Rodzina przybrana w rodzie Radziwiłłów. Problemy badawcze (przyczynek do badań nad magnacką rodziną przybraną w XVI–XVIII w.)

ENResearch on the stepfamily or reconstructed family (stepfamily, blended family, patchwork family) is well-advanced in foreign historiography (P. Laslett, S. Collins, R. Phillips, S. Perrier, T. Stretton, L. Warner, L. Wilson, G. Erdélyi, and others). In the Polish literature, no systematic research on this subject has been published so far. A look at the problem of the stepfamily within the Radziwiłł family is the author’s subsequent attempt to graft this subject onto the Polish historiography. A stepfamily is when a widowed mother or father enters into another marriage, quite oft en with another widowed parent, thus creating a new household together with a child or children from previous marriages. The article indicates, based on a genealogical database of the well-documented Radziwiłł family, which of its male members created such a stepfamily from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries: 15 cases out of 25 non-first marriages (in the remaining cases, children from the previous union were not brought into the new one). Also, most of the Radziwiłł children who lived to adulthood experienced life in a stepfamily or relationships with such a family. This fact is also an argument to research the functioning, in various contexts, of stepfamilies within this social group. It is worth noting that the data analysis shows that only in a few cases did the Radziwiłłs remarry women who already had children.The article also hints at research problems related to the study of the magnate stepfamily, such as issues of inheritance, cohabitation or not of children from previous marriages (and thus the real impact of the stepfamily on children living in it), the quality of care of off spring from earlier relationships (e.g. the influence of theories of evolutionary psychology research, such as the so-called Cinderella effect), etc., and pointed out examples of confl ict in the stepfamily (Aleksander Ludwik Radziwiłł and Lucretia Maria née Strozzi Radziwiłłowa) and, on the other hand, relatively harmonious functioning of its members (Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł and Anna née Mycielska primo voto Radziwiłłowa, secundo voto Radziwiłłowa). Keywords: reconstructed family, stepfamily, magnate family, magnates, Radziwiłłs.