• Adoption of a stepchild was not an option until the nineteenth century.

• High mortality rates were the primary reason people became stepparents during colonial times. Today, divorce rates are to blame.

• In Maryland, stepfathers would fight biological grandparents for custody, not on the grounds of a child's best interest, but because of his investment in the maintenance of a child and his need for their services.

• Stepmothers only had legal existence in the shadow of their husbands. It wasn't until a widowed father made his wife a guardian did she have any rights with regard to her step children.

• Stepmothers had a weaker claim to custody than stepfathers.

• Courts were more willing to "remove a child from a stepfather than from a father for what was frequently referred to as "evil usage" or "hard usage" of their stepchildren."

• Children from first families resented the inheritance rights of adopted stepchildren, so most stepchildren and stepparents coexisted in the ambiguous relationships that we still see today.