creating ‘stability’ for children in step-families: time and substance in parenting

CHILDREN & SOCIETY VOLUME 16 (2002) pp. 154–167Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/chi.698

Creating ‘Stability’ for Childrenin Step-families: Time andSubstance in Parenting

Children are said to be in need of stability for a ‘successful’

upbringing. This article focuses on the implications of this forparenting and childrearing practices in step-families. It addresses the

ways that conceptions of stability for children in family policy are tiedto a particular family form and to maintaining continuity in

biological parenting obligations, while parenting research has largelybeen concerned with measuring the consequences of changing familyforms for children. In contrast, parents and step-parents in

step-families themselves have far more complex understandingsabout the creation of stability for children in their care, around issues

of dis/continuity in linear time and the social and materialsubstantive constitution of stability. Copyright # 2002 John Wiley

& Sons, Ltd.

Introduction

Children and stability are linked in debates about the nature ofcontemporary family life. Social change has heightened asense of instability for both society and individuals. Theblueprints offered for everyday living and family life are nolonger simply given (see Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1995;Giddens, 1991). Marriage, sex, childbearing and childrearinghave become unhooked and the result has been anincreasing diversity of family forms and household structures.Between the early 1970s and late 1990s, the number of firstmarriages in the UK fell by two fifths, divorces morethan doubled, and one third of all marriages were remarriages.At the same time, lone motherhood almost doubled andbirths outside marriage trebled, while cohabiting relation-ships involving children are twice as likely to break down(Office for National Statistics, 1998; Ermisch and Francesconi,2000). There has been a significant increase in step-families,with estimates that around one in eight children live in ahousehold with a step-parent for at least some period of time(Haskey, 1994). With the loss of traditional social institutionsand forms of belonging, it is being argued that childrenoffer adults the promise of stability and integration,

Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Rosalind Edwards*South Bank University

*Correspondence to: Rosalind

Edwards, Professor in Social

Policy, Faculty of Humanities and

Social Science, South Bank

University, 103 Borough Road,

London SE1 0AA.

E-mail: [email protected]

embodying ‘an anchor’ in a diverse and precarious society (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim,1995; Jenks, 1996).

Children, however, are not just symbolically invested with stability in a changing society.There is also a consensus that they are in need of stability for a ‘successful’ upbringing.Such notions permeate political discussion, expert knowledges, and much academicresearch on family life. Stability has become a ‘commonsense’ given in understandings ofchildren’s needs, and a foundation on which family policies are based. It is one of theincontestable knowledge ‘truths’ that surround and produce childhood (Walkerdine,1990), and as such carries a powerful social and moral imperative for satisfaction. AsMartin Woodhead points out in his discussion of children’s needs:

. . . the authority of ‘need’ statements does not only come from their apparently straightforwarddescriptive quality. They also convey considerable emotive force, inducing a sense ofresponsibility, and even feelings of guilt if they are not heeded. (1997, p. 66)

Woodhead has unpacked ‘children’s needs’ as a rhetorical and prescriptive device,arguing for a disentangling of universal inherent qualities of children’s nature fromcultural preoccupations that are superimposed on them. This article is not concerned withwhether or not stability is, in fact, an intrinsic children’s need (its ‘truth’). Rather, it isconcerned with the implications of the dominance of such ideas for understandings ofparenting and childrearing practices on the part of those who, as will become clear, areplaced outside of conceptions of the ‘best’ provision of stability for children—parents andstep-parents in step-families. Given the moral compulsion of the notion of children’s needfor stability, it looks at how they interpret its demands and attempt to create stability fortheir children.

Stability in family policy and parenting research

The Government Green Paper Supporting Families (Home Office, 1998) unequivocallystates that:

Children need stability. There are many successful kinds of relationships outside marriage, but weshare the belief of the majority of people that marriage is the surest way for couples to bring uptheir children. (p. 52)

Thus a married heterosexual couple, who are the child’s biological parents, is posed as thefoundation of stability for children.

