Fatherhood in Complex Families: Ties between Adult Children, Biological Fathers, and Stepfathers.

Objective: We examined adult children's concurrent ties to biological fathers and stepfathers. Three mechanisms potentially determining the strength of father-child and stepfather-child ties were tested, namely, investment, interdependence, and substitution.

Background: As most research studied father-child and stepfather-child ties separately, our knowledge about the potential substitution dynamics between the two ties is limited.