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Submitted in Accordance with the Requirements for the Degree of Phd the Candidate Confirms That the Work Submitted Is Her Own An Reformulating Familiar Concerns: Parents in Stepfamilies Jennifer Flowerdew Submitted in accordancewith the requirementsfor the degreeof PhD The University of Leeds Department of Sociology and Social Policy September 1999 The candidateconfirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriatecredit has been given where referencehas been made to the work of others. Dedicated to memories Of my brother, Chris Smith (1953-1998) and my mother, Mary Goodacre (1924-1999) Acknowledgements To my two supervisors,Professor Carol Smart and Dr Jennifer Mason in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, I owe a huge debt of thanks. Throughout my time as a researchstudent - and this included times of some uncertainty - both have been wholly generousin their intellectual and personal support. I would also like to thank Professor Janet Finch, formerly of Lancaster University, for her enthusiasmin encouragingme to undertakeresearch in this areaof family life. I could not have undertaken this study without the help of the parents who agreed to take part, who gave freely of their time and whose insights are primarily behind the ideas in this thesis. To them I owe many thanks. Many thanks, too, to friends and colleagues Pamela Housden, Deborah and John Sawyer, Pippa Stevens, Brcn Neale, Amanda Wade, Hclen Willmot and Shelley Budgeon. They have been especiallyhelpful. Robin Flowerdew has provided much help, encouragementand support. I am grateful for this and for his constant willingness to keep watch with my brother and my mother. Finally, very special thanks to my daughter Sophie for her unending help as the going got tough and to my son Tom for daily reminding me of the realities I study. Abstract Stepfamilies are culturally significant in Britain on account of their media and mythical profile. Through increasedrates in separation,divorce and repartnering they have also becomeincreasingly socially significant. Yet this significance is only partially reflected in the researchliterature. Public versions of stepfamily life have tended to construct the ties of stepkinship in terms of fragility and contingency, assuming they cannot be counted upon in ways that arise 'naturally' through ties of blood. By talking directly to parentsin stepfamilies this project seeksto understandhow they themselvesunderstand these issues. The research question is: how do parents refon-nulate their family relationships in the light of separation,divorce and repartnering, and what implications does this have for their handling of contact and inheritance? Central to its concernsare parents' understandingsof the qualitative differences in their relationships with their biological and stepchildren,and how thesedifferences maybe accountedfor. The study used qualitative research methods and was based on semi-structured interviews with thirty parents living in married and cohabiting couple stepfamilies. Respondentswere chosen using theoretical sampling methods. The aim was to select a sample with a range of characteristics and experiences which would enable key comparisons to be made about how stepfwnily life 'works' under different social conditions. Although interviews focussed specifically on issues of 'contact' and inheritance,respondents were also able to discussissues of most importanceto them. Analysis showed clearly that ties and solidarities between stepparentsand stepchildren can be strong and enduring. Concerns were expressedby almost all stepparentsthat their stepchildren and biological children should be treated equally - whether this be on a day-to-day basis or in more lasting terms of inheritance. It also emerged that the experience of growing up as a stepchild provided a useful resource for those who, as adults, themselvesmoved into the role of stepparent. Table of Contents I The social significance of stepfamilies I 2 Kinship ties and solidarities 8 3 The researchprocess 39 4 Stepfamilies as moral places 72 5 Family relationships: inclusions and exclusions,commitments and contingencies 92 6 Contact: reaching for a collaborative ethic 126 7 Stepfamilies and inheritance 150 8 Stepfamilies of origin: a resourcefor contemporaryfamily relationships 177 9 Parentsin stepfamilies: learning new idioms, rewriting scripts 204 Appendix A- Interview Schedule 211 References 214 Chapter1 The SocialSignificance of Stepfamilies 'Even after I remarried, some people always made us fccl we were a broken family. Which is amazing, because I don't feel like that at And bothers divorce. Is that how all ... that me about the other people see us? Somethingbroken? A breakdown? But I did kind of think like that until I reachedmy forties. But how did we come to think of it like that? Part