Name of Family Form
“Blended Family”
Synonyms
Introduction
“Blended family” is a commonly used term for stepfamily. Although the phrase captures the human longing for closeness and oneness, it is misleading. Becoming a stepfamily proves to be less like blending a smoothie and more like asking a group of Japanese and a group of Italians to live intimately together. “Remarried family” is often used interchangeably with “stepfamily.” However, many stepcouple marriages are a first marriage for one or both adults. Forty-two percent of Americans have a close step relationship (Pew Research Center 2011), making it critically important that all clinicians develop a solid understanding of stepfamily dynamics, the challenges they create, and evidence-based, evidence-informed strategies for meeting those challenges.
Description
Stepfamilies differ fundamentally from first-time families. In first-time families, children are born into an already-established adult...
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References
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Papernow, P.L. (2017). Blended Family. In: Lebow, J., Chambers, A., Breunlin, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_471-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_471-1
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