‘Modern family policy’, however, also has to recognise that ‘family structures havebecome more complicated’ (Home Office, 1998, p. 4; see also McRae, 1999; Silva and Smart,1999). Family change and diversity are part of the precarious society created by socialchange, as noted earlier. There is thus, in these terms, the paradox that the changingsociety in which children come to represent stability itself undermines the meeting ofchildren’s need for stability. Under these circumstances, stability is regarded as bestachieved by ensuring continuity in children’s relationship with both their biologicalparents after divorce or separation. This prescription is legislated for in the Children Act1989 (reaffirmed under the Family Law Act 1996), while the Child Support Act 1991mandates ongoing financial obligations. Policies towards families, then, assume a simple

Creating Stability for Children in Step-families 155

Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY Vol. 16, 154–167 (2002)

model of providing stability, tied to a particular family formation and financialresponsibility. They tend not to allow for any broader social, emotional and materialissues. Furthermore, the status and practices of step-parents in relation to stability forchildren have not been a feature of policy discussions (Edwards and others, 1999a). Familypolicy thus does not account for the complexity and lived realities of step-family life,including around the provision of stability for children.

There is a considerable body of research concerned with the impact of changing familyforms, with implicit or explicit attention to stability for children. Discussions aroundwhether sole or shared residence arrangements are best for children after divorce orseparation, for example, are often conducted around the issue of stability (Baker andTownsend, 1996). Step-family formation is posed as involving a clustering of changes forchildren (Batchelor and others, 1994; Smith) and often viewed as problematic forchildren’s stability. Most of the literature on step-families stresses the complexity of familyforms and dynamics of family life involved (see overview discussion in Allan and Crow,2001), including changing relationships over time. Some identify a linear trajectory in howstep-family members develop a sense of solidarity (for example, Mills, 1984; Papernow,1993; Robinson and Smith, 1993), while others point to considerable fluctuation rather thansettlement (for example, Baxter and others, 1999; see also Gorell Barnes and others, 1998).Either way, step-family relationships are not regarded as subject to stability in the sameway as parent-child relationship development in ‘the unbroken family’. Parentingbehaviour and roles have been surveyed in step-families (Ferri and Smith, 1998), butwithout in-depth attention to the meanings of that behaviour. Some research paysattention to parents’ and step-parents’ own understandings as shaping their childrearing(such as Ribbens McCarthy and others, 2002; Smart and Neale, 1999), but this does notinterrogate issues of stability. In particular, Jacqueline Burgoyne and David Clark’s (1983)influential study, conducted two decades ago, found that most parents and step-parents instep-families felt that the thing to do was to ‘reconstitute’ an ‘ordinary’ family life becausethis was best for children. Contemporary family policies may well have cut across theability or desire to pursue this aim, as well as highlighting a different orthodoxy on how toproduce stability for children.

The main focus of much parenting research, however, has been on assessing theconsequences of family disruption, measuring and comparing ‘outcomes’ for children.Research has investigated the type and number of ‘life changes’ for children and theirassociation with health, behavioural, educational and social outcomes (see overview byRodgers and Pryor, 1999, and also critique by Gorell Barnes and others, 1998). Implicitly orexplicitly, such studies have issues of stability as a core concern, especially in relation tosupposed ‘inherent’ stability problems in step-family forms. This focus has been at theneglect of understanding how parents and step-parents in step-families themselves mayseek to mitigate instability and create stability for children.

The research

In order to explore these issues, this article draws on data from a study of parenting andstep-parenting after divorce/separation. This project addressed the ways that parents andstep-parents actively created, understood and made sense of ‘family’ and parenting withinand between households. Surprisingly, given concerns about the implications of family

156 Rosalind Edwards


change for children, it was one of the first British in-depth social research studies on thistopic since Burgoyne and Clark’s (1983) classic study.1

The main sample concerned 23 ‘step-clusters’, comprising interviews with 46 adults, withheterogeneous socio-structural characteristics (social class, gender and, to some extent,ethnicity). In each cluster, interviews were sought (but not always obtained) with theresident or co-parent (usually the biological mother), the step-parent (usually the socialfather) and the non-resident or co-parent (usually the biological father). Given thecomplexity of household forms, some of the resident biological mothers or fathers werealso step-parents. As is the case within the population generally, the majority of ourstep-families involved a resident biological mother and step-father. (Full details ofthe sample and how they were accessed are available in Edwards and others, 1999b.)It is the 42 resident or co-parenting parents and step-parents in step-families, whoundertook the everyday care of the children involved, who form the focus of this piece(see Table 1).

