Enquête auprès de familles recomposées et de première union - 2009-2010

Stepfamilies have become a reality in modern societies. Unfortunately, most results about them stem out from research done in North America. It is striking that little is known about family recomposition's relational and developmental consequences in Europe, and even more so in Switzerland. This interdisciplinary project between sociology and psychology tests the hypothesis that family relationships provide distinct types of social capital in stepfamilies compared with first time families, which may account for a significant share of the developmental outcomes associated with family recomposition. We also hypothesize that there is a great variability of social capital and developmental outcomes within stepfamilies due to sociological explanatory factors associated with prior trajectories of family members and social class. Face to face interviews of 150 mothers of school aged children from a first family and 150 mothers from a stepfamily, are quantitatively analyzed in order to reveal the mechanisms linking family recomposition, social capital, family processes and dimensions of child development. Various validated measures of parenting, conjugal processes and network relationships are included in the project as well as direct observations of family interactions.