withdrawal from family and peers, or acting-out behavior, all of which complicate or even obstruct the process of family reor- ganization. Indications are that preschool children, if given some time and help in mourning their previous loss, adjust most easily to a new stepfamily, while adjust- ment is most difficult for stepfamilies with teenagers. Latency age children seem to have the most difficulty resolving their feelings of divided loyalty and benefit from careful attention to their need for contact with both parents. Clearly, children of all ages suffer when there is intense conflict between their parents and benefit when they maintain civil, cooperative, co-parental relationships. If parents cannot be cooperative, tightly structur- ing the relationships is the next best alternative.
Stepfamilies with adolescents
Since the difficulties that most American families have with adolescents are legendary, it is not surprising that early adolescence seems the most difficult time for both boys and girls to adjust to their parents' remarriage. The additional complications of this phase in stepfamilies can push the stress level beyond manageable bonds. We have found the following issues common in stepfamilies at this phase.
1. Conflict between the remarried family's need to coalesce and the normal focus of adoles- cents on separation: Adolescents often resent the major shifts in their customary family pat- terns and resist learning new roles and relating to new family members when they are con- cerned with growing away from the family.
2. Stepparents get stuck if they attempt to disci- pline an adolescent stepchild.
3. Adolescents may attempt to resolve their divided loyalties by taking sides or actively playing one side against the other.
4. Sexual attraction may develop between step- siblings or stepparent and stepchild, along with adolescent difficulty in accepting the biological parent's sexuality.
The impact of remarriage in later life cycle phases
Although there is not the daily strain of having to live together with stepchildren and stepparents, remarriage at a post-childrearing phase of the life cycle requires significant readjustment of relationships throughout both family systems, which may now include in-laws and grandchildren. It is probable that grown children and grandchildren will accept a remarriage after a death of a parent more easily than after a late divorce. There is often great relief throughout the family if an older widowed parent finds a new partner and a new lease on life, whereas a later-life divorce usually arouses concern and dismay throughout the family, in part, perhaps, related to anxieties about who will care for the now single parents. But grown children may also surprise themselves and others with the intensity of their reactivity to an older parent's remarriage.
The strength of children's reactivity to a par- ent's remarriage, even after they believe that they have long ago resolved the loss or divorce of the parent(s), may overwhelm them. They may need coaching to find a way to incorporate a parent's new partner into their lives.
Adult children may fear the loss of inheritance when a parent (especially a father) remarries. They may also feel the new relationship is a betrayal of their own dead or divorced parent. Clinically, it helps to facilitate conversation about fears and expecta- tions to avoid shut down and cutoffs between adult children and their parents. The major factor in three- generational adjustment to remarriage in late middle or older age tends to be the amount of acrimony or cooperation between the ex-spouses and the adult child's degree of resolution of the death of the other parent. When the relationship is cooperative enough to permit joint attendance at important family func- tions of children and grandchildren and when holi- day arrangements can be jointly agreed upon, family acceptance of a new marriage tends to follow.
Clinical Intervention with Remarried Families
Whatever the presenting problem in a remarried family. it is essential to look laterally as well as back to previ- ous generations and to evaluate past relationships with previous spouses to determine the degree to which the family needs help to work out the patterns required by the new structure. Ongoing conflict or cutoffs with exspouses, children, parents, and grandparents will tend to overload the relationships in the remarried family and make them problematic. We consider genograms particularly essential in work with remarried families, because the structural complexity so influences the predictable triangles of these situations (McGoldrick, 2011; McGoldrick, Gerson, & Petry, 2008).
We next describe several predictable triangles in remarried families. In first-marriage families, the major problematic triangles involve the parents with any or all of the children and each parent with his or her own parents and in-laws. In the more complex structures of remarried families, we have identified six of the most common triangles and interlocking triangles presenting in multi-nuclear families. In no way do we mean to suggest by this focus that the triangles with the extended family and grandparen- tal generation are unimportant to the understanding and the therapy of remarried families. In our clinical work with remarried families, coaching of the adults on further differentiation in relation to their families of origin proceeds in tandem with work on current family problems (McGoldrick & Carter, 2001). Our experience indicates that families that are willing to work on relationships with their families of origin do better than those that are not.