The interviews were largely intensive and minimally structured, covering aspects of thelife histories of individuals, and of couple and parenting relationships. Towards the end,more specific questions were asked addressing perceptions of more ‘public’ images andpolicies around step-families. The interviews were thus concerned with the organisationand meaning of everyday family life for the interviewees, and did not focus specifically onproviding stability for children. The material that follows has been a combination ofinductive and deductive analytic strategies in examining the data produced. Stability wasone of the inductive themes that recurred as a key feature in several of the interviewees’accounts and, having identified it, a deductive comparison of this theme for children wasundertaken across the sample.

Given that being brought up by their married and co-resident biological parents ispromoted as the stability that children need and that step-families are regarded as sites ofinstability for children, parents and step-parents in step-families are accorded amarginalised and morally questionable position, defacto failing to meet this need. Indeed,it was largely the negative images associated with ‘step-families’ that led most of thosetaking part in the research to state that the word ‘step-family’ did not constitute part oftheir normal thinking about their family lives (see Ribbens and others, 1996). A significantfinding of the study overall, though, was the way that the parents and step-parentsadhered to the moral imperative of ‘putting children’s needs first’ (see Ribbens McCarthyand others, 2001).

Table 1. Interviewees’ parenting status in step-families

Women Men

Mother: 19 Father: 1Mother and step-mother: 3 Father and step-father: 2Step-mother: 2 Step-father: 15

Total: 24 Total: 18

1Parents’ and step-parents’ perspectives are valuable in their own right, in a context where family forms are said to be undergoing

social change and where their understandings and experiences have received little sustained research attention. Children’s views

on step-family life are also an important consideration, and have latterly received in-depth study (Brannen and others, 2000; Neale

and others, 1998; and also Gorell Barnes and others, 1998, on retrospective accounts from adults).



Time and substance

Time is a key axis in analysis of family processes (Morgan, 1996). It is also an importantdimension in understanding—and indeed a constitutive feature of—stability. Muchresearch thus either follows (such as through the Child Development Study), orretrospectively gathers information about, dis/continuities in children’s circumstancesover time. This poses stability as continuity of the child’s past into the present, and links tonotions of linear developmental trajectories involving gradual change for children withinstability (Burman, 1994). As the discussion of the parents’ and step-parents’ ownunderstandings of time will show, however, stability can be constituted by differentnotions of linear time. On the one hand, interviewees could similarly pose stability ascontinuity of the past into the present (and then on into the future). Thus they could seek,for example, to sustain their children’s relationships and circumstances over time. Notionsof the past to be continued, though, could stretch back beyond the child in question, withsome attempting to recreate their own stable childhood for their children. On the otherhand, however, the parents and step-parents could pose stability as entailingdiscontinuity with the past, such as attempting to cut off from the child’s past in orderto build stability from the present into the future. Again, notions of discontinuity couldalso stretch back to encompass working towards ensuring that their children did not sufferthe instability of their own childhood.

As indicated, within these different understandings of the relationship between time andstability, there are a range of social and material aspects and sites involved in the creationof stability for children. Key areas in which the need to produce stability formed apreoccupation for the parents and step-parents interviewed were: relationships and values(covering biological and step-parents, kin and friendship networks, childrearing acrossgenerations, daily routines, and parenting styles and values) and material aspects (largelyfocusing on financial provision, and ‘home’). These areas, constituting stability assubstance, are discussed in turn below, with the different notions of continuity ordiscontinuity in time woven throughout.

Relationships and values

Stability could be perceived as continuity of the child’s past into the present through theupkeep of relationships, specifically in both the step and biological fathering of children,and more widely in terms of kin and friendship networks.

