stepchildren will be close and familial, like one big happy family. Third, they will love their stepchildren as though they were their own. With experience, Burns noted, they realize that all three beliefs are unrealistic.
Turner (1989) identified four specific issues in step parenting that emerge and create problems for family members: (1) the issue of a third person sharing the intimate daily life of your children, (2) the construction of a required intimate relationship with someone you don't know at all, (3) the mutual invasion of familial boundaries of time and space, so that decisions that have been intrafamilial become contingent on two families, and (4) the necessary interplay between rules (such as two-weeks here and two weeks there), relationships (how the exceptions get constructed and allowed), and the complex interactions that take place in the journey back and forth between rights and responsibilities.
Burt (1989) listed six critical areas in which step families are different from traditional, first-time families. Foremost, stepfamilies come about because of loss. Grief and the grieving process is part of the step-family adjustment process. Adults grieve: the loss of a partner; the loss of a marriage relationship; the loss of their dreams about the way they thought things would be; and the loss involved in the changes that happen because of the death or divorce (moving, a new job, change in life style, etc.)
Burt (1989) noted that children also grieve, like adults: the loss of a parent (even if the nonresidential parent visits regularly; the loss or lessened availability of the remaining parent when courtship and remarriage occur; the loss of stability; the changes that happen because of the divorce or death (new place to live, new school, loss of friends, etc.); and the loss of their fantasy of family the way they want it to be. Unresolved grief can sometimes be seen in the continued warfare and hostilit...