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Stepbrother + Stepsister = Trouble
When Hormones Rage in Stepfamilies With Teens By Lisa Cohn
You're the parent of a healthy teenaged boy, and you just married the parent of an attractive teenaged girl. The teenagers are suddenly living in the same house together. They're checking each other out and soliciting opinions from friends about how they should interact with this appealing member of the opposite sex.
"Any healthy teenage boy thinks, 'She's cute, and we live together. What are my buddies going to think?'" says Margorie Engel, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer of the Stepfamily Association of America, based in Lincoln, Neb. "And she's thinking, 'He's cute, and he's nice, and should he be my boyfriend?' They are conflicted about what their relationship can or should be."
In traditional families, natural taboos generally prevent teenagers from experimenting with sex: Boys know they shouldn't get involved with their sisters, says Engel. Sometimes teens who have been living with stepsiblings for many years instinctively feel these taboos. But in new stepfamilies, such taboos don't exist. When teens' hormones are raging, the teenagers can become confused about how they should interact with opposite-sex stepsiblings – and even with stepparents. That's especially true if they're feeling pressure from friends to become romantically involved with their steprelatives, Engel says.
Sexual relationships between teenaged stepsiblings can lead to long-term pain, says Patricia Papernow, Ed.D., a psychologist in Hudson, Mass., and author of the book, Becoming a Stepfamily (Analytic Press, 1993). That's because family members can't simply walk away from one another after a breakup. They'll be forced to face each other again and again at family events, perhaps for their rest of their lives.
"I had a patient who had a relationship with a stepsibling as a teenager," Papernow says. "That person is now an adult. The relationship was devastating for my patient. The couple broke up, and the person couldn't tell anyone what had happened. The stepsiblings were thrown together over and over again in the same family. No one knew how they were suffering."
To help stepteens avoid such painful experiences, parents should, first of all, be clear about their expectations. It's helpful if all the parents in an "extended stepfamily" – both sets of biological parents and all stepparents – agree on their values about sex and attraction, says Peter Gerlach, MSW, a therapist who specializes in stepfamilies in Oak Park, Ill. In some rare cases, parents may feel that it's OK for stepsiblings to become involved with one another, given that they're not related by blood, he says. That may be especially true of stepsiblings who don't live together on a day-to-day basis.
"Some parents may think if stepteens act sexually with one another, it's no different than teens living in separate homes," he says. However, given the potential for long-term pain, most experts recommend that parents discourage sexual relationships between stepsiblings.
