The growth of stepfamilies has been one of the most dramatic changes in British family life in recent decades. Britain today has the highest divorce rate in Europe, and by the early 1990s one in twelve children in Britain were already living in stepfamilies. Stepfamilies formed by remarriage after death were once a common experience, but in the first half of this century, as parental death became more unusual, they became unfamiliar rarities, and much of the common understanding of their dynamics was lost. The recent very rapid growth in divorce and remarriage has exposed millions of adults and children to life situations which are surprisingly little understood, either at the level of common wisdom, or through research. It is widely assumed that children referred to social and health professionals come above all from broken or reconstituted families, and until recently the interpretation of stepfamilies was dominated by analyses of clinical data. However, in large scale sample based studies it has been found that the experiences of children in stepfamilies and those growing up in 'intact' families are not as different as had previously been assumed. This study of fifty children bo