Mr. L., a divorced father,  says: “I love my children. I just don’t understand them. And I really don’t  know  what’s their problem. It really used to bother me an awful lot that I wasn’t closer to them, and I’ve tried. I really did.  .  . But then I had to come to grips with it, that that’s what it’s gonna be.”

This quotation comes from a study entitled “Older Stepfamilies: Views from the Parental Generation,” done by Barbara Vinick, a veteran researcher affiliated with Boston University.

Dr. Vinick recently told me about her findings and shared much fascinating information. “We sat down and talked with husbands and wives who had been remarried an average of twenty years,” she said. “We asked them to look back on the course of their relationships with their children and their stepchildren.”

Almost half of the older divorced fathers described their relationship with their “ex-children” as “not close.” One-third of these alienated fathers had not had any contact with these children. Another third saw them from time to time, while a final third enjoyed routine contact with them.

Vinick says that the alienated fathers found it sad to have lost contact. She was surprised how much pain and regret they expressed. More of them than she expected were ready to blame themselves for this unhappy situation (whereas younger men, it seems, are more likely to blame their former wives.)

This greater readiness to accept responsibility can be seen as a sign of growing liberation in later life, Vinick believes. “The passage of the years has given them a chance to look back and have some perspective on things, to let go of a lot of their anger.”

She goes further: “As men get older, they are willing to give up some of this macho stance and tap into their nurturing, affiliative self.” These men, aged 57 to 84, often found it too late to do anything about the broken relationships but many would have liked to.

Dynamics are very different for the biological mothers. “For the most part,” Vinick reports, “they maintained very close relationships with their kids.” Only four out of the seventeen women interviewed did not fit this pattern.

Surprisingly often, relationships between mothers and sons were so close as to interfere with the bond between the wife and her second husband. Vinick calls these “triangles” and reports that often the husbands felt left out. “The husbands and sons found themselves pitted against one another with the mother in the middle.”

Because stepmothers are so supportive of their husbands getting back in touch with their children, Vinick calls these women “family carpenters.” Three-fourths of them said they had taken action to bring their husbands closer to the kids.

In some stepmothers this provoked anxiety. One woman told of going to her stepdaughter’s wedding but not before smoking, something she had not done in twenty years. “Some of these situations were very complicated,” says Barbara Vinick.

Not surprisingly, it is easier for children to enter into relationships with stepparents when the kids are already grown up. Teenagers in particular often have a hard time.

The researcher was struck by the difference between men and women in their appraisal of change within the extended family. Women often termed changes “positive” whereas men were more likely to see negative elements.

About possible interventions, Vinick judges that efforts to help men realize that their kids need them would be highly desirable. “There are wonderful models out there for male behavior in the family but they are not the majority. When men are engaged in negative interaction with the family, they tend just to withdraw.”

Men should be encouraged to express their feelings of regret. It’s never too late to reestablish relationships. The older a guy is, the more likely he will be able to express feelings.

At Dr. Vinick’s suggestion, I contacted Bob Chellis and Sandy Adams, who took part in the study. This couple, resident in Wellesley, stressed that things were different, and perhaps easier, for them because their biological children from previous marriages were not close in age and thus never lived under the same roof at the same time.

Nor, despite some difficulties in his relationship with his son, was Bob Chellis ever alienated from his own two children, the way so many other fathers in the study were.

However, during a time of crisis between him and his teenage son, Sandy did exercise the role of family carpenter. Says Bob of this experience, “Sandy was able to pull things together, to be a bridge.”

Pressed to say what she did, Sandy answers “I felt Bob’s son really needed someone to take a stand.” She and Bob took that stand when the son demanded his own way and Sandy ultimately succeeded in winning him over. Nowadays, Bob says, “my son asks his stepmother’s advice and shows affection for her.”

No wonder Barbara Vinick concludes that “stepmothers deserve more credit than they generally receive.”

Richard Griffin