Houses Divided : The Woody-Soon Yi Romance Has Sparked Questions About the Complex Ties That Bind the Modern Family : Stepfamilies: ‘(Romance) happens primarily because boundaries are very unclear,’ one sociologist says.

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 has also 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 sensationalist issue--rather than one of the problems stepparents commonly face, such as conflicts over discipline and favoritism.

And these experts admit that 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 USC professor of sociology, 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,” says Ahrons. But, “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, UCLA: “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 adds. 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.”

Ahrons and Jacobson agree that it is common for a stepfather living in a household with a stepdaughter he finds attractive to have sexual feelings toward her.

“Young women test their attractiveness against father figures,” says Ahrons. A stepfather may be attracted to a stepdaughter because he sees in her a younger version of the woman he married. The question is, how many act on it?

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. But, “We consider it emotional incest and spiritual incest because of the devastation it causes.”

She believes that the problem is “much more common” than most people think and adds: “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.”

If the young woman is of the age of consent, says Jacobson, “I’m not sure whether one calls it child abuse. (Allen is 56; Soon-Yi, 21). I don’t know what one calls it. Clearly, Woody Allen defined it as a situation in which he took no family responsibility for those children who existed prior to his relationship with Mia.

“He didn’t see himself as a stepfather. . . . He’s a lot older than she. He’d have a lot of influence on her. . . . I don’t know how vulnerable she was. I don’t know if she felt at home in that family, what she defined as family, the amount of conflict to which she was exposed.

“We have an awful lot to learn” about stepfamilies, Jacobson concludes.

The Stepfamily Assn. of America estimates that one in five U. S. families are stepfamilies.

Ahrons prefers to call these “remarriage” families, to sidestep any Cinderella connotation, and she suggests that they soon will be the dominant family form--if they are not now. (She and others include under this umbrella single parents who have not remarried but whose children spend time with the remarried ex-spouse.)

Even so, she says, “We’ve been very slow to acknowledge that stepfamilies are a normal family form. We have put them in the role of alternative.”

Society simply has not adapted fast enough, Ahrons says. Still, she does not believe that the American family is a dinosaur: “We still value families very strongly. But it’s a confusing time.”

The Woody/Mia/Soon-Yi triangle is “one of the family anomalies that we have no names for,” Ahrons says. “If he had married Mia, we would have said he was stepfather to Soon-Yi, even though she was adopted. And Mia and Woody weren’t even cohabiting.”

The relationship defies definition. “Let’s carry this out,” says Ahrons. “He marries her. Her siblings would then be what relationship to him? If he were to marry her, would Mia become his mother-in-law?

She adds, “One of the ways we know how to relate in families is by generation, and that’s all wiped out so everybody gets very confused.”

In simpler times, there was a popular song, “I’m My Own Grandpa.” It was strictly for laughs. In simpler times, there was the nuclear family: Mom, Dad, two biological children, and Fido and Fluff. In simpler times, incest was hush-hush.

Today, says Gary Hinte, co-president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Stepfamily Assn. of America, an incestuous relationship in a stepfamily is “somewhat unusual. However, it may not be as unusual as it might seem on the surface. Unusual sexual relationships go on in regular families and in stepfamilies, too.”

His organization’s main concern is not with the sensational, he adds, but “with issues that try to make stepfamilies illegitimate, such as the traditional family picture that the Republican campaign is painting now, as though stepfamilies are second-rate.”

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 points out, stepchildren can be very seductive but “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.”

The Step Family Foundation’s Lofas, a marriage and family therapist who has been both a stepchild and a step parent, 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 that 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 clinical psychologist and marriage and family counselor who is past state president of the Stepfamily Assn., 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.”

Of course, 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. In our children’s eyes, we are parents, and to switch that to romantic partner, that’s a very, very dramatic switch,” says Dillon.

Whatever anyone may think of Mia and Woody and Soon-Yi, says USC’s Ahrons, it is a tragedy destined to have positive fallout: “It is pushing people to talk about diversity in families. There are so many normal things that so far we haven’t seen as normal.”

UCLA’s Jacobson agrees. The American family is undergoing radical change, and new family forms are emerging. It’s a trend “not even a vice president can hold back.”