A sizeable proportion of children will spend some time living in a stepfamily before they reach the age of 18 years. Glick (1989) has estimated that approximately one-third of children will become stepchildren before they reach the age of 18 and over 40% of marriages involve a remarriage for one or both spouses (Wilson & Clarke, 1992). At any one time, stepfamilies constitute approximately 17% of all two-parent families with children under 18 years of age (Glick, 1989). If one considers cohabiting couples who are not legally married, there are even more children touched by the stepfamily experience, as cohabitation is increasingly becoming a substitute for remarriage (Ganong & Coleman, 1994; Hetherington, Bridges, & Insabella, 1998). There are also gay and lesbian stepfamilies who are not represented in existing statistics, although it is extremely difficult to obtain prevalence data on these families.

In this chapter, I provide an overview of the literature pertaining to how marital, often referred to as interparental, conflict affects children in stepfamilies. I begin with an overview of how stepfamilies are different than first-marriage families, with some attention devoted to how conceptual frameworks help shed light on these differences. Following this overview, our knowledge base related to marital conflict in stepfamilies is reviewed, with attention to the sources, frequency, and resolution of conflict. Next, the limited empirical base regarding how marital conflict affects children in stepfamilies is presented.