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.
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