Sydney Morning Herald, 27 March 2004, Page 7

New Etiquette of the Step-by-Step Parent
Adele Horin

A new post-divorce etiquette has transformed the stereotype of the wicked step-parent, says a visiting researcher.

The “step-parent as buddy” is part of the new etiquette that separated parents are trying to forge.

Carol Smart, a keynote speaker at a families conference in Brisbane next week, says “we are witnessing a new kind of etiquette” associated with divorce and separation. People are thinking in different ways about “how to divorce” and “how to live family life after divorce”.

The ramifications of this new ethos affected children, grandparents, and parents’ new partners. There were positive changes, but also costs, she said.

Professor Smart, from the Centre for Research on Family, Kinship and Childhood at Leeds University in Britain, said under the new code step-parents played a different role from the traditional one.

Now that more children stayed in regular contact with both parents after divorce, perhaps living equally between them, they were unlikely to regard the mother’s or father’s new partner as a parent figure.

“One cannot be a step-parent if there is not a vacancy for such a position”, she says.

Drawing on six studies she has conducted, including interviews with children, parents, and wider family groups, Professor Smart found step-parents were sometimes not considered part of the child's family.

Some children saw the new partner as their mother or father’s boyfriend or girlfriend. But others saw the new partner as a friend to them.

A 10-year-old girl said, “[Mum and Dad’s partners] are a big part of my life. But I don’t really think of them as family and people I love, I think of them as, I don’t know, friends I suppose”.

Professor Smart said it was never easy to be a traditional step-parent and it could be just as difficult for today's step-parents if they transgressed the new etiquette, and started to behave like a parent.

A 12-year-old boy, when asked if his mother’s partner tried to be a parent, said: “Well, if he did, I’d tell mum that I wasn’t happy living with him”.

It took a lot of tact and considerable time for relationships between children and the new partner to go beyond the level of family friend, Professor Smart said. But some children became very attached, and felt their families had been extended by divorce because they gained new caring adults.

But, such “idyllic outcomes” were not always possible. Professor Smart said the new post-divorce etiquette also extended to a parent’s decision to take a new partner.

Many parents, especially mothers, kept their new relationships quite separate from their lives with their children.

The adage that “one should stay together for the sake of the children” had been overtaken by an alternative code of conduct, namely “one should not cohabit until the children have left home”, she said.

Some parents had established long-lasting relationships but maintained separate households for years.

Professor Smart said living apart for the sake of the children may become a more common pattern after divorce. “The only problem is that children stay at home a lot longer these days”.

The Globalisation, Families and Work conference starts on Thursday and is organised by Families Australia. It has attracted international and Australian experts.