A stable relationship with step and biological parents

Stability in children’s relationship with their resident step and non-resident biologicalparents was a consistent feature of the interviewees’ accounts—and largely concernedfathers given that this is the predominant pattern. What is clear, crucially, is that thestability of step and biological fathers’ positions are often regarded as bound up with eachother.

Many of the step-fathers and step-mothers were unsure whether, having built up arelationship with their step-children, they would be ‘allowed’ to continue this relationship



into the future if their relationship with the children’s mother or father came to an end.Resident mothers could also share this concern, noting that discontinuity in the step-fatherrelationship, where stability had been built up, could be detrimental. This was in somecontrast with resident fathers who could see this as an issue for step-mothers but not to thesame extent. For example, Gill (White, working class) mused:

There was something on television one night about families splitting up and [my daughter] wassaying what would happen if you and daddy split up. And how much she wouldn’t like it andhow much it would affect her. And it made me realise it really would affect her. The fact that he’snot her biological father wouldn’t make that any easier.

The stability of children’s relationship with their step-father, however, was seen as shapedby the nature of their relationship with the biological father, and vice versa.

Some interviewees worked towards creating stability in the form of maintainingcontinuity of their child/ren’s relationship with their biological father(s), which thenimpacted on the step-father’s position. Laura (White, middle class), for example, felt thatshe and her partner, Pete, had tried to ensure that Laura’s three children from hermarriage to Chris had knowledge of and contact with him. When Chris went away for afew years, she said that they had especially tried to make sure that the youngest, Laurie—born after his parents had separated—knew that Chris was his ‘dad’. This went to theextent of Pete’s own children with Laura calling him by his first name rather than ‘dad’:

Cos Chris was away for three years, so when he came back that was all kind of a bit strange . . . Isuppose we’ve always called Pete ‘Pete’ for Laurie’s sake in a sense. Especially while Chris wasaway, we felt we had to very much keep up the daddy bit . . . I hope that [Chris and I]’ll carry onbeing able to be friends. Because I think for the kids to see us going in and out of each other’shouses and doing things together sometimes is important.

The idea of the importance of working towards the stable involvement of children’s non-resident biological parent, even in the event of their absence, is exemplified in the situationfor James (White, middle class). He was step-father to his wife’s three sons, whose fatherhad died. He and his wife, Margaret, kept photos of the children’s father on prominentdisplay in the living room and while James did not often talk to the children about theirfather, he was prepared to do so and knew that his wife did:

I’ve got to be careful not to pretend to be their dad, cos they’ve obviously got very clear memoriesof their dad. And so I need to be sensitive to that. And cos I was a close friend of [his] I think thathelps really . . .On the whole, they’re at the stage when they don’t talk much about their dad so Idon’t on the whole talk about him with them. Margaret does a bit more. But certainly if theywanted to, I mean I’d be very happy to.

At the same time, James felt that his own involvement gave his step-children a sense ofstability:

Well I think I certainly feel I help give them maybe a bit more stability in their lives. I try and givethem a lot of love as a father figure. I think it helps them probably, although they wouldn’t put it inwords, that they’ve actually got someone who really loves their mum . . . they know that we loveeach other, and I think that probably helps them, gives them reassurance and stability after, youknow, a very difficult year or two, before when their dad was dying and the year after that.



Other interviewees, however, could take an opposite approach, viewing the step-father aspotentially encroaching on the stability of the non-resident fathers’ actual involvement.Sue (White, middle class), for example, co-parented her two daughters with her ex-partner, Bob, half weekly. She talked about how her current partner, John, maintained anuninvolved relationship with his step-daughters in order to foreground their biologicalfather, Bob, and described John’s distanced relationship to the children as having ‘beenvery stable really’:

John’s actually staying back and not rushing in to take on the parenting. You know, that’simportant. I think that’s true. I think that would confuse [the children] because I think Bob is soinvolved still . . . [John]’s not getting in there trying to be all nice to them and build a relationship.

