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blended family

Definition of Blended Family

(noun) A family consisting of two or more adult partners and their children together with their children from previous relationships either living with them or nearby.

Examples of Blended Family

Blended Family Pronunciation

Pronunciation Usage Guide

Syllabification: blend·ed fam·i·ly

Audio Pronunciation

– American English
– British English

Phonetic Spelling

  • American English – /blEn-duhd fAm-lee/
  • British English – /blEn-did fAm-uh-lee/

International Phonetic Alphabet

  • American English – /ˈblɛndəd ˈfæməli/
  • British English – /ˈblɛndɪd ˈfæmɪli/

Usage Notes

  • Plural: blended families
  • A blended family can result from the combination of two or more divorced families or single-parent families.
  • Also called:
    • compound family
    • melded family
    • reconstituted family
    • remarried family
    • stepfamily (step-family)

Related Quotation

  • “We are living, I believe, through a transitional and contested period of family history, a period after the modern family order, but before what we cannot foretell. Precisely because it is not possible to characterize with a single term the competing sets of family cultures that co-exist at present, I identify this family regime as post-modern. The post-modern family is not a new model of family life, not the next stage in an orderly progression of family history, but the stage when the belief in a logical progression of stages breaks down. Rupturing evolutionary models of family history and incorporating both experimental and nostalgic elements, ‘the’ post-modern family lurches forward and backward into an uncertain future” (Stacey 1990:18).

Additional Information

Related Terms


Reference

Stacey, Judith. 1990. Brave New Families: Stories of Domestic Upheaval in Late Twentieth Century America. New York: Basic Books.

Works Consulted

Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill, and Bryan Turner. 2006. The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology. 5th ed. London: Penguin.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 5th ed. 2011. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Brinkerhoff, David, Lynn White, Suzanne Ortega, and Rose Weitz. 2011. Essentials of Sociology. 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Henslin, James M. 2012. Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach. 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Jary, David, and Julia Jary. 2000. Collins Dictionary of Sociology. 3rd ed. Glasgow, Scotland: HarperCollins.

Macmillan. (N.d.) Macmillan Dictionary. (https://www.macmillandictionary.com/).

Merriam-Webster. (N.d.) Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/).

Oxford University Press. (N.d.) Oxford Dictionaries. (https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/).

Princeton University. 2010. WordNet. (https://wordnet.princeton.edu/).

Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. 1997. New York: Random House.

Scott, John, and Gordon Marshall. 2005. A Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Shepard, Jon M. 2010. Sociology. 11th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Shepard, Jon M., and Robert W. Greene. 2003. Sociology and You. New York: Glencoe.

Thompson, William E., and Joseph V. Hickey. 2012. Society in Focus: An Introduction to Sociology. 7th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Turner, Bryan S., ed. 2006. The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wikipedia contributors. (N.d.) Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/).

Wikipedia contributors. (N.d.) Wiktionary, The Free Dictionary. Wikimedia Foundation. (http://en.wiktionary.org).

Cite the Definition of Blended Family

ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2014. “blended family.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Retrieved March 29, 2024 (https://sociologydictionary.org/blended-family/).

APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)

blended family. (2014). In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary. Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/blended-family/

Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2014. “blended family.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Accessed March 29, 2024. https://sociologydictionary.org/blended-family/.

MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)

“blended family.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Ed. Kenton Bell. 2014. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://sociologydictionary.org/blended-family/>.