Creating Family Together: How Children's Perspectives and Parents' Strategies Shape Early Black Stepfamily Relationship Formation

• In Event: Family Formation and Dynamics

Abstract

Black children are more likely than children from other racial groups to experience the introduction of a stepfather. Yet research on families has largely examined stepfamilies or Black families as separate categories, with limited attention to “Black stepfamilies” specifically. Additionally, existing scholarship often focuses on parents and overlooks children's perspectives, agency, and contributions to early stepfamily relationship formation. Drawing on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with parents and kids in 19 Black stepfamilies (72 participants), alongside ethnographic fieldwork with four additional families (23 families total), this paper examines how youth and parents experienced early stepfather introduction and the ways they shaped the process. Findings show that stepfather–child relationships develop through a patterned four-stage process shaped by parents’ family-planning strategies and youths’ agency, perspectives, and contributions. Importantly, this shared process was not experienced in the same way by all actors. Across stages, parents and children often held divergent interpretations of unfolding transitions. Uncovering these divergences demonstrates that children are central actors in the relationship-building process, shaping family formation through their emotion management and behavioral contributions. Children actively contributed to family formation by withholding concerns about the incoming stepfather in order to reduce their mothers’ stress and create space for relationships to develop with their stepfathers. However, because this work occurred internally, in youths’ minds, parents frequently did not recognize its significance. Findings also show how negative stereotypes about stepfathers circulate within youth culture through peer interactions and social media. These negative stereotypes learned through youth culture influenced youth to set boundaries and push back in response to early disciplinary efforts by stepfathers. Taken together, this demonstrates how early stepfamily relationships are co-constructed through youth and parental efforts and perspectives. The paper concludes by urging parents to avoid relying solely on nuclear-family techniques and encourages scholars to further explore youths’ influence on social phenomena.

Author

• Mason Jones, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities