Stepfamily Dynamics in the 1998 Film "Stepmom"

The Harrison Family and the Stepfamily Context

The Harrison family in the 1998 film Stepmom consists of the father (Luke Harrison, played by Ed Harris), the ex-wife and biological mother (Jackie Harrison, played by Susan Sarandon), the daughter (Anna Harrison, played by Jena Malone), the son (Ben Harrison, played by Liam Aiken), and the soon-to-be stepmother (Isabel Kelly, played by Julia Roberts). The children's natural mother and ex-wife becomes aware that she has cancer; a number of therapies are tried, but ultimately everyone must face the fact that the disease will end her life before long.

Stepchild-Stepparent Relationship Development

The parents of Anna and Ben have divorced, and their father's girlfriend, Isabel — a single, successful professional photographer — is living with them. Isabel's efforts to provide good mothering to the children are met at every turn by their resistance. Understandably, the children want their parents back together. As described by Ganong, Coleman, and Jamison (2011), six patterns of step-relationship development have been identified: "accepting as a parent, liking from the start, accepting with ambivalence, changing trajectory, rejecting, and coexisting" (p. 396).

The theoretical grounding for the research conducted by Ganong et al. (2011) was that "the degree to which stepchildren engage in relationship-building and maintaining behaviors with stepparents is a function of the stepchildren's evaluative judgments about stepparents' behaviors toward them and toward their peers" (p. 401). The dynamic that Ganong et al. (2011) made clear was that the judgments stepchildren make about their stepparents are influenced to a high degree by input from other people who are important to them, such as biological parents, siblings, half-siblings, and peers. Other variables that affect the quality and tenor of the stepchild-stepparent relationship include the child's age when the stepparent entered their life, the gender of both the stepchild and stepparent, the relationship between the children and their biological parents, differences between the children's relationships with the custodial versus the non-custodial parent, and the amount of time stepchildren spend with their stepparents and biological parents under the applicable custody arrangements (Ganong et al., 2011).

The relationship between Isabel and Anna is the central focus of the film, since Anna is the older of the two children and shares the same gender as both her stepmother and her biological mother — a factor commonly considered to add complexity to these relationships, particularly as the child ages. Ganong et al. (2011) found that the efforts of the biological parent to encourage or discourage the child to have a meaningful — or at least tolerable or generally pleasant — relationship with the stepparent is a strong factor in step-relationship development. The patterns of step-relationships are nuanced and depend on many variables; only 30% of the children in the study who had two or more stepparents developed the same pattern of relationship development with each of their stepparents. The stepparent-stepchild relationship between Isabel and Anna can best be described as following a "changing trajectory" — indeed, the relationship appears to span "rejecting" and "coexisting" before finally settling on "accepting as a parent" (Ganong et al., 2011, p. 396).

The Biological Mother's Role and Shifting Family Boundaries

It was not in Isabel's plans to become a mother; she is torn between trying to fulfill her new role well and maintaining her career. Isabel faced an uphill struggle on several fronts as she was thrust into instant parenthood. The fact that one of the stepchildren was a pre-adolescent girl foreshadowed particular difficulty, as Kluwer (2010) indicates, since the responsibilities of raising a daughter fall more heavily on the mother figure than on the father. According to several studies cited in Kluwer (2010), less active parenting by the men in a family relationship adds to the stress experienced by the mother. Although Isabel likely had few clear-cut expectations about mothering in her new role, she would still have experienced the additional demands that raising a girl entails. Moreover, the relationship between Anna and Isabel was volatile from the outset, made more combustible by the fact that Isabel and Luke enjoyed each other's company, with inevitable moments of exclusion when they were intimate. These encounters were particularly difficult given that Anna was right on the cusp of her teenage years. When Isabel rescued Anna by arranging for a high school boy to appear on campus and pose as Anna's boyfriend — and by coaching her on precisely what to say to the peer who was tormenting her — Isabel cemented her position as a go-to resource for the conundrums of adolescence.

The children's mother, Jackie, was able to devote herself fully to the children before her divorce, so her constant comparisons cast Isabel in a negative light. The tide shifts inexorably when Jackie's diagnosis worsens. Both Jackie and Isabel come to understand that for the children to be happy, Jackie must demonstrate her acceptance of Isabel. When Jackie makes overtures to Isabel and encourages her daughter to spend time with her — such as allowing Anna to attend a rock concert with Isabel — she takes major strides in a direction that begins to erode Anna's resistance to Isabel's efforts to connect. They must cross this threshold sooner than either would prefer in order to prevent further damage to the children's ability to adapt to life with their new stepmother. The well-defined and respected boundaries that surrounded the pre-Isabel family have been breached — and they must necessarily be breached once Jackie's situation has been fully acknowledged.

Conclusion

Kluwer, E. S. (2010, June). From partnership to parenthood: A review of marital change across the transition to parenthood. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 2, 105–125. doi: 10.1111/j.1756-2589.2010.00045.x

Fine, M. A., Voydanoff, P., & Donnelly, B. W. (1993). Relations between parental control and warmth and child well-being in stepfamilies. Journal of Family Psychology, 7(2), 222–232.

Olson, D. H. (2000). Circumplex model of marital and family systems. Journal of Family Therapy, 22, 144–167.

Weaver, S. E., & Coleman, M. (2005). A mothering but not a mother role: A grounded theory study of the nonresidential stepmother role. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 22(4), 477–497.