Still other interviewees regarded the most stable course as involving a break from the past,in the form of the children’s biological father, in order to build stability for the childreninto the future, in the form of their relationship with their step-father. Ben (White, workingclass) was step-father to his partner’s young daughter, Rosie, who had virtually no contactwith her biological father. Ben was dismissive of notions of co-parenting by parents afterseparation or divorce (a scepticism shared by many in the sample—see Edwards andothers, 1999a), and in reflecting on the situation for Rosie he said:

I mean some kids, their parents have split up, they tend to sort of wander between the two everynow and again. Er, loyalties and stuff get divided . . . I think it is better this way. It seems to be morestable for Rosie. So if her father kept coming round every now and again, it would be a bit strange.But this way she knows the relationship they had’s over.

Louise (White, working class) similarly regarded her young daughter’s lack of contactwith her biological father, and her partner being regarded as ‘Daddy’, as creating stability:‘I think she feels, um, I don’t know what the word really is for it—secure, now. I thinkthat’s the first thing, that she feels secure. I mean if someone says ‘who is that?’, she says‘that’s my daddy’.

In being able to envisage no contact with their biological father as of some benefit tochildren, involving a break from the past that allowed stability to be built into the future,rather than as creating problems for children, Ben and Louise held very similar attitudes toother working class interviewees in the sample (see Edwards and others, 1999a)—afeature that was absent from the middle class interviewees’ accounts.

Biological fathers could also lose their rights to a continued relationship with theirchildren in many of the sample’s eyes if they failed to maintain a stable relationship withthem (see Ribbens McCarthy and others, 2002). For example, Karen and Paul (Black,working class) were proceeding to adopt Karen’s teenage daughter from her previousmarriage because her biological father had been erratic in visiting her and made herpromises that he failed to fulfil, while Paul had acted as a stable, committed and involved(step)father.

Continuity of kin and friendship networks

Continuity in children’s relationships with their wider kin and friendship networkswas regarded as important in providing children with a sense of stability. Sue



(the co-parenting mother discussed earlier), for example, felt that, in addition tomaintaining links with the children’s extended family networks, her ex-partner Bob’swife (Jessica) and his mother were important in providing stability in this situation:

Bob and Jessica [are important], cos I think the stability of that—Jessica’s important. I mean she’snot a personal friend for me but she’s important for Bob and the children . . .Granny, well she’sknown both the children since they were born and she’s looked after them since I went back towork, so she’s been my long term childminder.

The parents and step-parents could also mention the importance of maintaining links withpeople outside the children’s kin networks. For example, Sue also referred to variousfriends of hers who had been constants in her children’s lives and acted as ‘aunts’ to them.Maintaining friendships with peers was not referred to as a source of stability for children,although a few interviewees indicated their importance in other ways.

Generational dis/continuity in childrearing with parents’ own upbringing

The creation of stability through continuity or discontinuity with the ‘past’, however,could also have longer roots—stretching back generationally. The interviewees wereasked about their own childhoods and how their current family lives might be similar ordifferent. This brought to light how they could work towards continuity or discontinuityin parenting their children with their own childhood upbringing.

Jessica (White, middle class) provides a good example of a desire for continuity with theperceived stability of her own childhood. She was a resident mother to her own twochildren and step-mother to her partner’s (Bob) two daughters, whom he was co-parenting on a half weekly basis. Jessica’s family life as a child was an important guidingimage in her approach to parenting both sets of children, and she was pleased that she wasgetting closer to recreating it in the environment of the house they had moved to. She saidthat her parents had provided her with ‘a real stable family base’, and compared herselfwith her mother and Bob with her father in their parenting of all their children:

I was just saying to Bob the other day, cos we moved here it’s getting towards my mum’s, and thegreenery and everything around, and I was saying about the birds singing . . . I remember justplaying a lot, and I do worry about whether the children are playing enough. They probably do. Ithink come the summer time they’ll probably be up in the park and things, like I used to do, hangaround on their bikes and things . . . So I mean I actually hanker after my childhood and we’regetting closer to my childhood. Like the woods, lots of children around . . . [Bob]’ll be the one thatthrows [the children] up in the air and takes them swimming. He does all the things that I alwaysthought a dad should do. Like my dad used to do that, he used to take us swimming, he used to beon the floor, like we’d all leap on him and tickle him and things, tickle under his feet, you know.And that’s what they do to him, Bob.

