Authors: Claire Cartwright, Virginia Farnsworth, Vicki Mobley
Overview
Many children spend part of their childhood living in a step-family household. Recent Australian statistics suggest that around one in ten couple families contain resident step-children (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2007). In Wave 3 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, 13% of households had either residential or non-residential step-children, or both (Qu & Weston, 2005). In the United States, approximately 9% of married couple households, and 11.5% of cohabiting households contain resident step-children (Teachman & Tedrow, 2008). Step-family data is not collected in the New Zealand census; however, results from the longitudinal Christchurch Health and Development Study indicate that 18.6% (or around 1 in 6) of the 1,265 survey participants had lived in a step-family between the ages of 6 and 16 years (Nicholson, Fergusson, & Horwood, 1999).
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