This volume provides extensive coverage and the most up-to-date information available for students and scholars in social psychology, interpersonal communication, family studies, clinical psychology, counseling, and gender studies.

Family Transformation Through Divorce and Remarriage is the first book to look thoroughly at the complete divorce-remarriage-stepfamily cycle in the context of demographic data, the legal process and the theoretical framework. For each phase of the cycle, the author describes the stages of development, summarises the relevant research and illustrates the effects on family members with case examples.

Confronting Relationship Challenges moves forward the "Understanding Relationship Processes" series by addressing the difficult side of relationships. This volume, edited by Steve Duck and Julia T. Wood, takes an honest look at what can go wrong with relationships and highlights some of the challenges partners might face while struggling to comprehend their connectedness to each other. Discussion in this volume moves away from any implication that relationships are only good and delightful, because even in the very closest of relationships, pain and suffering are inevitable. The contributing scholars examine the management and tolerance skills required of participants in order to construct meaningful interpretations of themselves, each other, and the relationship while all of the components evolve and interact in continually changing contexts. Issues examined include conflict, enemies, reconfiguring "family" after a divorce, codependency, interpersonal violence, HIV/AIDS, chronic illness, and managing grief over a partner's death. Students and scholars in interpersonal communication, social psychology, clinical/counseling psychology, family studies, social work, and sociology will find this volume to be a valuable resource.

The volume's topic was chosen in part because of the rapidly growing salience of dyadic research perspectives in developmental psychology, but also in social psychology and in fields such as communication and family studies. It provides the most complete representation now available on current theory and research on the significance of personal relationships in child and adolescent development. This volume addresses the ways in which the study of social development has been altered by an emphasis on research questions and techniques for studying children and adolescents in the context of their significant dyadic relationships. Leading scholars--many of them pioneers in the concepts and methods of dyadic research--have contributed chapters in which they both report findings from recent research and reflect on the implications for developmental psychology. Their work encompasses studies of relationships with parents, siblings, friends, and romantic partners. Opening chapters set the stage by describing the key characteristics of social-development research from a dyadic perspective and outlining key themes and contemporary issues in the field. It concludes with commentaries from distinguished senior scholars identifying important directions for future research.

First published in 1999, this book contains the findings of an exploratory study using in-depth interviews on parenting and the dynamics of Hong Kong Chinese stepfamilies. The stepfamily is a topic which is in lack of local research in Hong Kong, but is an emerging family structure which has increasing need for professional intervention. This study began as a result of the researcher’s concern about the soaring number of divorces and broken families in Hong Kong and her curiosity to uncover the untold stories of stepfamilies. The literature review, presentation and thematic analysis of the findings of this study will increase the readers knowledge and understanding of stepfamilies in contexts which are different from Western societies. This book unveils the perceptions and life experiences of the stepmothers, social workers and teachers attitudes towards stepfamilies and the parenting behaviours of stepfamilies in Hong Kong. The author has reflectively analyzed the complex interplay between the social attitudes, cultural stereotyping of stepfamilies influenced by Chinese traditional values, aspirations towards marriage and marital relationships, parental expectations and parent-child relationships, ideology and policy issues affecting professional intervention.

Stepfamilies represent an increasing number of American households and shape the upbringing of countless stepchildren. Despite their prominence in society, our knowledge about these families is very limited. To address this deficit, the editors have drawn together the work of 16 nationally known scholars to deal with four questions: * Marriages that create stepfamilies: Why do they occur? Fail? Succeed? * How do stepfamilies function as child rearing environments? * How do stepfamilies function as sources of support in later life? * Building research and policy agendas: What is needed? In seeking answers to these questions, the book bridges the disciplines of psychology, sociology, social psychology, child development, demography, law and policy. Readers will gain an understanding of the current knowledge about stepfamilies, obtain an appreciation of the diverse views on a variety of stepfamily issues, learn about existing and anticipated laws and policies that affect stepfamilies, and acquire ideas on needed research and policy agendas. Chapter authors are leading figures in psychology, sociology, demography, human development, and family law; their contributions are valuable to researchers, teachers, and students as well as policymakers and legislatures.

While statistics indicate that nearly half of all first marriages in America today terminate in divorce, more than three-quarters of these divorces also result in remarriage, producing stepfamilies. Although they have become increasingly common, stepfamilies are still poorly understood, by stepfamily and non-stepfamily members alike. This book looks at the internal and external dynamics of this new family form, taking the reader through a series of case studies and examining characteristic pitfalls and opportunities. The author begins by comparing the basic building block of the stepfamily--the remarried couple--to the first-married couple. In successive chapters the structure of the stepfamily is considered in terms of increasing complexity, from the simplest, in which one of the partners has never married before and has no children, to the most complex "yours and ours" stepfamilies, in which there are children from both previous marriages and the present one. The author probes the conflicts that arise between parents and children and among stepsiblings and explores the different strategies that stepfamilies devise for resolving these tensions. In the later chapters, the sociohistorical origins of today's stepfamilies are traced in terms of changing values and new technologies. Professor Beer argues that stepfamilies are proliferating as a result of attitudes and patterns of behavior that, more than ever, encourage divorce and remarriage. He demonstrates on the basis of large-scale evidence that stepfamilies produce children who are just as well adjusted as children brought up by both biological parents, and that they will turn out to be adults who are almost as socially well adapted as those from conventional families. The author concludes that stepfamilies are types of families in their own right, with foreseeable difficulties and rich rewards.

Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships draws on current research, a wide variety of clinical modalities, and thirty years of clinical work with stepfamily members to describe the special challenges stepfamilies face. The book presents the concept of "stepfamily architecture" and the five challenges it creates, and delineates three different levels of strategies—psychoeducation, building interpersonal skills, and intrapsychic work—for meeting those challenges in dozens of different settings. The model is designed to be useful both to stepfamily members themselves and to a wide variety of practitioners, from a highly trained clinician who needs to know how and when to work on all three levels, to a school counselor or clergy person who may work on the first two levels but refer out for level three. It will also be useful to educators, judges, mediators, lawyers and medical personnel who will practice on the first level, but need to understand the other two to guide their work.

Stepfamilies: History, Research, and Policy examines language use, laws, cultural stereotypes, media images, and social policies and practices to create an understanding of how predominant views about stepfamilies and stepfamily members are constructed within society. As the rates of divorce and remarriage continue to increase, it is more important than ever to overcome nuclear family ideology and abandon the model of research that compares stepfamilies with nonstepfamilies. This book shows you how honor and empowerment can be attained in new family structures and how alternative kin networks can be just as healthy as the traditional nuclear family unit.As this book examines the ability of different societies to integrate different family forms into mainstream notions of "family," you will realize the damaging effects of treating stepfamilies as incomplete, undesirable institutions. In fact, Stepfamilies: History, Research, and Policy will challenge your notions of family over and over again, as it discusses: key relationships in stepfamilies stepfather involvement in parenting after remarriage meaning of gender in a stepfamily differences in "investment" between biological and nonbiological parents demographic change and significant shifts in the social and cultural implications of stepfamilies attempting to reconstruct a household like that of a previous marriage the impact of stereotypes on the internal dynamics of stepfamilies and on the interactions of stepfamilies with outsiders the absence of guidelines and cultural norms for role performance and problem solving in stepfamiliesStepfamilies: History, Research, and Policy discusses both the difficulties of forming new families and households as well as the factors that promote family cohesiveness and integration in stepfamilies. From stereotypes of stepmothers to ambiguous legal relationships to child maltreatment in stepfamilies to sibling relations, there isn't much that the penetrating lens of this book leaves uncovered.