In direct contrast with this, Kim (White, working class) was attempting to discontinue theunstable patterns associated with her own childhood in her parenting of her youngdaughter, in particular based around her parents’ arguments and heavy drinking:

I mean I’m not trying to make it sound worse than it was. They, you know, my mother wasn’t analcoholic but she did a fair bit of drinking. They argued almost continually. You know, every family



occasion was centred around the pub . . . I like a drink, yes, but I’m not going to be an alcoholicbecause I’ve seen what it does to little children and would never put my child [through that].

As a result of her perceptions of her unstable upbringing Kim laid stress on stability in herown childrearing, particularly in adhering to daily routines, as discussed below.

Stability of daily routines

Providing children with stability through continuity in daily routines was another featureof interviewees’ discussions, and one that was mainly raised by mothers. While dailyroutine implies a continuity of current everyday practices with those in the past, it alsoinvolves detailed attention to the ‘here and now’ of children’s lives—a focus that can be aparticularly gendered parenting preoccupation (see discussion in Ribbens McCarthy andEdwards, 2002). Sue, the half-weekly co-parenting mother discussed earlier, for example,noted how hard it was to maintain routines for her children in such a situation:

It affects just setting up sort of patterns. And also because we do a sort of funny three days on fourdays off sort of thing. You know, like not being there every night to see [my younger] daughterreading or practice her recorder. And I know [my ex-partner]’s sort of less on the ball about thosethings, he won’t put that much emphasis on them.

Desire for dis/continuity across the generations could also play a part here. As a result ofher chaotic childhood, Kim (discussed above) placed great store on stability as linked toroutine in bringing up her own child:

Well, being a good mother to me is to try to provide a stable environment for the child . . . I’vealways tried to provide a bedtime, a bedroom, special rituals that you have every day, because Ithink that provides—and to be continuous.

She also placed stress on her partner learning how to provide stability through routine aspart of the parenting that he was increasingly taking on as they settled into a committedrelationship:

It is getting that he seems to be able to do more and more things with her. Because I mean to beginwith he didn’t even know sort of what she had for breakfast, but he’s getting to know herroutine . . .He’s not quite as up on the continuity as I am. Because I believe you have to becontinuous with children.

Stability in parenting styles and values

Underlying discussions of providing routine for children are notions of parenting stylesand values. Much of the popular and academic parenting literature advocates thatparenting style should be consistent and authoritative, including parents presenting a‘united front’. Certainly, the parents’ and step-parents’ accounts could include these sortsof issues. Again, these demonstrated different time aspects in what constituted stability.

Karen (Black, working class) did not address continuity with the past in telling how sheand her husband worked from the (then) present to ensure stability into the future indeciding on how they, unitedly, brought up Karen’s daughter from her previous marriage:



I think from the time that he proposed to me, I think, which was about a year before we gotmarried, we said we thought it was necessary to sit down and discuss certain issues, how wewould bring her up, what policies we would have . . . I think it’s something that you’ve got to dobefore cos if you wait until afterwards you’re going to have misunderstandings . . . So it was quitefully discussed. Our policy was that we should be in agreement.

Gill (White, working class) focused on the necessity of the step-father in particularbuilding respect through discipline from the present into the future: ‘Discipline in allareas. Because I think step-children will walk all over them. And if there’s no respect froman early start I think they will get a lot of things thrown back at them’.

Laura saw both beneficial continuity and discontinuity with the past in her childrearing.There was continuity in that she was their mother and had been the main stable influenceon her children throughout their lives, despite other discontinuities, and there wasdiscontinuity in that her children were now being parented in a situation where she andher partner, Pete, had similar values, which had not been the case with her ex-husband,Chris:

I suppose the main influence is always from oneself. Because in some ways, with other people,they can be a bit transient . . . I suppose I always felt a strong sense myself that I was the kids’ mumand that would never change . . . I suppose one running argument I’ve always had with Chris isthat he didn’t value, and he doesn’t value, looking after young kids really . . . I don’t think heunderstands young children very well. I think he thinks they’re just adults waiting to grow up,you know . . . [Pete and I] agree more really.

