Characteristics Of Step Families

Great Essays
Register to read the introduction… James Bray from a nine-year study for the National Institutes of Health cites the characteristics of successful step families and discusses the importance of daily communication between husband and wife to prevent and defuse potential problems. The other recommendation that Dr. Bray suggests is that the relationship between the new spouse and children be developed very slowly. As a part of this research, Dr. Bray also lists the following types of step families and describes the characteristics and success rates of each (Herbert 60). Neo-Traditional Step families These families can be described as the most successful families in the nine-year study. The most striking characteristic of the neo-traditional family is that they take a very realistic and flexible approach to building a family. They accept that they are not a 1950's version of a nuclear family and don't try to be. This is also the type of family that after a few years most closely resembles the traditional nuclear family because of the level of intimacy and unconditional support of one another (60). Romantic Step families These families picture themselves as the idealized version of the nuclear family and do whatever they can to fit into that …show more content…
It might be that step mothering is just more difficult, because the children's bond with the biological mother is very powerful. For the most part, a man can be a good stepfather simply by being a provider and a "nice" guy, but a stepmother is usually called upon to establish empathy and attachment, traits that are very difficult to establish, and impossible to fabricate. Other research shows that stepchildren are less likely to be provided for. Studies confirm that biological mothers around the world spend more family income on food-particularly milk, fruit, and vegetables-and less on tobacco and alcohol, compared with mothers raising non-biological children (63). Whatever the reasons, stepmothers and stepchildren are the losers in these reconfigured families. The issues surrounding step families have launched a conservative assault supporting the indictment of step families. This assault is fueled by the support of "evolutionary psychologists" who contend that parents have evolved over time to care only about the welfare of their own genetic offspring (Feifer

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    5. Allies and Opponents The problem of step families is something that is becoming more and more common these days. That is why all the support is needed that we can get. At Blended Family Getaway Camp we plan to work state, local and national allies to make the camp the best we can.…

    • 1042 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the U.S., the biggest changes in the family are in its structure and changing priorities. In the past century, and particularly in recent decades, the definition of the family has widened to be inclusive of a spectrum of family structures, not just nuclear or traditional families. Less people are getting married and the divorce rate has increased, as have single parent homes and cohabitation, while birth rates have decreased. Ideas about gender roles in families have also been challenged with the women’s rights movement and the legalization of same sex marriage. There has also been an increase in interracial and interreligious marriages.…

    • 2359 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The American Dream and American Society have sensed changed from the Leave it to Beaver, nuclear family of the 1950s and sixties. From the suburban household with a husband at work, wife at home and their children, playing in the front yard. Brought upon many changes in the past couple of years to the staple of the nuclear family. Yet the traditional family still survives today, only to integrate and become a category among the varied families that now shape the new American society. This melting pot of families has emerged out of decades of movements and events, though the twenty-first century brought a surge of change to what is now viewed as the many faces of the modern American family.…

    • 1414 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Being a stepparent is never easy, and often challenging for many, individuals must maneuver the challenges presented both by life as a stepfamily and the relationship between the stepparent-stepchild and performed two important task to maintain a healthy stepparent and stepchild relationship. First, the individual must develop an appropriately affectionate relationship with the children and second, he or she must establish themselves as legitimate parental authorities. (Ward,…

    • 1432 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Family life has changed dramatically over the last century. The delay of marriage is one of the biggest changes that has occurred in American families. People are waiting until they have finished their education to marry, which has an impact on parenting when they become parents. Another significant change that has occurred in American families is the structure of a typical family, so much so that the typical family of a father, mother and 2.5 children has all but disappeared. The family structure can be the popular image of a mother, father and children or it can be a divorced mother or father and children or a mother or father and their partner and children.…

    • 1016 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    People have broken families with one parent and also heterogeneous families. The standard nuclear family living style has decreased greatly as seen in the graph. Families who are married without children have seen a slight decrease but not as vast as the nuclear. The other family types addressed in the graph are all rising. The gradual increase compared to the steep decrease shows where they typical “family” is headed.…

