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Disparate parenting and step-parenting with siblings in the post-divorce family: Report from a 10-year longitudinal study
Judith Wallerstein
School of Social Welfare, University of California at Berkeley, United States of America
Julia M Lewis
Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University, California, United States of America
Abstract
A longitudinal study of divorced families shows widely discrepant psychological adjustment among siblings along with disparate relationships with parents and stepparents in one half of the families at the 10-year follow-up.
These differences in sibling adjustment and parent-child relationships were not evident at the divorce assessment. This instability in many parent-child relationships following divorce and remarriage challenges the view of divorce as an acute time-limited crisis for children and court policy that assumes that parent-child relationships at divorce will remain relatively unchanged over the years that follow.
Findings also show the power of remarriage to reshape parenting styles of biological parents.
Keywords
parenting, step-parenting, sibling relationships, post-divorce relationships
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