Material aspects

Financial and other material provision

The material aspects of parenting children were also a feature of stability, and when itcame to money had a gendered dimension. Financially providing for children as a keyissue in providing stable parenting of children was a recurring feature of the men’saccounts. They placed stress on breadwinning as a moral identity (see Ribbens McCarthyand others, 2001, 2002).

Pete (White, middle class), for example, talked about the way he provided stability ofincome for his three step-children, as well as his two biological children with his partnerLaura, in contrast to their biological father’s erratic and inadequate payments. In talkingabout this, he also drew on the notions of parenting values and generational continuitywith his own childhood discussed above:

Cos, you know, there was a time when he didn’t give us any money . . .And I think, you know, ifyou’ve got children you can’t say well I haven’t got any [money], it’s not what it’s about, is it. Imean what about if I haven’t got any?! . . .And [when he does pay] I think it’s vastly inadequate forwhat’s necessary. And I don’t think any of the kids actually—we don’t overfeed them, give themfashion clothes, take them on expensive holidays, you know . . . I always keep my change cos in themorning it’s like one fifty for Toby’s dinner, one pound twenty for Laurie’s dinner, and Lauriegoes swimming. So I mean that to me is a problem so consequently I pay. Laura doesn’t work. Wemade a joint decision that—I think it’s right. So long as we don’t get into too much financial



difficulty over the next few years that appears to us the best course of action . . . It makes adifference to the kids, I think. Having at least one parent around a lot is for me better. Partlybecause when I was a kid my mother was around a lot and I thought it was good.

Mark (White, middle class) did not feel close to his eldest step-son, Lewis, but still felt thathis role in providing materially for him was crucial in creating a necessary stability tobuild into Lewis’ future:

I suppose I feel responsibilities towards Lewis. I have to provide him with a roof over his head andthose basic kinds of things that I feel I ought to provide. And I think I ought to be a role model tohim. I think it’s important that I can go to work every day and I’m not getting drunk and all thatkind of stuff. You know, setting an example. I feel obligated in that way towards Lewis . . . toprovide a place from where he can develop from. Something stable.

Home

Stability as being conceptualised in different ways that can comprise continuity ordiscontinuity is also a feature of another facet of material provision for children—placeand locality, and especially ‘home’.

While James, discussed earlier, promoted stability in the form of his step-children’smemory of their dead father, he felt that it was beneficial for the step-family to start off in adifferent town to the one in which his wife, Margaret, and step-children had previouslylived and where they had first met:

I think it probably would have been difficult had we started up say for the first year in Northover. Ithink we probably would’ve found it difficult because, you know, obviously people—all thefriends in Northover through the church knew Margaret and [her husband] as a couple and I thinksome would have found it quite difficult suddenly seeing Margaret and James. So I think from thatpoint of view it’s probably been quite good that there’s been—you know, the boys have doneremarkably well . . . I certainly felt [the move] was the right thing . . .You know, a lot of people[here] will assume that we’re just a normal family.

This geographical move is similar to the ‘fresh start’ desired by some of the step-couplesinterviewed for Burgoyne and Clark’s (1983) influential study of step-family life, andrelates to ideas about a break with the past in order to allow stability to be built into thefuture. It also exemplifies an attempt to ‘pass’ as the ‘ordinary’ family model that ispredominantly posed as the foundation of stability for children. While James andMargaret were the only step-family in the study to move to a different town, many movedto a new house in order to signal a fresh beginning from which to build a stable future as astep-family for their children. For Jessica, quoted earlier, the ‘new start together’ in adifferent house, although signalling a break with the immediate past, involvedgenerational continuity in ‘getting closer’ to the environment of her own childhood‘stable family base’.

