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“Becoming A Family”: Developmental Processes Represented In Blended Family Discourse, Dawn O. Braithwaite, Loreen N. Olson, Tamara D. Golish, Charles Soukup, Paul Turman

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

We adopted a process-focus in order to gain a deeper understanding of how (step) blended family members experiencing different developmental pathways discursively represented their processes of becoming a family. Using a qualitative/interpretive method, we analyzed 980 pages of interview transcripts with stepparents and stepchildren. We studied the first four years of family development, using the five developmental pathways developed by Baxter, Braithwaite, and Nicholson (1999). Three salient issues identified in the family experiences were boundary management, solidarity, and adaptation. While the negotiation of these issues varied across the five trajectories, there were commonalities across family experiences that helped determine whether …