Narratives of Mothers in Stepfamily Situations an Exploratory Investigation

This doctoral project explores the topography of stepfamily relationships through the prism of the mother, a view as yet rarely explored. Recorded interviews of eleven mothers were examined using narrative, phenomenological, grounded theory methods, within a Gestalt theoretical framework and refined into first person narratives of their experience as mothers and stepmothers. The findings indicate that while many social scientists reject biological determinism within stepfamily dynamics, an acceptance of evolutionary theory opens out the analysis to provide greater understanding of the stepfamily landscape. Further, the study shows that some features of stepfamily dynamics have similarities to the workings of psychotherapeutic groups, and vice versa. Therefore stepfamily situations can be a useful metaphor for therapy group interventions and the possibility exists to develop this further as an addition to the existing knowledge of group dynamics.