“She Was Stomping on Everything That We Used to Think of as a Family”: Communication and Turning Points in Cohabiting (Step)Families

Abstract

Over half of children living in cohabiting partner households reside with 1 biological parent and their parent's partner (Manning, 2006) Scholars suggest that the definition of “stepfamilies” should be expanded to account for these cohabiting partner households. In this study, we interviewed 28 (step)children whose parents had cohabited before remarrying. These stepchildren identified relational turning points (RTPs) and discussed how these RTPs affected their sense of feeling like a family. We organized these RTPs into 6 categories: (a) quality time, (b) remarriage, (c) changes in household and family composition, (d) relocation or geographical move, (e) conflict or disagreement, and (f) prosocial actions.

Keywords:

• cohabitation
• relational turning points
• remarriage
• residential parents
• stepchildren
• stepfamily
• stepparents