Beyond divorce: Research on children in repartnered and remarried families

In the past 50 years, research on divorce has grown exponentially. A search of the database PsychInfo from 1962 to the present using the search term “divorc*” returned a total of 14,955 citations.1 A graph of this growth by decade is depicted in Figure?1, indicating an average of 514 citations per year over the last decade. A similar search in Family Court Review/Family and Conciliation Courts Review (FCR) returned 347 sources dating from 1982 to 2012. In contrast, during this same time period, only 96 references in FCR were identified using four different search terms for remarriage and stepfamilies. In the broader psychological literature, however, interest in remarriage and stepfamilies continues to grow, with roughly 30% the total research in this area over the last 50 years taking place over the last decade.2 In this paper, we review research on children livin…