An Extra-Special Relation

Martis Davis doesn't have biological children, yet last summer he held a father's place of honor at his adored stepdaughter Chelsea King Garza's wedding, dancing with the bride to the Temptations' oldie My Girl. (He also had the distinctly parental honor of footing the bill for the wedding gown.) Strictly speaking, Chelsea isn't a stepdaughter after Martis and his former wife Joy Ficket split in 1982, Joy's two kids from her first marriage were no longer tied to him. But Davis didn't want to let Chelsea, then 8, and her brother Gabren, 10, pass out of his life, so he maintained an active relationship with them, attending school events, taking an interest in their friends and sports activities and showing them the sights of New York City during weekend visits from their suburban New Jersey home. With their biological father living in California throughout their childhood, the kids accepted Davis as their "weekend dad."

Staying involved with his stepkids after his marriage ended was a priority, says Davis, 58, now director of media relations for the American Association of Retired Persons in Washington. "Even though Joy and I were no longer married, I'd been in the kids' lives since they were little, and I felt we all needed to stay close. Walking away from these children was unthinkable. I couldn't stand the thought that they might be disappointed in me," he explains. Says ex-wife Ficket: "From the beginning of our relationship, Martis embraced and helped raise these children as his own, and he has so much to offer them, I didn't want to deprive any of them of that bond." That he is African American and his stepchildren are white makes no difference either; instead, it "just increases the fun and confusion," Davis says with a smile.

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Closeness of the kind Davis describes can be difficult enough to maintain when biological parents split. But when stepparents divorce, the ties that bind stepparents and stepchildren often stretch to the breaking point. According to a 1998 study by researchers at the University of Virginia, 75% of divorced men and 66% of divorced women remarry, but these remarriages have a notoriously high casualty rate, especially when children are brought into the mix. Remarriages with children at home are half again as likely to fail as those with no stepkids. This multiple-married and redivorced demographic means that many Americans are forced to invent new connections across unconventional family ties.

Andrew Simonet could be the poster child for the generation coming of age in the era of multiple divorce. A choreographer with his own dance company in Philadelphia, Simonet, 33, has to take a deep breath before describing even the closest branch of his family tree: "First there are my parents, then they got divorced and each remarried, so there is that set of stepparents. They had children with the stepparents, then they each divorced, so now I have ex-stepparents who are parents of my half-siblings. My mother has married again, and my father is in a long-term relationship; so that's a third set of 'parents' in my life." Maintaining relationships with his many parents has at times been frustrating and upsetting, he says. He credits his former stepmother with persevering, by phone calls and visits, in order to have a relationship with him and his sister even after she split with their father when Andrew was a teen. His relationship with his ex-stepfather has been rockier. But after 10 years of estrangement, the two have recently taken the first moves toward reconciliation, exchanging letters and planning a visit.

Former stepparents who manage to stay close are the "unsung heroes in many families," says Margorie Engel, a family therapist and president of the Stepfamily Association of America. "They have an opportunity to maintain a low-key but steady connection and prove to a child that adults care about them and are reliable even when they don't share dna and when conditions at home change." Such relationships are dependent, however, on the attitudes of the biological parents. "Custodial parents have the basic right to control access to the child," says Margaret Mahoney, author of Stepfamilies and the Law (University of Michigan Press). "Rare cases where stepparents petition the court for visitation or custody are most often decided in the custodial parent's favor." The age of the child and the length of time the stepparent spent in the child's life before the split may also affect future relationships. Young children and adolescents may be eager for contact but need adult help to get together, while college-age kids can make the arrangements themselves. But experts say stepparents and children of all ages have much to offer one another. Here are some tips on how former stepparents can keep in touch:

BE PATIENT Just after a split, give the custodial parent time to establish a routine and let that parent know that you wish to maintain contact with the child in a way that is positive and helpful to the family.