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Handbook of Family Resilience pp 85–103Cite as

Resilience in Stepfamilies

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Abstract

Stepfamilies are common in the United States. An estimated 40–50 % of marriages are a remarriage for one or both partners (Cherlin, 2010), and although not all of these remarriages result in the formation of a stepfamily, a significant portion of them do. According to a recent study, 42 % of a national sample of US adults and more than half (52 %) of those younger than 30 had at least one steprelative (Pew Research Center, 2011). About 40 % of US families have a stepgrandparent (Szinovacz, 1998). What is more, these statistics do not account for the growing number of stepfamilies created through cohabitation (Sweeney, 2007), an often-overlooked group.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Development and Family Studies, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    Marilyn Coleman, Lawrence Ganong & Luke T. Russell

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  1. Marilyn Coleman
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Correspondence to Lawrence Ganong .

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    Dorothy S. Becvar

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Coleman, M., Ganong, L., Russell, L.T. (2013). Resilience in Stepfamilies. In: Becvar, D. (eds) Handbook of Family Resilience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3917-2_6

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