ips. The daughter may resent the stepmother's closeness with her father. This is especially true if the father and daughter had a strong relationship prior to the stepmother's arrival. Attempts by the stepmother to fulfill her role in the stepfamily may be perceived by the stepdaughter as efforts to replace her mother. Stepmothers tend to hold onto the "wicked stepmother" myth longer than other family membersIt may be impossible for Cinderella to have her storybook ending even if she does not get together with Prince Charming. It is possible for Cinderella and her stepmother to have a stable and healthy relationship after all. In Relative Strangers, William Beer states that there is a solution to the quagmire that stepfamilies are stuck in. He proposes a "stepfamily cycle" and identifies the steps necessary to forming a successful remarriage. The primary process thinking stage is dominant in the early stages of the second marriage and involves concepts and emotions such as fantasy, immersion and awareness. The secondary processes of the cycle are mobilization and action. The tertiary stages are contact and resolution. If the stepfamily undergoes this process together without breaking up, then there is hope for the stepfamily. In his book Step-fathering, Mark Bruce Rosin sums up the reason why these steps are present in the formation of a stepfamily and its unity. “This is a major fact of stepfamily life: that there are parents and stepparents. In learning to accept this fact, I’ve also come to see another reason why the word ‘stepfather’ is so appropriate for the position in which we men who marry women with childen find ourselves: because the process of becoming a stepfather happens in steps.” (Rosin 22) The early stages explored in Beer’s stepfamily cycle involve the effects of unformed preconceptions and fog of love that clouds the harsh reality of an impending stepfamily. The fantasy phase in...
