Stepping together

Abstract

We present our shared research journey. To place it in context, we briefly describe the history of stepfamily scholarship in four phases, highlighting our roles. We reflect on our mutual experiences as spouses who were research partners, and finish with thoughts about our contributions to the field. Although we occasionally examined sociocultural contexts within which stepfamilies lived, most of our attention focused on how stepfamily members developed and maintained satisfying and effective relationships. We also chronicled and critiqued the state of knowledge about stepfamilies by writing multiple reviews. For nearly 50 years, we have studied stepfamilies from a normative‐adaptive, resilience perspective. Our motivation was to explore issues that mattered to stepfamily members and to professionals who interacted with them. Being remarried facilitated the quality of our scholarship in many ways, although we faced challenges as well. We conclude with a brief discussion of our contributions to the study of stepfamilies.