The New Stepfamily Requires a New Public Policy

Abstract

About one‐fourth of all children born in the 1980s will live with a stepparent before they reach legal adulthood. Despite the prevalence of stepfamilies and their importance in nurturing children and protecting them from poverty, they have been largely ignored in state and federal policy. In this article we first analyze demographic data, focusing on the supportive yet fragile stepparent‐stepchild relationship. Second, we review existing state and federal stepparent policies, with a critical eye to their shortcomings. Finally, we propose a new conceptualization of the stepparent‐stepchild relationship in which stepchildren receive the same protections under law as do natural children, and in which stepparents who are functioning as de facto parents have the same rights and obligations as do natural parents, and a limited set of rights and obligations should the marriage terminate.

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