PARENTING STEPCHILDREN AND BIOLOGICAL CHILDREN - THE EFFECTS OF STEPPARENTS GENDER AND NEW BIOLOGICAL CHILDREN

Evolutionary views suggest that stepparents find it more difficult to parent stepchildren than to parent biological children. However, gende r stratification perspectives suggest that stepmothers are more likely than are stepfathers to experience role conflict in acting as both a stepparent and a biological parent. Therefore, especially when new bio logical children are added to the stepfamily, stepmothers, more often than stepfathers, may experience greater relative difficulty parenting their stepchildren. Using a sample of 139 stepparents with both resid ential stepchildren and residential biological children, we determined that stepmothers are in fact more likely than are stepfathers to find it more difficult to rear stepchildren than to rear biological childr en. However, we also discovered that when stepparents add new biologic al children to their stepfamilies, both stepmothers and stepfathers fi nd it more difficult to derive satisfaction from stepchildren than fro m biological children only if their new biological children are their firstborn biological children.