Families of a Different Kind: Patterns of Kinship, Support and Obligation in Remarriage Families and their Implications for Public Policy

Robin Fleming

Much public policy assumes that the term “family” applies to a man, a woman and their biological children. As a result, families that do not conform to this pattern may not respond to, or may even be disadvantaged by, policies intended to benefit them. One example is remarriage or a new partnership with children from a previous marriage.

This paper examines the way remarriage families differ from first-marriage families, and the implications for social policy. The paper highlights several policy-related issues for remarriage families, including the high costs of running a remarriage family and the adverse impacts of inconsistencies between policies developed in separate areas; for example, inconsistency between the Child Support formula and Student Assistance may produce a double disadvantage.

The conclusion reached is that remarriage families are structurally and relationally different from first-marriage families. Significantly, the high levels of divorce and remarriage in New Zealand suggest a growing proportion of such families, and the paper concludes that failure to identify this family type in census or household survey data means they can remain invisible and therefore easily ignored.