Triangle between the new spouses and an ex-spouse
When a triangle focuses on conflict between new spouse and the old spouse with the partner in the middle, the usual issues are finances or sexual jeal- ousy. Underneath, it is likely that the ex-spouses have not accomplished an emotional divorce. The first step in the tricky clinical work around this triangle is for the therapist to establish a working alli- ance with the new spouse, who will otherwise sabo- tage efforts to focus on the first marriage. Efforts to work on the resolution of the divorce by seeing either the ex-spouses alone or all three in sessions together will probably create more anxiety than the system can handle. We have found that such work goes most smoothly when a spouse is coached in the presence of the new spouse to undertake steps out- side of the therapy sessions that will change his or her relationship with the ex-spouse. Along the way. the new spouse will have to learn to acknowledge the importance of that past bond to his or her spouse and to accept the fact that some degree of caring will probably always remain in the relationship, depend- ing on the length of time the first marriage lasted and whether there were children.
Triangle involving a pseudo-mutual remarried couple, an ex-spouse, and a child or children
In this triangle, the presenting problem is usually acting out or school problems with one or more chil- dren or perhaps a child's request to have custody shifted from one parent to another. The remarried couple presents itself as having no disagreements and blames either the child or the ex-spouse (or both) for the trouble. Although the request in ther- apy will be for help for the child or to manage the child's behavior, the background story will usually show intense conflict between the ex-spouses, the new spouse being totally supportive of his or her spouse in conflicts with that spouse's child. The first move in sorting out this triangle is to put the manage- ment of the child's behavior temporarily in the hands of the biological parent and get the new spouse to take a neutral position, rather than siding against the child. This move will probably calm things down, but they will usually not stay calm unless the pseudo- mutuality of the remarried couple is worked on, per- mitting differences and disagreements to be aired and resolved and permitting the child to have a rela- tionship with his or her original parent that does not automatically include the new spouse every step of the way. Finally, work will need to be done to end the battle with the ex-spouse and complete the emo- tional divorce, the lack of which is perpetuated by the intense conflict over the child or children.
Triangle involving a remarried couple in conflict over the child/children of one of them
The first of these triangles (stepmother, father, and his children), although not the most common house- hold composition, is the most problematic because of the central role the stepmother is expected to play in the lives of live-in stepchildren. If the stepmother has never been married before, and if the children's mother is alive and has a less than ideal relationship with her ex-husband, it may be an almost impossible situation. The stepmother should be helped to pull back long enough to renegotiate with both her hus- band and the children regarding what her role can realistically be. Rather than leave the stepmother and children to fight it out, the father will have to participate actively in making and enforcing what- ever rules are agreed upon. When their immedi- ate household is in order, the husband will have to work on establishing a cooperative co-parental rela- tionship with his ex-wife, or else his conflict with her will set the children off again and inevitably re-involve his new wife. If the first wife is dead, he may need to deal with his mourning for her and help his children to do the same in order to let the past go and not see his second wife as a poor replacement of his first.
When a stepmother is involved, the father needs to deliver two messages to his children:
1. Be courteous to my spouse (not "your" anything).
2. You are answering to me. You have not lost both your mother and me.
Triangle involving a pseudo-mutual remarried couple, his children, and her children
This triangle presents as a happily remarried couple with "no difficulties" except that their two sets of children fight constantly with each other. The children are usually fighting out the conflicts denied by the remarried couple either in the marriage or in the relationship with the ex-spouse(s). Since direct con- frontation of the pseudo-mutuality stiffens resistance, and since the presenting request is made in regard to the children, it is wise to begin with an exploration of the triangles involving the children and ex-spouses, focusing on the welfare of the children.
Triangle involving a parent, the biological children, and the stepchildren
As in the previous situation, this triangle may present as simple household conflict with the parent caught in the middle between his or her biological children and stepchildren. It is, in fact, quite complex, always interlocking with the triangle involving the remar- ried couple (who may have either a pseudo-mutual or a conflictual relationship) and the triangles with both ex-spouses.
Triangle involving remarried spouses and the parents of either
This triangle features the in-laws as part of the pre- senting problem, but it should be remembered that relationships with the grandparents' generation are as crucial in remarried families as they are in all other families, and their exploration should be a routine part of any evaluation. The presentation of the older generation as part of the current problem is most likely to occur if they have disapproved of the divorce and remarriage or have been actively involved in caring for their grandchildren before or during the remarriage.
