The position of stepparents in blended families

Do stepfathers and stepmothers play the same roles in the lives of their partner’s children? Does the amount of time stepchildren spend in the household affect the degree of involvement of their stepfather or stepmother?

Stepparents in blended families may carry out parenting activities on a daily basis or much less often (weekends, school vacations). Associating stepparenting exclusively with children’s main residence, as is often done in institutional statistical measurements, fails to account for all observed situations. 

In Fance in 2011, almost as many women as men (respectively 500,000 and 600,000) were living with a different-sex intimate partner with children under 18 from an earlier union. However, while 64% of men in that situation reported living all or nearly all the time with their stepchildren, only 18% of women did (“Famille et Logements” survey; Families and housing). These figures reflect the substantial proportion of children who live exclusively with their mother after separation, whereas fathers often spend time with and care for their own children only on weekends and vacations. 

Few social contrasts are observed between stepfathers who live all the time with their partner’s children and those who do so only on weekends. However, in cases where children’s time is divided more equally between parents, the educational capital of the father is higher, as stepfathers in this category are in couple relationships with mothers whose children are often in shared residential custody. A similar effect of educational attainment and social category is found for stepmothers who live half or more than half of the time with their stepchildren. Overall, the social profiles of stepmothers by amount of time spent with their partner’s children vary much more than stepfathers’. Stepmothers who live all or nearly all the time with their stepchildren are more likely not to be working and to have either no formal education or less than a high school degree. Conversely, highly educated stepmothers often live only part-time with their stepchildren. Last, stepmothers of children who never live at their father’s are more likely to have no formal education than those living less than half the time with their stepchildren. 

Drawing on data from the ERFI survey (“Relations Familiales et Intergénérationnelles”) to study the activities of stepfathers and stepmothers without children of their own living at least half-time with their under-18 stepchildren, we find an equally gendered distribution of parental tasks, with female involvement predominant. Like fathers, stepfathers are seldom on the front line, and they are involved to the same degree as fathers in certain tasks, such as getting children dressed, helping them with their homework, and taking care of a sick child. However, stepfathers are less present than fathers when it comes to putting children to bed or taking them to daycare or school, and they intervene less than fathers in upbringing and education-related decisions. Privacy boundaries and a legal void on the question of stepparent status explain stepfathers’ relatively limited participation in those activities. 

It should be noted that stepmothers are as a rule more implicated than stepfathers in the above-mentioned tasks (getting stepchildren dressed, helping with homework, taking them to school or day care), and they participate more often than their male counterparts in upbringing and education decisions. Intra-couple inequalities are nonetheless not as sharp for stepmothers as they are for mothers because fathers’ degree of involvement is relatively high when they are the sole parent of the children in the household. 

Last, in both blended and more classically structured families, the adult household member most often in charge of activities categorized as parental duties (taking care of a sick child, assisting with homework, etc.) is the woman, whereas distribution by sex is more balanced when it comes to play and leisure activities. 

Source: Guillemette Buisson et Marie-Clémence Le Pape, 2023, Les temps recomposés des beaux-parents : du temps avec au temps pour les beaux-enfants, Population, 2023/3 Vol. 78, Ined Éditions, pages 467 à 500 [FR]

Online: October 2024