About Us

About the Stepfamily Foundation, Inc. headquartered in New York, N.Y. A not for profit founded in 1975, the Stepfamily Foundation Inc. provides worldwide certification for professionals and coaches and counseling on the telephone and in person. 

Jeannette Lofas, PhD, LCSW is President and Founder of Stepfamily Foundation, Inc. She hasbeen managing stepfamilies for thirty years. In 1995 Lofas won a presidential award for her work. Research reports that she has an 84% success rate. A stepchild and stepmother herself, she is considered to be the leading authority on stepfamilies. Dr. Lofas has written five books: Living In Step, McGraw-Hill, Stepparenting, Citadel, How to Be a Stepparent, Nightingale Connant;  He's OK, She's OK: Honoring the Differences Between Men & Women, and Family Rules, Kensington Books.

She has written 5 books, won a Presidential Award and coached for 30 years. Research shows 84% success. She is passionate about diminishing high divorce rate (2 out of 3) through her management system.

Jeannette Lofas Ph. D. LCSW receiving award from
President Clinton and Congress on
National Parents Day 

"For outstanding efforts in strengthening
step relationships across America"

"No other counselors have been able to help me STEP BY STEP with what to do with my boys.

Our relationship is 150% better since our work with Stepfamily"

- Jeff R. April 2007, New Hampshire

Traditional marriage and family counselors are trained to work with the biological family. They are not trained in the complexities of the stepfamily. The result, 66% fail. 84% of Stepfamily Foundation, Inc. clients succeed.

64% of families today live in some form of divorced and/or stepfamily relationship. They are:

  • The Original Family
    • Husband and Wife. Recent research proves that our methodology also works well with the original couple.

  • The Divorced Family
    • Single parents, parents who visit, and their new partners.

  • The Re-Coupled, or Stepfamily
    • Formed when one are both partners have children from prior whether these children are residential or visiting.

The Promises of the Stepfamily Foundation
You and your partner:

  1. Will be able create powerful agreements to work together and to manage your family.
  2. Will respect and honor your differences on issues such as discipline, rules, responsibilities and expectations in your family.
  3. Will create a powerful stepfamily team
  4. Will manage “the ex” without rancor and upset.

How We Work: Our Methodology

"Today’s Family, in our culture, is the most unstable, most diverse, most confounding…"

Jeannette Lofas Ph. D., LCSW, Founder of The Stepfamily Foundation

Our Research tells us it’s the biggest unsolved problem… It is a patchwork, a crazy quilt of confusing configurations…

We as counselors are trained in the basic precepts of psychology. We use only some of this. We teach our clients through educational materials and counseling about the specific behaviors and dynamics inherent to divorce and stepfamily systems. We educate our clients to the fact that the step system can not and will not function as does a biologically related family. We teach couples how to partner in the context of step.

We ask the couple to separately define their vision and their wishes as to just "how" they want their family to function. We coach couples to respect each other's point of view. Our model is positive and forward looking. It is based on the precepts of business management. We are mindful that we are merging two family systems. Two family systems with different ways of functioning, different ways of looking at the family, at the world, and at God.

We ask each partner to describe his/her point of view, and we honor both. We must merge these realities to create a functioning and orderly stepfamily system.

Using the business model we create an action plan, define job descriptions - roles, rules, responsibilities, and contributions of each member of the in-house family and the visiting children. We ask about the allocation of time, energy, and money from each person's point of view. We build couple strength, practice partnership and teach our special communication skills. We also work on issues of discipline, manners, visitation, the prior spouse, co-parenting and much more.

We work to create a positive action plan, accomplish a task and obtain a solution at each session.

Most clients complete their work in about 5 - 8 sessions, utilize about 10 hours listening to tapes and doing homework.