Clinical Guidelines
We recommend the following general guidelines to help remarried families think of themselves as pio- neers, inventing new and workable structures:
•Give up the old model of family and accept the complexity of a new form
•Maintain flexible but workable boundaries to permit children to feel safe in shifting of household memberships
•Work for open lines of communication between all parents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren
It is surprising how often visitation decreases when either parent remarries. While the intention may be to have the child bond with the stepparent, the likelihood that strong and positive relationships will develop between children and their stepparents is diminished by a lack of relationship with the non- custodial parent. A parent's hope that the new spouse will step up and handle administrative arrangements with the ex-spouse, serious discipline issues and visi- tation arrangements are misguided at best.
The original parent should always remain in charge of the relationship with the ex-spouse and should always handle the disciplining of his or her own children. This should never be given over to the new spouse. But couples who feel worn out or frustrated with the previous partner make this mistake regularly.
When there are child-focused problems, we routinely contact an ex-spouse and invite him or her to meet alone or with the children to hear our opinion of the children's problems that have been brought to our attention by the remarried family. When we inform the family of our intention to do this, we are frequently warned that the ex-spouse in question does not care, will not respond, or is crazy. Neverthe- less, our phone calls frequently locate a concerned parent who is perfectly willing to come in, although warning us that our client is the one with problems. Ex-spouses can frequently be engaged in subsequent sessions alone or with the children.
Our general goal in working with remarried families is to establish an open system with workable boundaries and to revise traditional gender roles. This goal requires that the former spouses work through the emotional divorce, which we assume is not resolved if ex-spouses are not speaking or have continuous conflicts. The goal then is to create an open, working, co-parental relationship.
The following guidelines summarize our clini- cal recommendations:
1.Take a three-generational genogram and out line previous marriages before plunging into current household problems.
2.Educate and normalize continuously, regarding the predictable patterns and processes in remarriage, keeping in mind particular difficulties related to:
a.Family members being at different life cycle stages
b.The emotionally central role of women in families and their special difficulties in moving into a new system, where much is demanded of them
c.Couples trying to maintain the myth of the intact nuclear family
3.Beware of families struggling with develop- mental tasks before they have adopted the pre- requisite attitudes for remarriage: for example, a parent pushing a child and stepparent to be close without accepting that their relationship will take time to develop.
4.Help the family gain patience to tolerate the ambiguity and not "over-try" to make things work out. This includes accepting that family ties do not develop overnight. Encourage step- parents to understand that a child's negative reactions are not to be taken personally and help them tolerate guilt, conflicted feelings, ambivalence, divided loyalties, and so on.
5.Include the new spouse in sessions in which you coach the client to resolve his or her relationship with an ex-spouse, at least in the beginning or you will increase the new spouse's paranoia about the old spouse-and take the frequent characterization of an ex- spouse as "crazy" with a grain of salt. The list of the ex-spouse's outrageous behaviors may reflect the client's provocations or retaliations.
6.When the remarriage ends a close single- parent/child relationship, the feelings of loss of that special closeness, especially for the child, have to be dealt with and will take time.
7.If the child is presented as the problem, try to involve all parents and stepparents as early as possible in therapy. If joint sessions are held, discussion should be directed toward coop- erative work to resolve the child's difficulties, never torward marital issues. Children should never have the power to decide on remarriage, custody, or visitation. It is, of course, impor- tant to inquire from children their experiences, wishes, and preferences. But the responsibility for the ultimate decisions should always rest with the adults.
8.When problems involve child-focused uproar, put the child's original parent in charge tem- porarily. When the uproar subsides, coach the parent on ways to "move over" and include his or her spouse in the system-first, as a spouse only. Warn the family that the shift to active stepparenting usually takes several years and will require the active support of the biological parent. In the case of older adoles- cents, it may be unrealistic to expect the shift ever to occur to any great degree.
9.Work to get parents to define predictable and adequate plans for visitation and to keep up relationships with the ex-spouse's extended family, and beware of the possible "hidden agenda" in any sudden proposals to rearrange custody, visitation, or financial arrangements.
10.Include work on the spouses' families of origin as early in treatment as possible.
