Statistics show that children of blended families are a rapidly growing population in schools. Some demographers predict that as many as one-third of all children born in the 1980\u27s may live with a stepparent before they are 18 (Kantrowitz & Wingert, 1990). School personnel have predominantly related to students\u27 families under the assumption that all two-parent families were nuclear, intact, biological families. There is a need for schools to make adjustments to acknowledge the existence of the growing number of stepchildren and blended families in society (Crosbie-Burnett & Skyles, 1989). 1 Writers differ in their definition of blended families. A definition for blended families, according to Nichols and Schwartz (1991) is, Separate families united by marriage; stepfamilies (page 589). A stepchild is defined as a child whose biological parent has married someone other than the child\u27s other biological parent
