Instant Families:

This study focused on "instant families": i.e., marriages between never married men and divorced women who had at least one pre-adolescent child from a former marriage.¹ Based on in-depth interviews with 16 couples, adjustment to remarriage was found to involve the issue of dependence, independence, and interdependence. Consistent with grounded theory, the findings are presented in 15 propositions which can be utilized as the basic hypotheses for future research on these families.