As a result of the divorce revolution, more children grow up in complex families. Yet, we know little about how family complexity affects relationships when children are adults and parents are ageing. In this article, we use unique survey data to test fundamental ideas about intergenerational ties: the role of biology, partnerships (marriage and cohabitation), residence, and selection. The survey used a register-based oversample of Dutch adults who grew up in nonstandard families, collected data among adult children and their parent figures, and used a double multi-actor design in which adult children reported on their parents and parents reported on their children. Using random-and fixed-effects models, we confirm most hypotheses but the results are highly gendered. For fathers, we find evidence for a partnership premium and no disadvantage of being a stepparent once the length of residence is adjusted. For mothers, the partnership premium is weaker but the effect of biology is strong: stepmotherstepchild ties are much weaker, even after taking residence patterns into account. Biological mothers are the primary kinkeepers, and for fathers of any type, their relationship to children depends on their partnership to the biological mother. Within-family comparisons suggest that selection into divorce and remarriage do not explain these disadvantages.

executed by a collaboration between a team of researchers at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and a team of researchers at Statistics Netherlands. Matthijs Kalmijn is a full Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. His main research fields are family, life course, and intergenerational relationships. He was also codirector of several large-scale surveys in the Netherlands, including the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study and the Netherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study. Kalmijn has a PhD from UCLA (1991). Katya Ivanova is a postdoctoral researcher at the Sociology department of University of Amsterdam. Her primary research interests are in the field of family sociology, with a particular focus on the implications of family complexity for intergenerational ties and individual well-being. She received her PhD in Sociology from University of Groningen as a member of the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology. Ruben van Gaalen is a senior researcher at Statistics Netherlands and a professor by special appointment of register analyses of life course dynamics at the sociology department, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam. He is interested in demographic behaviour, life course dynamics, parent-child relationships, and social inequality and has published widely in the area of family studies in journals like Journal of Family Issues, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Advances in Life Course Research. Suzanne de Leeuw is a PhD student at the Sociology department of the University of Amsterdam. Her main research interests are intergenerational transmission and mobility, divorce and inequality. Her project on the intergenerational transmission process in nonintact families is embedded in the ERC Advanced Grant 'Family Complexity'. Design and content of the OKiN survey 3 Kirsten van Houdt is a PhD student at the Sociology department of University of Amsterdam. Her main research interests are family, intergenerational relationships, and divorce. Her project on adult parent-child relationships is embedded in the ERC Advanced Grant 'Family Complexity'. Frederique van Spijker is a junior researcher at the department of Research, Information and Statistics of the municipality of Amsterdam. Maaike Hornstra is a PhD student at the Sociology department of University of Amsterdam. Her current research interests lie in the field of family sociology with a particular focus on divorce and intergenerational relationships. Her PhD project on relationships in adult childparent networks is embedded in the ERC Advanced grant 'Family Complexity'.

Objective: This study examines the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status among people who have a biological father as well as a stepfather. In particular, this study investigates how the relative importance of biological fathers and stepfathers in the transmission process depends on the time in coresidence, postdivorce contact frequency, and parental involvement. Background: The traditional literature on social mobility and stratification has a strong focus on the intact family. Recently, a new strand of literature on the transmission process in divorced families has emerged. However, little is known about the role of contact quantity and quality in the intergenerational transmission process in divorced families. Method: The authors used the newly collected survey Parents and Children in the Netherlands and selected 1,540 respondents from stepfamilies. A structural equation model was used for the analysis. Results: Biological fathers who have more frequent contact with their children after divorce and who are more involved in the school life of their child are more influential in the transmission process. This is also true for more involved stepfathers. In addition, there is evidence that stepfathers are especially important when there is limited contact with the biological father. Conclusion Based on these findings, it could be said that stepfathers “replace” absent biological fathers but the role of stepfathers is relatively small when the biological father stays involved in the life of the child.

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It has been argued that an increase in the number of siblings means that there are fewer parental investments made per child (resource dilution hypothesis). Yet, these studies are mostly based on biological two-parent families in which it can be assumed that parental resources are distributed more or less equally across siblings. This assumption does not hold in the complex family structure of a stepfamily where not all siblings are biologically related and living in the same household. Since more and more children are growing up in stepfamilies, a distinction between sibling types (full/half/step) is needed. In this study, we focus on the dilution of nonmaterial resources (i.e., parental involvement) and use the OKiN dataset to examine paternal (n = 1,077) and maternal (n = 1,369) resources separately. In this way, this study provides the first comprehensive overview of the dilution of parental resources in stepfamilies. While maternal resources are mostly diluted by full siblings, paternal resources are diluted by all sibling types (full, half, and step). We reflect on the implications of these results for the literature on sibship size as well as the literature on social mobility.

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