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The researchers adopted a dialectical perspective to study how stepchildren experience and communicatively manage the perception of feeling caught in the middle between their parents who are living in different households. The metaphor of being caught in the middle is powerful for stepchildren and this metaphor animated their discourse. A central contribution of the present study was to understand the alternative to being caught in the middle and what this alternative means to stepchildren. Reflected in the discourse of stepchildren is that to feel not caught in the middle is to feel centered in the family. Stepchildren's desire to be centered in the family was animated by the dialectic of freedom-constraint, which co-existed within the contradictions of openness-closedness and control-restraint. These contradictions are detailed in the analysis, along with advice to parents from the perspective of stepchildren. Implications for the interaction of stepchildren and their parents are discussed.

This study explores the processes by which a group of lesbian women report managing public-private dialectical contradictions at the external border between their relationship as a couple and networks, social norms, and laws. Specifically, 18 dyads and 2 individuals, all of whom had been in a committed relationship for at least 1 year, were interviewed about the rituals that are part of their relationship. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed using grounded theory. Participants reported using the dialectic response strategies of integration and segmentation to manage the inclusion-seclusion and revelation-concealment dimensions of the public-private contraction.

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