Famiglie ricomposte e gestione delle risorse una ricerca relazionale

Stepfamily have been around for a long time and they are unlikely to go away. They are one of the fastest growing family types in industrial nation. Stepfamilies are complex and diverse: adding a stepparent post-divorce created new level of kin and new interaction pattern. This research seeks to highlight that there is a practical urgency to address such matters about stepfamily because there is little awareness of stepfamily issue at a policy level. Excluding collection of information on stepfamilies re-affirms their invisibility and reinforce the notion that their situation is a private matter and not a public concern. The aim of this study is to highlight the current state of national and international researches and to explores patterns of control and management of money by means of data from semi-structured interviews with 8 stepfamilies couples in which one partner or both have had children from previous relationship not necessarely living together. The men and the women were interviewed separately. It’s used a qualitative data analysis with a phenomenological approach to understand the meanings, interpretation and subjective experiences of family members. The choice of using money as the reading key for the analysis of the processes of reconstruction after family separation and divorce, is very easy to explain. Money plays a very important role, it represents a major learning source for studying family dynamics. In stepfamilies facing with everyday costs is not an easy operation. Different interests and roles take part and own responsabilities often are not clear, neither legally defined, therefore everyday life is not regulated by the law, rather by everyday situations. The economic factors may be closely related to one’s global assessment of life and general sense of well-being. Many studies (Coleman and Ganong 1989; Jacobson 1993; Pasley, Sandras, Edmondson 1994), argued that finances can be a major source of stress for stepfamilies, not only because they have manage the “generic” issues normally associated with married life but also the finance circumstances unique to remarriage. Increased stress from financial issues in stepfamilies households may stem from fluctuating numbers of household members, negative experience with finances in prior marriage, child support obligations and miscellaneous expenses owing to the merging of two households. So their financial affairs are likely to be more complex and conflictual than for first-married couples, but there has been little research attention paid to this group in Italy. The purpose of the present study is to understand the economic behaviour of stepfamilies, the beliefs and values about household finances, and the relationship of financial management behaviour to family quality. The study points out that within stepfamilies the inclination towards individualization between partners plays a stronger role as far as economics management is concerned. Models of money management in stepfamilies are moving increasingly towards an individualized strategy, where the couple comprises two free individuals who have at least a certain degree of autonomy in making decisions. The financial autonomy, however, can create inequalities in spending power within the same pair, both partners can enjoy a degree of autonomy and personal freedom as long as their income is in principle equivalent. The individualization of money could be a path that opens new inequalities and new areas of conflict. Under certain conditions (such as disparity in resources between the partners), these strategies of economic management that enhance the independence and autonomy of individuals, may lead to a reinforcement of inequality between partners, causing potential problems on each partner’s life, on the different opportunities that stepchildren and natural kids may have. In general you could understand how patterns of money management are major changes happening, which may be linked to larger cultural trends related to the processes of individualization that underlie the progressive shift from the idea of collective solidarity to that of individual responsibility.