    • 1085 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The overall purpose of Chapter 1 Springing Forward from the Past: An Introduction is to inform the reader of which topics that are going to be taught in each part in this book. What chapter one is describing is information about who is behind all of the reading in the textbook. The book is made up of essays, fact sheets, briefs, and symposiums from members of the Council on Contemporary Families (CFC). These people study and work with families all the time. The material in this book are not reprints, so they will not be found anywhere else.…

    • 833 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Nuclear Family Sociology

    • 1572 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The nuclear family in television consists of a mom, dad, and three kids. They live in a suburban community, with other heterosexual families as neighbors. The father works to provide for the family, while the mom stays at home with the kids or occasionally works. Their lives revolve around school, work, and home, places that define a certain characteristic of each member of the family. However, sitcom families spend most of their time at home.…

    • 1572 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Inequality In Families

    • 671 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Imagine you just got married one year ago but something is feeling different, your time isn’t to each other and now its coming to a divorce. I witnessed this myself with my cousin who was married for only a little time had a child and ended up with divorce. In the article “From Marriage Markets: How Inequality is Remaking the American Family” authors June Carbone and Naomi Cahn talk about how families changed from the past to today. The authors talk about how people are postponing marriages and the ones who do get married don’t last so long.…

    • 671 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This essay compares the speech Against the Stepmother and an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims unit, with the aim to compare and contrast the way these two are similar and different. Against the Stepmother consists of a young man accusing his stepmother for killing his father and was written in Athens between 420 to 411 BC. The Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Legitimate Rape" was aired on March 27, 2013, and deals with a woman named Avery accusing her co-worker, Purcell, of rape and the court case that follows the accusation. Despite the temporal and cultural differences, there are significant similarities in regards to the rhetoric used to provoke emotion from the jury and the use of evidence to support a position, and…

    • 1637 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Divorce In America

    • 137 Words
    • 1 Pages

    There can be no argument that the rise in divorce in the United States over the last decade is a cause for concern when addressing the family unit. Fifty years ago, divorcing a spouse for personal reasons occurred, however, this was not as socially accepted and as numerous as it is in today’s culture. According to McDermott et al (2013), the National Center for Health Statistics reports that about 43 percent of marriages will end in divorce within the first fifteen years. The structure of the nuclear family which includes the father, mother, and child, is the most basic and universal fact in our society. Every person was born of a man and woman.…

    • 137 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The debates over the proper form of family life ever since the rise of women’s movement and the civil right revolution of 1960 are also an offended in my personal point of view. While reading the information provided in those sources I compared my family with the “American” family standard definition and I realized that people from different cultures need to rethink their assumptions and consider a better way to describe family by taking in consideration life’s issues through the point of view of people that comes from different backgrounds from their own. Based on American family standard definition I never had a family or my family was simply distorted because I am part of minorities. The article argues about the different types of families in which it includes; nuclear family, never married families (cohabitation), and blended families. Based on American argument, the…

    • 1127 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With only one parent in charge of the family, children lack the guidance they would have with two parents in the household. A single parent is less able to provide financial security for the family. Families headed by a single female are more than two times as likely to fall below the poverty…

    • 863 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory of development centered around the theory that a person is affected by the distinct relationships they have during their life. These relationships can be put into five different levels and each level represents each of the major interactions. The levels are the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, microsystem, and the chronosystem. Each level is based on the theory that each change based on the environmental systems that the person is exposed to from childhood through adulthood. This paper will show how Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory shaped the author’s development through their life.…

    • 848 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Marriage and Family is all around us. It’s on television, newspapers, and magazine ads. We pass by families on the street, in the store, in our own neighborhoods. At some point of our lives, everyone has a family. However, with society changing and progressing and falling over time, the definition of a family is changing.…

    • 1245 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays