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Fam Proc 18:175-183, 1979
An Empirical Comparison of Natural-Father and Stepfather Family Systems TERRY F. PERKINS, Ph.D.a JAMES P. KAHAN, Ph.D.b aCamarillo State Hospital, Camarillo, California. bUniversity of Southern California, Los Angeles.
This study examined the family system differences between 40 volunteer natural-father and stepfather families. Family triads consisting of the husband, the wife, and a child whose age ranged from 12 to 15 years were studied. Four instruments were used: (a) the Family Concept Q-Sort; (b) a Semantic Differential; (c) a demographic questionnaire; and (d) an interaction-reaction questionnaire. Analyses of variance on the data obtained from the Q-sorts and the Semantic Differentials indicated that stepfather family systems are different from natural-father family systems along several salient dimensions including psychological adjustment, satisfaction with family, reciprocal understanding, and perceived goodness and potency. It was concluded that the differences between the family systems in terms of their interpersonal relations and perceptions affect the entire stepparent family system and its ability to function adequately. It is generally assumed that one's family is the primary and the most powerful system that one belongs to; it shapes and determines the course and outcome of the lives of its members (9). Given this assumption, it becomes apparent how important it is to understand how differences in family structure affect family system functioning; yet the impact of family structure on the family system has not been carefully examined by researchers. The present research is concerned with this impact; it focuses on the differences in functioning between the two structurally different family systems of the natural-father family and the stepfather family. 1 Research concerning any aspect of the stepfather family is sparse despite the fact that stepparent families are becoming more prevalent in our culture. Roosevelt and Lofas (17) estimate that 15 million children under the age of 18 in the United States are living with a stepparent and that 25 million husbands and wives are stepfathers or stepmothers. These numbers can be expected to increase, as the divorce rate appears to be rising about eight per cent a year (4, 6). What research does exist is basically divided into two areas: (a) the adjustment of children in step-families, and (b) the relation between stepchildren and their parents. Although the popular myth is that children automatically suffer in adjustment when a parental divorce takes place, post-World War II research in the United States (e.g., 3, 8, 14) indicates that poor adjustment is not inevitable. Additionally, Burchinal (3) found that child adjustment in the areas of personality and social relationships did not differ for children in stepparent families when they were compared with children in natural-parent families. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that some personal adjustments must be made when divorce and remarriage occur, and the adjustments merit investigation. The relations between stepchildren and their parents has been explored to only a minor extent. Smith (18) concluded from interview data that relations between step-children and their stepparents are considerably less harmonious than between children and parents in natural-parent homes. Bowerman and Irish (2) asked children of stepparent families to rate their relations with their stepparent and their natural parent; they compared these ratings with the same parental ratings of children in natural-parent homes. Their findings indicate that the level of affection between stepchildren and their parents, both the step and the natural, was less than that between children and parents in natural homes. Bowerman and Irish further indicate that step-parent families are characterized generally as having more stress, more ambivalence, and less cohesiveness, as seen by the children, than natural-parent families. On the other hand, Duberman (5, 6) contended that 64 per cent of her stepparent population rated their relations with their step-children as excellent. It is interesting to note, however, that this positive result was obtained from self-report data; a social desirability set may have been at work. In fact, the investigator's own subjective ratings were usually lower than the parental reports. The responsibility for what difficulty stepparents and stepchildren may have in their relations lies in many realms. Remarriages call for the welding of two systems or two units with different histories, memories, and valuesa type of assimilation that is very difficult. Another complication is the role definition of the stepparent and the social attitudes toward that role. Bohannon (1) points out that, besides the stigma of being labeled "stepparent," there is currently the problem, because of the increasing number of divorces, that the new stepparent is in addition to, instead of a replacement for, the previous parent. Fast and Cain (7) also address this issue when they indicate that a stepparent cannot totally assume the role of mother or father; the step-parent role contains the interwoven roles of parent, stepparent, and non-parent. They
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further assert that the stepparent's capacity to assume the role does not depend only on his willingness and ability. Rather, the reciprocal acceptance by him in the role by both his spouse and the child is essential. Mead (12) suggests that this reciprocal acceptance by the child is made difficult in our American culture by the overly strong central role of the nuclear family as the living unit. The general approach we bring to this study of natural families versus stepparent families is the systems model of Kantor and Lehr (10), in which family systems are three subsystems that interact with each other as well as the outside world. These three are the family-unit system, the interpersonal subsystem, and the personal subsystem. When two or more of the subsystems meet, each with its own boundaries and each with its own set of interrelated parts, they are said to be at an interface. The three subsystems in the family meet at interface both with each other and with the outside world. This interface can be said to be successful if the interacting systems and subsystems have congruent views of the world; if not, the interface may be said to have failed. Success at interface is vital to the system's functioning and depends upon how the members of the systems or subsystems interact and behave both within themselves and across other systems. It is when the interfaces fail that interpersonal and intra-personal problems manifest themselves. If a family member places himself or is placed in the position of being inside the family perimeter but outside the interpersonal subsystem, he will have a different experiential domain from the other family members and will feel dislocated and cut off from the family. This is exactly the experience of many stepparents; they are caught in the intraspace, inside the family perimeter but outside one interpersonal subsystem, that of the children. Likewise, stepchildren are often caught in the intraspace, without access to the marital interpersonal subsystem.
METHOD2 Subjects Volunteer families3 in Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura Counties, California were divided by family structure into two groups: stepparent families and natural-parent families. Stepparent families for this study were limited to families consisting of a natural mother who had been divorced, her children, and a stepfather, all living together in the same home. Natural-parent families were families in which both the husband and the wife were the biological parents of the children living in the home. Family triads consisting of the husband, the wife, and a child whose age ranged from 12 to 15 years were examined. Twelve years was the minimum age for the child because of the nature of the Family Concept Q-sort; 15 years was the maximum age so as to avoid too much adolescent identity crisis. If two children within a family fell into the specified age range, one was selected randomly. There were ten children of each sex in each group.
Instruments Four instruments were used in this study: (a) the Family Concept Q-sort; (b) a Semantic Differential; (c) a demographic questionnaire; and (d) an interaction-reaction questionnaire. Previous research employed family interaction tasks, which merely look at the family-unit subsystem and do not penetrate the intraspace to examine the family's interpersonal subsystem. Therefore, we adopted an indirect approach, in which two instruments were used in novel ways to elucidate metaperspectives (11) as well as family perspectives about each other. The Family Concept Q-sort, developed by van der Veen, Huebner, Jorgens, and Neja (21) provided a measure of family adjustment and family satisfaction. This instrument defines the family concept as the collection of feelings, attitudes, and expectations one has about the family unit in which one lives and has been employed effectively both with adults and with children age 12 years and older (13, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23). It consists of 80 items that describe the family. They are presented on separate cards and are arranged by the subjects into nine piles from least like my family to most like my family. There is a constraint on the number of cards that may be put in each pile; the constraint is in a roughly normal distribution: 3, 6, 9, 13, 18, 13, 9, 6, and 3. Sample items are: "We often do not agree on important matters," "We are an affectionate family," and "We have very good times together." The Family Concept Q-sort may be used to describe any family constellation that the researcher wishes to examine. In the present study, in addition to the more typical "actual" and "ideal" descriptions of the family, metaperspective Q-sorts, in which a family member predicted how another family member would complete the "actual" Q-sort, were also collected. In this way, in addition to van der Veen et al.'s (21) adjustment scores, family satisfaction, agreement, and understanding may be assessed. The second instrument utilized was the and semantic differential of Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (15). Family members assessed each other on sets of bipolar adjectives from which could be tapped the meaning of individual family members to each other along the traditional dimensions of evaluation, potency, and activity.
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The Semantic Differential (Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum, (15)) employed in this study consists of 12 bipolar adjectives. The actual items used are: Evaluation: Good-Bad, Wise-Foolish, Important-Unimportant, and Meaningful-Meaningless; Potency: Weak-Strong, Soft-Hard, Light-Heavy, and Mild-Harsh; and Activity: Active-Passive, Fast-Slow, Complex-Simple, and Excitable-Calm. The third instrument tapped demographic data on the family. The fourth instrument asked questions about family members' interactions and about how family members reacted to the interviewer and to the interview.
Procedure The collection of the data covered the time period of June 1976-December 1976. The families were tested in their own homes for an average of two and one-half hours each. After arriving at the family's home, the interviewer first spent a short period of time (15 to 20 minutes) talking informally with the family. The Family Concept Q-sort was administered first. Four Q-sorts were obtained from each family member. Standard verbal instructions (van der Veen, et al., 21) were given for the first Q-sort. After the family had completed their actual family sorts, each member was asked to sort the cards according to how he thought the other members of the family had sorted them. These sorts provided the metaperspectives needed for this study. The fourth and final sort asked the subjects to sort the cards according to their own perceptions of what an "ideal" family would be. Following the completion of the Q-sorts, the individual family members were given the self-explanatory Semantic Differential scales. Husbands and wives were given scales to rate each other and the child. Children in natural-parent families were asked to rate their parents separately. Children in stepfamilies were asked to rate not only their mothers and stepfathers individually but also their natural fathers. At the completion of these ratings, a demographic questionnaire was administered orally, and then the individual family members were given the interaction-reaction questionnaire and asked for comments. An offer to provide the family with summary results of the study was accepted by all 40 families.
RESULTS Characteristics of Families The demographic questionnaires were examined both across and between groups (see Perkins, 16, for details). The across-group analysis of the stepfather family group focused on the mother's previous marriage and divorce. Data from these questions indicated that on the average the mothers had been the initiators of their divorces, which they rated as being between "neutral" and "somewhat hostile" on a five-point scale that ran from "very friendly" to "very hostile." The mean time between marriages for these women was three years. All children in the stepfather family systems had maintained close contact with their natural fathers, seeing them on the average of twice a month. This information was collected to ensure that the divorce adjustment reactions would no longer be immediately salient. The between-group analysis showed that both groups of families were by and large composed of parents in their late thirties or early forties, of college-level education, and of upper-middle-class income. There was an overrepresentation of Jewish families relative to the overall Southern California population (but not relative to the geographical location of the families) in both groups; other religions were proportionally appropriate. All families exhibited adequate life-functioning skills and all seemed to be "successful" members of society.
The Family Concept Q-sort The Family Concept Q-sort was used to gather measures of adjustment, satisfaction, agreement, and understanding. The three individual (father, mother, child) adjustment scores were calculated directly by the method recommended by van der Veen et al. (21). These scores may range from zero to 48. The three individual satisfaction scores were obtained by correlating each family member's actual family Q-sort with his ideal family Q-sort. Similarly, three agreement scores (father-mother, father-child, mother-child) were obtained by correlating the actual Q-sorts of the indicated dyad. For example, the father-mother agreement score is the correlation between the mother's actual Q-sort and the father's actual Q-sort. Finally, six understanding scores were calculated by correlating one family member's prediction of another family member's sort with that other family member's actual sort. Thus, the question, "Does mother understand father's perception of the family?," was answered by correlating father's actual Q-sort with mother's Q-sort of how she believes father sorted. Between- and over-group means for all 15 Q-sort measures are presented in Table I.
Measure
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Table 1 Comparison of Q-Sort Means in Natural Father and Stepfather Families Natural-Father Families Stepfather Families
Over Groups
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*ADJUSTMENT: *Mothers
30.90
23.60
27.25
*Fathers
32.10
22.85
27.48
*Children
26.25
20.40
23.30
*Over Family Members
29.72
22.42
26.07
*Mothers
0.38
0.17
0.28
*Fathers
0.44
0.13
0.28
*Children
0.45
0.25
0.35
*Over family members
0.42
0.18
0.30
*SATISFACTION:
AGREEMENT: Mother-Father
0.58
0.52
0.55
Mother-Child
0.47
0.42
0.44
Father-Child
0.45
0.37
0.41
Over dyads
0.50
0.44
0.47
*UNDERSTANDING:
Mother's of Child
0.30
0.27
0.28
Mother's of Father
0.31
0.24
0.28
Child's of Mother
0.33
0.25
0.29
*Child's of Father
0.55
0.25
0.40
Father's of Mother
0.42
0.32
0.37
Father's of Child
0.32
0.18
0.25
*Over all combinations
0.37
0.25
0.31
*p
< .05 by appropriate statistical test.
Multivariate analyses of variance using a Type I error rate of a = .05 were performed separately for the adjustment, satisfaction, agreement, and understanding measures. If this analysis was significant (as was the case for all but the agreement measure), then univariate tests were performed on the individual measures. Entries in Table I that are accompanied by asterisks indicate measures on which natural-father families differed significantly from stepfather families. Examination of Table I shows that adjustment scores were higher for natural-father families than for stepfather families for all three family members. These differences indicate that on the average, members of stepfather families are less well-adjusted than their counterparts in natural-father families. Similarly, satisfaction scores were higher for natural-father families than for stepfather families for all three family members. This result, together with the adjustment result, suggests that the stepfather family is not functioning as well as a natural-father family and that all the family members are aware of this fact. The agreement scores did not differ across family types as might be expected from the previous results in which different family members were uniform in their relative adjustment and satisfaction scores. There were differences, however, in understanding. The univariate analyses (Table I) indicate that the differential child's understanding of the at-horne father caused the multivariate difference. This is a fairly obvious difference; the child may well be expected to better understand a father whom he has known since birth than a relative newcomer to the scene. All of the understanding scores, however, were in the same direction of more understanding in natural-father families, and a score created by summing over all understandings was significant. The implication of this finding is that a possible source of the previous differences in adjustment and satisfaction is the lack of understanding of each other's positions vis à vis family life, as measured by the Q-sort.
The Semantic Differential Each participant completed semantic differential scales for the other two members of the family. In addition, children in stepfather families completed a scale for their biological fathers. The scale scores, taken directly from Osgood et al. (15) measure the three dimensions of evaluation (high = badness), potency (high = powerful), and activity (high = passive); each score may range from 1.00 to 7.00. Table II presents the mean semantic differential scores by group for all 21 measures,
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plus overrater means of the individual family members. Multivariate analyses were performed for each family member's ratings separately, followed by univariate analyses for the child's and father's measures; the multivariate test for the mother was not significant. Again, statistical significance is indicated by appropriate asterisks in Table II. Table 2 Mean Semantic Differential Scores by Group in Natural-Father and Stepfather Families Natural-Father Families Stepfather Families Measure
Evaluation
Potency
Activity
3.58 3.05
Evaluation
Potency
Activity
1.76
3.81
3.13
*2.58
*2.69
2.88
*1.63
*3.39
2.90
*Child's ratings
-of Mother
1.78
3.94
-of Father (in home)
*1.78
*3.43
-of Father (not home) Mother's ratings -of Child
1.73
3.89
2.73
1.98
3.50
2.75
-of Father (in home)
1.64
3.24
2.86
1.65
3.06
2.75
-of Child
*2.00
3.79
2.78
*3.00
3.68
3.04
-of Mother
1.66
3.96
2.69
1.89
3.81
2.96
Father's ratings
* Means differ statistically from those in the other condition.
Examination of Table II shows that the differences in the child's semantic differential scales were all on his or her ratings of the father. Natural fathers were seen as better and more powerful than their stepfather counterparts. A separate analysis within the stepfather group comparing the child's ratings of his or her stepfather with his or her biological father replicated this difference: that stepfathers were less good and less powerful; this latter finding runs counter to the stereotyped notion that divorced mothers turn their children against their fathers. There were no differences on the semantic differential in mothers' ratings of either their children or current spouses. The significant multivariate statistic for fathers can be attributed to the single difference that stepfathers rate their stepchildren as less good than natural fathers rate their own children.
Discussion The findings of this study merit attention because they provide information about a family structure that is little understood but rapidly increasing: the stepfather family. General societal expectations about families are that on the average they all function pretty much the same. The results of this study suggest that this is not true; a stepfather family system is not the same as a natural-parent family system. These two types of family systems differ from each other along several important dimensions; these differences will be discussed in terms of their implications for both theory and practice. The Family Concept Q-sort results support the position (2, 7) that stepparent families do not function as well as natural-parent families. The adjustment scores obtained by members of stepparent families in this study are comparable to those obtained by the "disturbed" families (families in which the child was diagnosed psychotic or prepsychotic) in previous work done with the Family Concept Q-sort (22). One possible explanation for this difference in adjustment is that divorce may create confusion among the family members. Although husband and wife roles are relinquished in a divorce, the mutual parent roles are not. A divorce does not end the adults' relationship if there are children; it merely ends one set of roles. When a remarriage occurs, a new set of husband and wife roles comes into being. New parental roles, however, are not created; an additional one is merely added, with the possibility of creating much confusion for all members of the family if the roles are not explicitly well defined. Support for this interpretation comes from the finding that, of the 60 members of stepfather families who participated in this study, 53, as opposed to 15 members of natural father families, sorted on the most like my family side of the distribution on the items "We sometimes wish we could be an entirely different family," and "We are a disorganized family." It is important to note that the adjustment difficulties in stepfather families were perceived equally by all members of the family system and that the family satisfaction scores reflect this perception. If, as van der Veen and Novak (23) suggest, "adjustment" is relabeled "effectiveness," our results would be interpreted to mean that members of stepfather families perceive their family unit as relatively ineffective and are dissatisfied with this ineffectiveness. This finding strengthens the
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case for a family therapy approach in the treatment of such families because the dysfunction is seen by all the family to reside within the family rather than in any individual person, the family indicates readiness to accept intervention posited on a nonblaming approach. The differences between families in terms of understanding are very important. It should be remembered that understanding is essential for individuals to be able to avoid Laing et al.'s (11) vicious cycle of mismatched expectations and experiences. Stepchildren understood their stepfathers significantly less than natural children understood their fathers. Therefore, even though the stepchild and the stepfather agreed about how they each saw the family, the stepchild did not understand that they were in conjunction with one another. Roosevelt and Lofas (17) indicate that the most prevalent difficulty for stepparents is that their stepchildren treat them as outsiders because of loyalty to the biological parent, fear, anger and/or a million other reasons. This can be translated to: step-children relegate their stepparents to the intraspace between the family unit subsystem and their interpersonal subsystem. The result of this process is that the individuals do not have access from the intraspace to the interpersonal subsystems and therefore cannot understand each other's perspectives. Additional support for the poor interpersonal relations between the stepfather and the stepchild is provided by the results of the interaction-reaction questionnaire (16): in only four of the 20 stepfather families did the child go to the stepfather with his personal difficulties for help or guidance; the corresponding figure for natural fathers was 15 of 20. The failure of the other understanding scores to differentiate between groups supports the dual interpersonal subsystem hypothesis. Mothers and fathers and mothers and children, regardless of family type, do have access to each other's interpersonal subsystems and are therefore able to understand each other's views of the family. Thus, the information obtained from the Q-sort analyses has drawn a picture of the differences between natural-parent and stepparent family systems. The data obtained from the semantic differentials, to which we now turn, help to color in the outlines of this picture. Although it might be expected that mothers in stepfamilies would rate their children differently than mothers in natural-parent families do, especially with regard to potency, this did not prove to be true. This finding supports our dual-family subsystem interpretation, for it indicates that the stepkin relationship difficulties are adversely affecting neither the woman's perception of her husband, nor of her child. Similarly, children appear to maintain separate subsystems; their ratings of their biological fathers were not affected by whether or not that man occupied the father role at home. However, this result strengthens the argument that the stepfather is not seen as a father by the child; recall that within-group analysis of the child's ratings of his stepfather versus his natural father showed that the two were not rated equally. On the other end of this relationship, stepfathers rated their step-children as less good than natural fathers rated their children. There were no differences in terms of potency or activity. Differences could be expected on the potency factor because the child's potency may have increased in the time between the mother's divorce and the remarriage; however, as in the case of the mother's ratings of the child, this does not seem to be true. Thus, the semantic differential locates most of the perceived differences between families in the step-kin relationships, in support of the dual interpersonal subsystem hypothesis. The implications of this study are important for professionals and nonprofessionals alike. First of all, it has been clearly demonstrated that a stepfather family system is not the same as a natural-parent family system, in spite of the denial of this fact by society. This corroborates Roosevelt and Lofas' (17) view that, in spite of the need to recognize stepfamilies as unique systems, the tendency of all is to expect, act, and react as though the stepfamily were a biological family because we have no other patterning. Our finding is all the more important because our stepfamilies had the "ideal" divorce situation of biological fathers maintaining warm relations with their children and at least civil relationships with their former spouses. On the other hand, one result of this "ideal" situation ("ideal" in the sense of extolled by most mental health practitioners) is that both the prior and the current families exist at the same time and their concurrent existence may endanger contextual relationship and cause systemic confusion. More than ever it is necessary for clinicians to treat the stepparent family with an awareness of the system's differences. The stepfamily has foreign and poor communication patterns within it. It does not have one interpersonal subsystem; it has two. The clinician can best serve the stepfamily by trying to help them open their interpersonal subsystems so that all members have mutual access. If this can be accomplished, perhaps family members will be able to understand each other, as well as agree, and possibly the members then would be both more satisfied and more effective both within their family context and within society.
REFERENCES 1. 2. 3.
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Bohannan, P., Divorce and After, New York, Doubleday and Company, 1970. Bowerman, C. E. and Irish, D. P., "The Relationships of Stepchildren to Their Parents," Marr. Fam. Liv., 24, 113-121, 1962. Burchinal, L.G., "Characteristics of Adolescents from Unbroken, Broken, and Reconstituted Families," J. Marr.
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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
21. 22. 23.
Fam., 26, 44-50, 1964. Chen, R., "The Dilemma of Divorce: Disaster or Remedy," Fam. Coordinator, 17, 252-254, 1968. Duberman, L., "Step-Kin Relationships," J. Marr. Fam., 35, 283-292, 1973. Duberman, L., The Reconstituted Family: A Study of Remarried Couples and Their Children, Chicago, Nelson-Hall, 1975. Fast, I. and Cain, A.C., "The Stepparent Role: Potential for Disturbance in Family Functioning," Am. J. Orthopsychiat., 36, 485-491, 1966. Goode, W.J., After Divorce, Glencoe, Illinois, The Free Press, 1956. Guerin, P. J. (Ed.), Family Therapy, New York, Gardner Press, 1976. Kantor, D. and Lehr, W., Inside the Family, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1975. Laing, R.D., Phillipson, H. and Lee, A.R., Interpersonal Perception, New York, Harper and Row, 1966. Mead, M., "Anomalies in American Postdivorce Relationships," in P. Bohannan (Ed.), Divorce and After, New York, Doubleday and Company, 1970. Novak, A.L. and Van Der Veen, F., "Family Concepts and Emotional Disturbances in the Families of Disturbed Adolescents with Normal Siblings," Fam. Proc., 9, 157-171, 1970. Nye, F.I., "Child Adjustment in Broken and in Unhappy Unbroken Homes," Marr. Fam. Liv., 19, 356-361, 1957. Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J. and Tannenbaum, P. H., The Measurement of Meaning, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1957. Perkins, T. F., "Natural-Parent Family Systems Versus Stepparent Family Systems," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1977. Roosevelt, R. and Lofas, J., Living in Step, New York, Stein and Day, 1976. Smith, W. C., "Remarriage and the Stepchild," in M. Fishbein and E. W. Burgess (Eds.), Successful Marriage, New York, Doubleday and Company, 1947. Van Der Veen, F., "The Parent's Concept of the Family and Child Adjustment," J. Couns. Psychol., 12, 196-200, 1965. Van Der Veen, F., Howard, K. and Austria, A., "Stability and Equivalence of Scores Based on Three Different Response Formats," Proceedings of the 79th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, 451-452, 1971. Van Der Veen, F., Huebner, B., Jorgens, B. and Neja, P., "Relationships Between the Parents' Concept of the Family and Family Adjustment," Am. J. Orthopsychiat., 34, 45-5, 1964. Van Der Veen, F. and Novak, A. L., "Perceived Parental Attitudes and Family Concepts of Disturbed Adolescents, Normal Siblings, and Normal Controls," Fam. Proc., 10, 327-343, 1971. Van Der Veen, F., "The Family Concept of the Disturbed Child: A Replication Study," Am. J. Orthopsychiat., 44, 763-772, 1974.
Reprint requests should be addressed to Terry F. Perkins, Ph.D., Camarillo State Hospital, Box A, Camarillo, California 93010. 1Although stepmothers should also be examined, their present rarity relative to stepfathers made it impossible to include them in this study. 2Following the advice of the editors, we have considerably condensed the details of experimental method and statistical analysis. Readers requiring more information will find it in Perkins (16), which may be ordered from Xerox University Microfilms International. 3Volunteer families were solicited via advertisements placed in local newspapers requesting volunteers for a study of families. Neither the object of research nor the specific need for stepfathers were spelled out in the advertisements. No family, once contacted, later withdrew from the study, although all were informed that they could do so at any time.
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Fam Proc 18:175-183, 1979
An Empirical Comparison of Natural-Father and Stepfather Family Systems TERRY F. PERKINS, Ph.D.a JAMES P. KAHAN, Ph.D.b aCamarillo State Hospital, Camarillo, California. bUniversity of Southern California, Los Angeles.
This study examined the family system differences between 40 volunteer natural-father and stepfather families. Family triads consisting of the husband, the wife, and a child whose age ranged from 12 to 15 years were studied. Four instruments were used: (a) the Family Concept Q-Sort; (b) a Semantic Differential; (c) a demographic questionnaire; and (d) an interaction-reaction questionnaire. Analyses of variance on the data obtained from the Q-sorts and the Semantic Differentials indicated that stepfather family systems are different from natural-father family systems along several salient dimensions including psychological adjustment, satisfaction with family, reciprocal understanding, and perceived goodness and potency. It was concluded that the differences between the family systems in terms of their interpersonal relations and perceptions affect the entire stepparent family system and its ability to function adequately. It is generally assumed that one's family is the primary and the most powerful system that one belongs to; it shapes and determines the course and outcome of the lives of its members (9). Given this assumption, it becomes apparent how important it is to understand how differences in family structure affect family system functioning; yet the impact of family structure on the family system has not been carefully examined by researchers. The present research is concerned with this impact; it focuses on the differences in functioning between the two structurally different family systems of the natural-father family and the stepfather family. 1 Research concerning any aspect of the stepfather family is sparse despite the fact that stepparent families are becoming more prevalent in our culture. Roosevelt and Lofas (17) estimate that 15 million children under the age of 18 in the United States are living with a stepparent and that 25 million husbands and wives are stepfathers or stepmothers. These numbers can be expected to increase, as the divorce rate appears to be rising about eight per cent a year (4, 6). What research does exist is basically divided into two areas: (a) the adjustment of children in step-families, and (b) the relation between stepchildren and their parents. Although the popular myth is that children automatically suffer in adjustment when a parental divorce takes place, post-World War II research in the United States (e.g., 3, 8, 14) indicates that poor adjustment is not inevitable. Additionally, Burchinal (3) found that child adjustment in the areas of personality and social relationships did not differ for children in stepparent families when they were compared with children in natural-parent families. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that some personal adjustments must be made when divorce and remarriage occur, and the adjustments merit investigation. The relations between stepchildren and their parents has been explored to only a minor extent. Smith (18) concluded from interview data that relations between step-children and their stepparents are considerably less harmonious than between children and parents in natural-parent homes. Bowerman and Irish (2) asked children of stepparent families to rate their relations with their stepparent and their natural parent; they compared these ratings with the same parental ratings of children in natural-parent homes. Their findings indicate that the level of affection between stepchildren and their parents, both the step and the natural, was less than that between children and parents in natural homes. Bowerman and Irish further indicate that step-parent families are characterized generally as having more stress, more ambivalence, and less cohesiveness, as seen by the children, than natural-parent families. On the other hand, Duberman (5, 6) contended that 64 per cent of her stepparent population rated their relations with their step-children as excellent. It is interesting to note, however, that this positive result was obtained from self-report data; a social desirability set may have been at work. In fact, the investigator's own subjective ratings were usually lower than the parental reports. The responsibility for what difficulty stepparents and stepchildren may have in their relations lies in many realms. Remarriages call for the welding of two systems or two units with different histories, memories, and valuesa type of assimilation that is very difficult. Another complication is the role definition of the stepparent and the social attitudes toward that role. Bohannon (1) points out that, besides the stigma of being labeled "stepparent," there is currently the problem, because of the increasing number of divorces, that the new stepparent is in addition to, instead of a replacement for, the previous parent. Fast and Cain (7) also address this issue when they indicate that a stepparent cannot totally assume the role of mother or father; the step-parent role contains the interwoven roles of parent, stepparent, and non-parent. They
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further assert that the stepparent's capacity to assume the role does not depend only on his willingness and ability. Rather, the reciprocal acceptance by him in the role by both his spouse and the child is essential. Mead (12) suggests that this reciprocal acceptance by the child is made difficult in our American culture by the overly strong central role of the nuclear family as the living unit. The general approach we bring to this study of natural families versus stepparent families is the systems model of Kantor and Lehr (10), in which family systems are three subsystems that interact with each other as well as the outside world. These three are the family-unit system, the interpersonal subsystem, and the personal subsystem. When two or more of the subsystems meet, each with its own boundaries and each with its own set of interrelated parts, they are said to be at an interface. The three subsystems in the family meet at interface both with each other and with the outside world. This interface can be said to be successful if the interacting systems and subsystems have congruent views of the world; if not, the interface may be said to have failed. Success at interface is vital to the system's functioning and depends upon how the members of the systems or subsystems interact and behave both within themselves and across other systems. It is when the interfaces fail that interpersonal and intra-personal problems manifest themselves. If a family member places himself or is placed in the position of being inside the family perimeter but outside the interpersonal subsystem, he will have a different experiential domain from the other family members and will feel dislocated and cut off from the family. This is exactly the experience of many stepparents; they are caught in the intraspace, inside the family perimeter but outside one interpersonal subsystem, that of the children. Likewise, stepchildren are often caught in the intraspace, without access to the marital interpersonal subsystem.
METHOD2 Subjects Volunteer families3 in Los Angeles, Orange, and Ventura Counties, California were divided by family structure into two groups: stepparent families and natural-parent families. Stepparent families for this study were limited to families consisting of a natural mother who had been divorced, her children, and a stepfather, all living together in the same home. Natural-parent families were families in which both the husband and the wife were the biological parents of the children living in the home. Family triads consisting of the husband, the wife, and a child whose age ranged from 12 to 15 years were examined. Twelve years was the minimum age for the child because of the nature of the Family Concept Q-sort; 15 years was the maximum age so as to avoid too much adolescent identity crisis. If two children within a family fell into the specified age range, one was selected randomly. There were ten children of each sex in each group.
Instruments Four instruments were used in this study: (a) the Family Concept Q-sort; (b) a Semantic Differential; (c) a demographic questionnaire; and (d) an interaction-reaction questionnaire. Previous research employed family interaction tasks, which merely look at the family-unit subsystem and do not penetrate the intraspace to examine the family's interpersonal subsystem. Therefore, we adopted an indirect approach, in which two instruments were used in novel ways to elucidate metaperspectives (11) as well as family perspectives about each other. The Family Concept Q-sort, developed by van der Veen, Huebner, Jorgens, and Neja (21) provided a measure of family adjustment and family satisfaction. This instrument defines the family concept as the collection of feelings, attitudes, and expectations one has about the family unit in which one lives and has been employed effectively both with adults and with children age 12 years and older (13, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23). It consists of 80 items that describe the family. They are presented on separate cards and are arranged by the subjects into nine piles from least like my family to most like my family. There is a constraint on the number of cards that may be put in each pile; the constraint is in a roughly normal distribution: 3, 6, 9, 13, 18, 13, 9, 6, and 3. Sample items are: "We often do not agree on important matters," "We are an affectionate family," and "We have very good times together." The Family Concept Q-sort may be used to describe any family constellation that the researcher wishes to examine. In the present study, in addition to the more typical "actual" and "ideal" descriptions of the family, metaperspective Q-sorts, in which a family member predicted how another family member would complete the "actual" Q-sort, were also collected. In this way, in addition to van der Veen et al.'s (21) adjustment scores, family satisfaction, agreement, and understanding may be assessed. The second instrument utilized was the and semantic differential of Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (15). Family members assessed each other on sets of bipolar adjectives from which could be tapped the meaning of individual family members to each other along the traditional dimensions of evaluation, potency, and activity.
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The Semantic Differential (Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum, (15)) employed in this study consists of 12 bipolar adjectives. The actual items used are: Evaluation: Good-Bad, Wise-Foolish, Important-Unimportant, and Meaningful-Meaningless; Potency: Weak-Strong, Soft-Hard, Light-Heavy, and Mild-Harsh; and Activity: Active-Passive, Fast-Slow, Complex-Simple, and Excitable-Calm. The third instrument tapped demographic data on the family. The fourth instrument asked questions about family members' interactions and about how family members reacted to the interviewer and to the interview.
Procedure The collection of the data covered the time period of June 1976-December 1976. The families were tested in their own homes for an average of two and one-half hours each. After arriving at the family's home, the interviewer first spent a short period of time (15 to 20 minutes) talking informally with the family. The Family Concept Q-sort was administered first. Four Q-sorts were obtained from each family member. Standard verbal instructions (van der Veen, et al., 21) were given for the first Q-sort. After the family had completed their actual family sorts, each member was asked to sort the cards according to how he thought the other members of the family had sorted them. These sorts provided the metaperspectives needed for this study. The fourth and final sort asked the subjects to sort the cards according to their own perceptions of what an "ideal" family would be. Following the completion of the Q-sorts, the individual family members were given the self-explanatory Semantic Differential scales. Husbands and wives were given scales to rate each other and the child. Children in natural-parent families were asked to rate their parents separately. Children in stepfamilies were asked to rate not only their mothers and stepfathers individually but also their natural fathers. At the completion of these ratings, a demographic questionnaire was administered orally, and then the individual family members were given the interaction-reaction questionnaire and asked for comments. An offer to provide the family with summary results of the study was accepted by all 40 families.
RESULTS Characteristics of Families The demographic questionnaires were examined both across and between groups (see Perkins, 16, for details). The across-group analysis of the stepfather family group focused on the mother's previous marriage and divorce. Data from these questions indicated that on the average the mothers had been the initiators of their divorces, which they rated as being between "neutral" and "somewhat hostile" on a five-point scale that ran from "very friendly" to "very hostile." The mean time between marriages for these women was three years. All children in the stepfather family systems had maintained close contact with their natural fathers, seeing them on the average of twice a month. This information was collected to ensure that the divorce adjustment reactions would no longer be immediately salient. The between-group analysis showed that both groups of families were by and large composed of parents in their late thirties or early forties, of college-level education, and of upper-middle-class income. There was an overrepresentation of Jewish families relative to the overall Southern California population (but not relative to the geographical location of the families) in both groups; other religions were proportionally appropriate. All families exhibited adequate life-functioning skills and all seemed to be "successful" members of society.
The Family Concept Q-sort The Family Concept Q-sort was used to gather measures of adjustment, satisfaction, agreement, and understanding. The three individual (father, mother, child) adjustment scores were calculated directly by the method recommended by van der Veen et al. (21). These scores may range from zero to 48. The three individual satisfaction scores were obtained by correlating each family member's actual family Q-sort with his ideal family Q-sort. Similarly, three agreement scores (father-mother, father-child, mother-child) were obtained by correlating the actual Q-sorts of the indicated dyad. For example, the father-mother agreement score is the correlation between the mother's actual Q-sort and the father's actual Q-sort. Finally, six understanding scores were calculated by correlating one family member's prediction of another family member's sort with that other family member's actual sort. Thus, the question, "Does mother understand father's perception of the family?," was answered by correlating father's actual Q-sort with mother's Q-sort of how she believes father sorted. Between- and over-group means for all 15 Q-sort measures are presented in Table I.
Measure
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Table 1 Comparison of Q-Sort Means in Natural Father and Stepfather Families Natural-Father Families Stepfather Families
Over Groups
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*ADJUSTMENT: *Mothers
30.90
23.60
27.25
*Fathers
32.10
22.85
27.48
*Children
26.25
20.40
23.30
*Over Family Members
29.72
22.42
26.07
*Mothers
0.38
0.17
0.28
*Fathers
0.44
0.13
0.28
*Children
0.45
0.25
0.35
*Over family members
0.42
0.18
0.30
*SATISFACTION:
AGREEMENT: Mother-Father
0.58
0.52
0.55
Mother-Child
0.47
0.42
0.44
Father-Child
0.45
0.37
0.41
Over dyads
0.50
0.44
0.47
*UNDERSTANDING:
Mother's of Child
0.30
0.27
0.28
Mother's of Father
0.31
0.24
0.28
Child's of Mother
0.33
0.25
0.29
*Child's of Father
0.55
0.25
0.40
Father's of Mother
0.42
0.32
0.37
Father's of Child
0.32
0.18
0.25
*Over all combinations
0.37
0.25
0.31
*p
< .05 by appropriate statistical test.
Multivariate analyses of variance using a Type I error rate of a = .05 were performed separately for the adjustment, satisfaction, agreement, and understanding measures. If this analysis was significant (as was the case for all but the agreement measure), then univariate tests were performed on the individual measures. Entries in Table I that are accompanied by asterisks indicate measures on which natural-father families differed significantly from stepfather families. Examination of Table I shows that adjustment scores were higher for natural-father families than for stepfather families for all three family members. These differences indicate that on the average, members of stepfather families are less well-adjusted than their counterparts in natural-father families. Similarly, satisfaction scores were higher for natural-father families than for stepfather families for all three family members. This result, together with the adjustment result, suggests that the stepfather family is not functioning as well as a natural-father family and that all the family members are aware of this fact. The agreement scores did not differ across family types as might be expected from the previous results in which different family members were uniform in their relative adjustment and satisfaction scores. There were differences, however, in understanding. The univariate analyses (Table I) indicate that the differential child's understanding of the at-horne father caused the multivariate difference. This is a fairly obvious difference; the child may well be expected to better understand a father whom he has known since birth than a relative newcomer to the scene. All of the understanding scores, however, were in the same direction of more understanding in natural-father families, and a score created by summing over all understandings was significant. The implication of this finding is that a possible source of the previous differences in adjustment and satisfaction is the lack of understanding of each other's positions vis à vis family life, as measured by the Q-sort.
The Semantic Differential Each participant completed semantic differential scales for the other two members of the family. In addition, children in stepfather families completed a scale for their biological fathers. The scale scores, taken directly from Osgood et al. (15) measure the three dimensions of evaluation (high = badness), potency (high = powerful), and activity (high = passive); each score may range from 1.00 to 7.00. Table II presents the mean semantic differential scores by group for all 21 measures,
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plus overrater means of the individual family members. Multivariate analyses were performed for each family member's ratings separately, followed by univariate analyses for the child's and father's measures; the multivariate test for the mother was not significant. Again, statistical significance is indicated by appropriate asterisks in Table II. Table 2 Mean Semantic Differential Scores by Group in Natural-Father and Stepfather Families Natural-Father Families Stepfather Families Measure
Evaluation
Potency
Activity
3.58 3.05
Evaluation
Potency
Activity
1.76
3.81
3.13
*2.58
*2.69
2.88
*1.63
*3.39
2.90
*Child's ratings
-of Mother
1.78
3.94
-of Father (in home)
*1.78
*3.43
-of Father (not home) Mother's ratings -of Child
1.73
3.89
2.73
1.98
3.50
2.75
-of Father (in home)
1.64
3.24
2.86
1.65
3.06
2.75
-of Child
*2.00
3.79
2.78
*3.00
3.68
3.04
-of Mother
1.66
3.96
2.69
1.89
3.81
2.96
Father's ratings
* Means differ statistically from those in the other condition.
Examination of Table II shows that the differences in the child's semantic differential scales were all on his or her ratings of the father. Natural fathers were seen as better and more powerful than their stepfather counterparts. A separate analysis within the stepfather group comparing the child's ratings of his or her stepfather with his or her biological father replicated this difference: that stepfathers were less good and less powerful; this latter finding runs counter to the stereotyped notion that divorced mothers turn their children against their fathers. There were no differences on the semantic differential in mothers' ratings of either their children or current spouses. The significant multivariate statistic for fathers can be attributed to the single difference that stepfathers rate their stepchildren as less good than natural fathers rate their own children.
Discussion The findings of this study merit attention because they provide information about a family structure that is little understood but rapidly increasing: the stepfather family. General societal expectations about families are that on the average they all function pretty much the same. The results of this study suggest that this is not true; a stepfather family system is not the same as a natural-parent family system. These two types of family systems differ from each other along several important dimensions; these differences will be discussed in terms of their implications for both theory and practice. The Family Concept Q-sort results support the position (2, 7) that stepparent families do not function as well as natural-parent families. The adjustment scores obtained by members of stepparent families in this study are comparable to those obtained by the "disturbed" families (families in which the child was diagnosed psychotic or prepsychotic) in previous work done with the Family Concept Q-sort (22). One possible explanation for this difference in adjustment is that divorce may create confusion among the family members. Although husband and wife roles are relinquished in a divorce, the mutual parent roles are not. A divorce does not end the adults' relationship if there are children; it merely ends one set of roles. When a remarriage occurs, a new set of husband and wife roles comes into being. New parental roles, however, are not created; an additional one is merely added, with the possibility of creating much confusion for all members of the family if the roles are not explicitly well defined. Support for this interpretation comes from the finding that, of the 60 members of stepfather families who participated in this study, 53, as opposed to 15 members of natural father families, sorted on the most like my family side of the distribution on the items "We sometimes wish we could be an entirely different family," and "We are a disorganized family." It is important to note that the adjustment difficulties in stepfather families were perceived equally by all members of the family system and that the family satisfaction scores reflect this perception. If, as van der Veen and Novak (23) suggest, "adjustment" is relabeled "effectiveness," our results would be interpreted to mean that members of stepfather families perceive their family unit as relatively ineffective and are dissatisfied with this ineffectiveness. This finding strengthens the
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case for a family therapy approach in the treatment of such families because the dysfunction is seen by all the family to reside within the family rather than in any individual person, the family indicates readiness to accept intervention posited on a nonblaming approach. The differences between families in terms of understanding are very important. It should be remembered that understanding is essential for individuals to be able to avoid Laing et al.'s (11) vicious cycle of mismatched expectations and experiences. Stepchildren understood their stepfathers significantly less than natural children understood their fathers. Therefore, even though the stepchild and the stepfather agreed about how they each saw the family, the stepchild did not understand that they were in conjunction with one another. Roosevelt and Lofas (17) indicate that the most prevalent difficulty for stepparents is that their stepchildren treat them as outsiders because of loyalty to the biological parent, fear, anger and/or a million other reasons. This can be translated to: step-children relegate their stepparents to the intraspace between the family unit subsystem and their interpersonal subsystem. The result of this process is that the individuals do not have access from the intraspace to the interpersonal subsystems and therefore cannot understand each other's perspectives. Additional support for the poor interpersonal relations between the stepfather and the stepchild is provided by the results of the interaction-reaction questionnaire (16): in only four of the 20 stepfather families did the child go to the stepfather with his personal difficulties for help or guidance; the corresponding figure for natural fathers was 15 of 20. The failure of the other understanding scores to differentiate between groups supports the dual interpersonal subsystem hypothesis. Mothers and fathers and mothers and children, regardless of family type, do have access to each other's interpersonal subsystems and are therefore able to understand each other's views of the family. Thus, the information obtained from the Q-sort analyses has drawn a picture of the differences between natural-parent and stepparent family systems. The data obtained from the semantic differentials, to which we now turn, help to color in the outlines of this picture. Although it might be expected that mothers in stepfamilies would rate their children differently than mothers in natural-parent families do, especially with regard to potency, this did not prove to be true. This finding supports our dual-family subsystem interpretation, for it indicates that the stepkin relationship difficulties are adversely affecting neither the woman's perception of her husband, nor of her child. Similarly, children appear to maintain separate subsystems; their ratings of their biological fathers were not affected by whether or not that man occupied the father role at home. However, this result strengthens the argument that the stepfather is not seen as a father by the child; recall that within-group analysis of the child's ratings of his stepfather versus his natural father showed that the two were not rated equally. On the other end of this relationship, stepfathers rated their step-children as less good than natural fathers rated their children. There were no differences in terms of potency or activity. Differences could be expected on the potency factor because the child's potency may have increased in the time between the mother's divorce and the remarriage; however, as in the case of the mother's ratings of the child, this does not seem to be true. Thus, the semantic differential locates most of the perceived differences between families in the step-kin relationships, in support of the dual interpersonal subsystem hypothesis. The implications of this study are important for professionals and nonprofessionals alike. First of all, it has been clearly demonstrated that a stepfather family system is not the same as a natural-parent family system, in spite of the denial of this fact by society. This corroborates Roosevelt and Lofas' (17) view that, in spite of the need to recognize stepfamilies as unique systems, the tendency of all is to expect, act, and react as though the stepfamily were a biological family because we have no other patterning. Our finding is all the more important because our stepfamilies had the "ideal" divorce situation of biological fathers maintaining warm relations with their children and at least civil relationships with their former spouses. On the other hand, one result of this "ideal" situation ("ideal" in the sense of extolled by most mental health practitioners) is that both the prior and the current families exist at the same time and their concurrent existence may endanger contextual relationship and cause systemic confusion. More than ever it is necessary for clinicians to treat the stepparent family with an awareness of the system's differences. The stepfamily has foreign and poor communication patterns within it. It does not have one interpersonal subsystem; it has two. The clinician can best serve the stepfamily by trying to help them open their interpersonal subsystems so that all members have mutual access. If this can be accomplished, perhaps family members will be able to understand each other, as well as agree, and possibly the members then would be both more satisfied and more effective both within their family context and within society.
REFERENCES 1. 2. 3.
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Bohannan, P., Divorce and After, New York, Doubleday and Company, 1970. Bowerman, C. E. and Irish, D. P., "The Relationships of Stepchildren to Their Parents," Marr. Fam. Liv., 24, 113-121, 1962. Burchinal, L.G., "Characteristics of Adolescents from Unbroken, Broken, and Reconstituted Families," J. Marr.
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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
21. 22. 23.
Fam., 26, 44-50, 1964. Chen, R., "The Dilemma of Divorce: Disaster or Remedy," Fam. Coordinator, 17, 252-254, 1968. Duberman, L., "Step-Kin Relationships," J. Marr. Fam., 35, 283-292, 1973. Duberman, L., The Reconstituted Family: A Study of Remarried Couples and Their Children, Chicago, Nelson-Hall, 1975. Fast, I. and Cain, A.C., "The Stepparent Role: Potential for Disturbance in Family Functioning," Am. J. Orthopsychiat., 36, 485-491, 1966. Goode, W.J., After Divorce, Glencoe, Illinois, The Free Press, 1956. Guerin, P. J. (Ed.), Family Therapy, New York, Gardner Press, 1976. Kantor, D. and Lehr, W., Inside the Family, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1975. Laing, R.D., Phillipson, H. and Lee, A.R., Interpersonal Perception, New York, Harper and Row, 1966. Mead, M., "Anomalies in American Postdivorce Relationships," in P. Bohannan (Ed.), Divorce and After, New York, Doubleday and Company, 1970. Novak, A.L. and Van Der Veen, F., "Family Concepts and Emotional Disturbances in the Families of Disturbed Adolescents with Normal Siblings," Fam. Proc., 9, 157-171, 1970. Nye, F.I., "Child Adjustment in Broken and in Unhappy Unbroken Homes," Marr. Fam. Liv., 19, 356-361, 1957. Osgood, C. E., Suci, G. J. and Tannenbaum, P. H., The Measurement of Meaning, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1957. Perkins, T. F., "Natural-Parent Family Systems Versus Stepparent Family Systems," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1977. Roosevelt, R. and Lofas, J., Living in Step, New York, Stein and Day, 1976. Smith, W. C., "Remarriage and the Stepchild," in M. Fishbein and E. W. Burgess (Eds.), Successful Marriage, New York, Doubleday and Company, 1947. Van Der Veen, F., "The Parent's Concept of the Family and Child Adjustment," J. Couns. Psychol., 12, 196-200, 1965. Van Der Veen, F., Howard, K. and Austria, A., "Stability and Equivalence of Scores Based on Three Different Response Formats," Proceedings of the 79th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, 451-452, 1971. Van Der Veen, F., Huebner, B., Jorgens, B. and Neja, P., "Relationships Between the Parents' Concept of the Family and Family Adjustment," Am. J. Orthopsychiat., 34, 45-5, 1964. Van Der Veen, F. and Novak, A. L., "Perceived Parental Attitudes and Family Concepts of Disturbed Adolescents, Normal Siblings, and Normal Controls," Fam. Proc., 10, 327-343, 1971. Van Der Veen, F., "The Family Concept of the Disturbed Child: A Replication Study," Am. J. Orthopsychiat., 44, 763-772, 1974.
Reprint requests should be addressed to Terry F. Perkins, Ph.D., Camarillo State Hospital, Box A, Camarillo, California 93010. 1Although stepmothers should also be examined, their present rarity relative to stepfathers made it impossible to include them in this study. 2Following the advice of the editors, we have considerably condensed the details of experimental method and statistical analysis. Readers requiring more information will find it in Perkins (16), which may be ordered from Xerox University Microfilms International. 3Volunteer families were solicited via advertisements placed in local newspapers requesting volunteers for a study of families. Neither the object of research nor the specific need for stepfathers were spelled out in the advertisements. No family, once contacted, later withdrew from the study, although all were informed that they could do so at any time.
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