Look Before You Step

Advice for Potential Stepparents and Their Partners

Look Before You Step will help potential stepparents prepare personal strategies for facing the challenges involved in forming a stepfamily by analyzing their own values and goals in relation to the issues they will encounter. By considering the issues we describe, potential stepparents can objectively determine how they will handle the issues they are likely to face before the issues are upon them and fraught with emotion. Look Before You Step contains a collection of real experiences and advice from real stepparents, intended to spark conversations for couples contemplating forming a stepfamily, because while every stepparenting experience is different, there are many common threads. We do not want to discourage stepfamily marriages; we want to help potential stepparents understand what they are undertaking so that they can avoid some of the anguish others before them have faced. Look Before You Step is based on in depth original interviews, surveys, personal experience and research. The text contains studies, survey results, self-inventories, advice and discussion questions meant to prompt potential stepparents to recognize similarities with their own situations so that they can easily choose appropriate topics to discuss with their partners.