of me understandsit and part of me is mystified. We're just a family' (Dcb Casson,aged forty-cight). Up until very recently, 'public stories' (Jamieson, 1998) or discourses - whether emanating from academic, political, religious or media sources - have tended to construct processesof separation, divorce and repartnering almost entirely in terms of family 'brokenness' or 'breakdown. Further, as the opening comment to this chapter suggests,the theme of brokennesspersists beyond people's experiencesof separation and divorce, moving with them through repartnering into stepfamily life. At this point, notions of 'brokenness' intersect with public stories and cultural stereotypes of stepfamilies, in which stepmothers are negatively portrayed as 'wicked' or 'unkind', stepfathers as 'abusive' and their children as the potential victims of that abuse and neglect (Coleman and Ganong, 1987). Themes of ambivalence and brokenness in relation to stepfamilies also pervade the literature on kinship. This body of literature focuseson issuesof solidarity and conflict between people, what it is that binds them, what it is that divides them. Through these bonds people develop attachments, form and sustain commitments (Allan, 1996: 1). Emphasis here has been in - and many respectsremains - on the 'blood' relationship between parents and their biological children as the 'natural', given locus of enduring, morally binding ties and commitments between people. Empirical studies of family I relationships reveal that tensions are most likely to surface around issues of contact (between children and their non-resident biological parents) and inheritance. In these areas of family law, primacy is also assigned to 'blood' ties. From these different perspectives- and as I show further below - not only are stepfamilies viewed as a second-bestarrangement through the lens of a deficit model of family (Robinson, 1991) but the ties and solidarities of stepkinship are regarded as 'unnatural', contingent and fragile. This brings me to the issueswith which this thesis is centrally concerned. My research question is: How do parents in stepfamilies reformulate theirfamily relationships in the light of separation, divorce and repartnering, and what implications does this havefor their handling of contact and inheritance? This question is concerned with ties and solidarities in stepfamilies, specifically those between (step)parentsand (step)children. It is concernedwith some of the social consequencesof parents' refon-nulatedideas on family relationships, that is, with the demands that can be made and the obligations owed in theserelationships. Demographic trends: divorce and repartnering Although many of these negative constructions of stepfamily life derive historically from contexts in which stepfamily formation occurs after death rather than divorce, they nicely feed and fuel contemporary debatesabout trends and changesin family life and relationships and some of the 'risk' factors associatedwith them (see for example, Wallerstein and Kelly, 1980; Cockett and Tripp, 1994; Utting, 1995). A brief survey of some of these trends reveals that between 1970 and 1996, the number of divorces in England and Wales has more than doubled from 79,000 to 171,000. 'Risk' of the 'breakdown' of remarriagesappears to be about double that of first marriages. We do not have accessto figures on the number of cohabitation 'breakdowns' (Maclean and Eekelaar, 1997). In 1997, over 150,000 children aged under sixteen had experienceof parental divorce (Social Trends, 1999). Many people who separate and/or divorce subsequentlyrepartner and in so doing createa 'stepfamily'. 2 Stepfamilies In broadest terms a stcpfamily may be understood as a samc-sex or hctcro-sexual couple, one or both of whom is not the biological parent of all or some of the other's biological children. This definition allows flexibility as to whether the couple is married or cohabiting, co-resident or living apart, or whether they are current or former partners. It also leaves open issues of whether a stepfamily is full-time or part-time, a stepfather, stepmother or lone-parent household. However, as I show in Chapter 2, many definitions assume stepfamilies are heterosexual, married couple, co-resident stepfwnilies. According to Haskey (1996) 6.8% of all (heterosexual) families with children are stepfamilies (this includes cohabiting and married couple stepfamilies) and 8.2% of all children living in families live in stepfamilies (1996: 11-14). These figures indicate there are over half a million stepfamilies in Britain with almost one million stepchildren. Furthermore, it has been estimated that one in eight children in Britain will experiencelife in a stepfamily by the time they reach the age of sixteen (Ferri and Smith, 1998). Although a number of typologies
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