What is incest? What is a stepfamily? And what are appropriate and socially acceptable relationships between parents and children who are not related biologically but through marriage or other long-term commitments?
The Woody Allen-Mia Farrow-Soon-Yi Farrow Previn love triangle makes for good party chatter and bad jokes, but because they are high-profile personalities, the media blitz also has opened the door to debate on a different kind of “family values” — those of stepfamilies.
Mental-health professionals who counsel stepfamilies tend to see the Allen-Farrow situation as an aberration — a sensationalized issue — rather than one of the problems stepparents commonly face, such as conflicts over discipline and favoritism.
And these experts admit they are at a loss as to how to categorize it.
Sexual relationships between stepfathers and young adult stepdaughters are hardly commonplace, says Constance Ahrons, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, but “it happens — and it happens primarily because boundaries are very unclear in stepfamilies.”
Is the Woody-Soon-Yi affair incest? “I cannot comment … because he claims he wasn’t a parent figure,” Ahrons says. “In general, I would say, yes, if someone has been in the role of mother’s lover and the child was 9 when he came into her life (as Soon-Yi was), I would say yes, there’s a power relationship.”
Says Doris Jacobson, a professor in the School of Social Welfare at the University of California at Los Angeles: “The first issue here, it seems to me, is what’s the family?
“In my view, even when consenting adults live together, there’s a different commitment to family than if they’re married and have made a public commitment to each other. (The Allen-Farrow) situation is confused, or obfuscated, in a way, by the fact that Woody Allen never lived in the household. He came in every day.”
Even in a so-called ordinary stepfamily, research on interaction is limited, she says. In cases such as Allen’s and Farrow’s, “There are no guidelines from society about appropriate behavior.”
Because of this, Jacobson says, “The barriers to what is usually considered incest are weaker and more confusing.”
And, if there is sex between a stepparent and a consenting young adult stepchild, what do we call that?
“It’s not incest under the law,” says Jeannette Lofas, founder and president of the New York-based Step Family Foundation. “We consider it emotional incest and spiritual incest because of the devastation it causes.”
She believes the problem is “much more common” than most people think. “It can really mess up a family. How do you break up with your mother’s boyfriend?
“The Bible says you don’t sleep with your brother’s wife. There’s no blood there. Well, you don’t sleep with your girlfriend’s daughter, although there may be an attraction there.”
Psychotherapist Karen Savage, writing in The Good Stepmother: A Practical Guide, says, “Incest between father, or father figure, and daughter is the most frequently broken of the incest taboos.”
Teen-age rebellion may fuel the relationship. And, Savage notes, stepchildren are less apt to think of their parents’ intimate relationship as vaguely non-sexual: “When it is not mother or father, but stepmother or stepfather who is sleeping in their parents’ bed … the situation changes.”
Further, Savage says, stepchildren can be very seductive. “Most often, they don’t really want sexual contact. It may be one of their weapons for playing one parent against another.”
Sometimes, the forbidden attraction is between stepmother and stepson.
In Stepmothering: Another Kind of Love, Pearl Ketover Prilik, herself a stepmother, observes:
“Sometimes women become stepmothers to adolescent and older ‘boys’ who are unable to think about their fathers’ wives in a maternal or nurturing sense. … The stepmother who lounges about in a sheer negligee, having intimate talks with her teen-age son while waiting for ‘Daddy’ to come home, is sending out mixed messages and asking for trouble.”
Lofas, a marriage and family therapist who has been both a stepchild and a stepparent, says of the Woody-Soon-Yi relationship: “If I were betting, I’d give you 19 out of 20 that it won’t succeed.”
She suggests there may be more than an attraction to Allen involved: “Soon-Yi is having an age-appropriate competition with her adopted mom. What’s the best way to get after Mom?”
Cecile Dillon, a Huntington Beach, Calif., clinical psychologist and marriage and family counselor who is past state president of the Stepfamily Association, isn’t buying Allen’s contention that he was not Soon-Yi’s father figure:
“He was in a parental role, by law or just by commitment. Seeing parents have a sexual relationship with children is very upsetting to us.”
She adds, “She is also an adult, so she can consent to any relationship she wants and, out of all possible men, she ends up with this one. That’s kind of troublesome in itself.”
In real life, Dillon says, “I just don’t hear those stories. I think this relationship doesn’t have any prognosis. It’s going to last for a while and that will be the end of it.”
Is it incest?
“Absolutely, absolutely. A break of generational boundaries,” Dillon says. “In our children’s eyes, we are parents, and to switch that to romantic partner, that’s a very, very dramatic switch.”
