| Why many step-parents are happy - with love, money and children |
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Page 1 of 2  Why many step-parents are happy - with love, money and children In the late 1970s, four years after the last episode of The Brady Bunch was screened, American sociologist Andrew Cherlin described remarriage as an "incomplete institution". In an essay he warned of inevitable confusion as society stumbled into a new frontier of divorce and blended families. But the overriding message was: we'll get there. In time, step-parents, children and everyone else will know how it's supposed to work. Nearly 10 per cent of Australians are, or have been, step-parents, with most experts agreeing the figure is conservative. And anyone vaguely familiar with the trials of step-parenthood - the delicate negotiations about everything from dinner table etiquette to the provisions of a will - could testify that Professor Cherlin's predictions were a tad naive. This is also the finding of a study released this week by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. Sociologists Mariah Evans and Jonathan Kelley, who surveyed more than 3000 people, found that step-parents still struggle to get it right. And they pay a considerable emotional cost for their efforts. "These people are the unsung heroes of the divorce revolution," Dr Evans says. "They're the ones taking the flack and pitching in." The problems were particularly stark for step-parents of live-in stepchildren- an experience more common among men, as women tend to be partnered to non-custodial fathers with visiting children. (Step-parents with visiting stepchildren reported no less happiness with their lives than biological parents.) Step-parents with live-in stepchildren were a lot less satisfied with children, and slightly less satisfied with their standard of living, compared with biological parents. The former illustrates the emotional minefield that still divides step-parent and stepchild. On the latter, the research found that on the same pay packets, a step-parent feels less content with their degree of affluence than does a biological parent, suggesting resentment at play. "My guess is that he (the stepfather) sees himself as spending his hard-earned money on people who don't appreciate it - and that is psychologically very costly," Dr Evans says. Intriguingly, despite the pressures, step-parents were only slightly less happy than married people not in blended families, and much happier than singles. Importantly, live-in stepchildren do not appear to reduce a step-parent's level of marital satisfaction. |
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