For some interviewees, however, the aim was to provide stability through not changingthe children’s home, with the step-parent moving in with the parent and child/ren. Evenwith one home remaining stable, adding another ‘home’ to it could be perceived asdisruptive for children. Laura, while working to make sure that her children had



knowledge of and contact with their biological father, Chris (discussed earlier), felt thatchildren needed to have a sense of one home, and this had implications for separatedparents sharing care:

Chris has always said he wanted the kids to be living with him and stuff, and wanted them in hishouse half the time, and all that kind of stuff. And so in some ways I was quite glad he was going[away for three years] cos I thought at least we don’t then have to fight about this thing about dothe kids have two wardrobes or one . . .They should have one wardrobe somewhere . . .And [mypartner]’s quite anti it, cos he thinks they should be in one place . . . I can’t see [shared care withtwo homes] being best for the kid really.

Laura’s view poses some contrast with Sue, the co-parenting mother who shared halfweekly care with her ex-partner discussed earlier, who—while she acknowledged thematerial difficulties involved in her children having two homes, including her ability toestablish routines—felt that the stability of daily parenting involvement from their fatherover-rode these.

Conclusion

This article has not necessarily provided a comprehensive discussion of how parents andstep-parents can understand and attempt to create stability for children in a situation ofmarginalisation and discontinuity of parental relationship. What it does show, however, isthe complexity of this as part of step-family life.

The issue of time as a constitutive feature of stability for children formed an importantaxis, and meant that creating stability could be understood in varied ways. On the onehand, it could be posed—as in dominant policy and research understandings—ascontinuity of the child’s past into the present and then on into the future. The relationshipwith the non-resident parent especially, as well as wider kin and friend relationships,therefore, needed to be maintained, daily routines and parenting values continued, andmaterial circumstances kept constant. The meaning of stability as continuity could stretchback even further into the past, however, beyond the child and into the previousgeneration. Parents and step-parents could thus work towards continuity in theirchildrearing with their own childhood upbringing, which they remembered andevaluated positively.

On the other hand, creating stability for children could be focused more around buildingstability from the present into the future, which could involve a break with the past. Aswith stability as continuity, discontinuity with the past could mean the child’s past orbeyond. Parents and step-parents could thus see a break with children’s non-residentbiological father as contributing towards stability, especially where he had failed tomaintain a continuous and committed parenting relationship, and could work not tocontinue or reproduce chaotic and negative parenting that they had experienced in theirown childrearing. They could also see a change of home as an opportunity to create a newsymbolic stability to build into the future.

Building stability from the present into the future was especially an issue in thinking aboutstep-parenting. Step-fathers particularly could be seen as providing emotional and materialstability for their step-children (especially where this was not forthcoming from their



biological father), including as part of a united childrearing front with the mother, andthere were concerns about the importance for children of continuity in the relationship withtheir step-father. Crucially, this could cross-cut with the issues involved in creating stabilityfor children through their relationship with their non-resident father. In contrast to familypolicy (and often research on the topic) that addresses non-resident fathers and ignoresstep-fathers, parents and step-parents could be acutely aware of how stability in children’srelationship with their biological father from the past into the present integrally affected theways in which they could create stability for them from the present into the future withinthe step-family and in their relationship with their step-father.

The complexity of these viewpoints from parents and step-parents in step-familiesconcerning how they can best create stability for their children in a situation of familychange contrasts with the rather simplistic view put forward in family policies, andfocused on in research on the topic. The latter pose stability for children as continuity ofthe child’s past into the present in the substance of their relationship with their non-resident biological parent. In a society that is undergoing social change, not least in familyforms and the complexity of households in which children are parented, understandingsof stability that take account of both continuity and discontinuity in linear time and awider conception of its social and material substance in children’s lives deserve greaterconsideration.

Acknowledgements

The ‘Parenting and step-parenting after divorce/separation: issues and negotiations’study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council under grant numberR000236288. I would like to acknowledge Jane Ribbens McCarthy and Val Gillies’contribution to the research as a whole, as co-director and research fellow on the project.Thanks also to Brian Heaphy for his invaluable contribution towards my thinking on theissues discussed here.

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Contributor’s details

Rosalind Edwards is Professor in Social Policy and Director of the Families and SocialCapital ESRC Research Group in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science, South BankUniversity.



creating ‘stability’ for children in step-families: time and substance in parenting

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