To think MN is horrible about blended families?

How old are the children?

They won't have fully formed opinions on the situation until they look back with adult eyes. It can take them having children of their own to really see it too.

I know several blended families who are very happy. They’re civilised adults who work as a team to support the children.

Op, are your parents divorced?

Most of us from blended families are from parents that have parents that never divorced. They have no clue what it's actually like.

Especially as a girl having to live with a new man.

My parents got divorced and remarried esch other and then divorced again so I've had all options growing up!
In my opinion it often only works really well when there's no other children involved. Being thrust in with dad's partners kids was challenging, we were all around the same age and it was horrible, we should have all got along but I was so jealous and resentful they got my dad all the time now and I only got him on weekends. My step mum also clearly hated us being there.
When my mum had partners it was never an issue as the man didn't have any other children and also she never moved them in and kept our family home. I think it can work but probably the kids have to be quite young. I do appreciate that was a big sacrifice my mum made to keep our lives stable until we grew older

When I was at primary school my mum had a boyfriend that me & my siblings hated. He was creepy, his house stank, his car stank, his kids were annoying. Our greatest fear was that mum would marry him. We didn’t dare say anything to mum, so I’m sure she’d have thought we were all happy happy, but boy were we relieved when they broke up.

She married my step dad when I was 15, he’s a good man and a great step dad, but despite that I think there’s no way she should have moved a virtual stranger (to us) into our house at that time. She couldn’t possibly have known how it would go, or the effect on us, but like with the creepy guy she was mostly interested in what she wanted.

I’m sure there are happy blended families out there, but the fact that kids don’t complain does not mean they’re happy.

How common is it? I can only think of 1 example who did this for a short period of time. I think two of (non-related!) kids ended up shagging one night as teenagers in the house. At the time I found the whole situation very confusing (I was a teenager) so I sort of disengaged from the drama of it all. I cannot imagine being happy about being forced to live with other random kids when I was a kid? But everyone is different.

I just think, while the adults seem to get on with it... new partner =new fulfilling relationship, shared costs and childcare ... and so on, the children are left to deal with it. They are on their own emotionally, as what they are experiencing isn't shared or truly understood by their parents.
Sometimes it works out OK, sometimes it doesn't.

I am, but so are the parents who say their kids are happier in the blended family. And it’s a bit of a coincidence that all the behaviour and mental health problems for the kids I’m thinking about happened to start in the 6 months or so after the “blending” took place too.

Yep, and imagine how awful it must be to live 50% of the time with a stepmother who openly hates you and is just counting down the days until she convinces your dad to stop seeing you and focus all his attention on “her little family”.

OP, read some threads started on here by unpleasant stepmothers, and ask yourself why other posters may think blended families often don’t work.

Absolutely!

I think blended families have as much chance as a traditional family of being a shit show. I grew up in a blended family and genuinely I love my step parents so much and my life is definitely better for having them in it. It wasn’t always easy though when I was a child and at the time I wished they hadn’t been around. But I am a step parent now and it has been much harder than I thought it would be, for all of us. In an ideal world, people would only have kids with someone they can then stay with forever happily but that’s just not reality unfortunately. If my marriage broke down though, I wouldn’t be willing to bring a step dad into the mix. It is really difficult for children and I don’t think it does them any good.

Your children's opinions will change when they have children of their own.

You'd do well to listen to posters on here OP.

MN in general is a pretty hateful place IMO.

I just don't think that existing children in blended families benefit from the arrangement in any way and the negatives when they aren't working well or when they dissolve - asking them to give up not just a parent-like figure in their lives but sibling-like relationships too, is absolutely brutal.

It's not just one person. There is quite a bit of research. I don't have time now to look but here is example.

Nobes et al.’s (2019) research inquired into child homicide by fathers in Britain between 2000 and 2015 as recorded by the Home Office’s Homicide Index. To address limitations of prior research, Nobes et al. made more accurate estimates of family composition in the population using data from three large British surveys. This analysis revealed that children aged between 0-4 years were 15.74 times more likely to be killed by a stepfather compared to a genetic father. The increased risk was much less pronounced for stepchildren aged 5-9 years (1.60) as well as stepchildren aged 10-17 years (2.85). All of these odds ratios were reduced when only data from cohabiting father-child dyads were analyzed. This indicates that a substantial amount of risk to children is posed by non-cohabiting adults. In considering the physical distance that characterizes the relationship between a child and non-cohabiting adult, such violence could be explained by poor attachment bonds between the child and the perpetrator.

Ask your children what they really thought when they are in their 20’s.

No experience of step families but I do have children in their 20s and it's an eye opener when they talk about things from childhood good or bad. Their perspective is so very different from what you expected. recollections may vary is so true.

Couldn't agree more

First post nailed it.

As a lone parent, I will not be subjecting my child to a blended family.

You can, but I don’t see how that can be successful. If you have small children and no childcare then you’re seeing a partner once a month potentially - what would be the point?
Surely if you’ve found a decent partner there would be no issues in blending the family once the time is right. The only way blended families don’t work is if
you have someone who isnt willing to put their all into making your families work.

Thing is though, you can't know that. How can you actually know they would be happier? You are guessing.

The happy ones are probably not putting posts for advice on number id imagine

we have a very blended family - my stepson is now 18 and I’ve got a 3 year old and newborn with his dad

his own mums husband has kids aged 16 & 17

we all get on really well and have family dinners at her parents and my parents house

we’ve all been to each others weddings

but I do feel the kids are sometimes pulled different directions and maybe it’s not always been amazing for them! Like sometimes we’ve gone on holiday during the school year with the babies and can’t take step son as he’s in school or whatever

but husband makes up for that with 1/1 time - they go to music festivals together and weekends away etc

Absolutely. As a single parent I'd never risk moving a man in.

I don’t see them as second class but I don’t know any in real life that seem to be working well. In most cases I know personally, those children would be far happier with their parents apart, but not having moved in them in with new partners and their kids.

You can share your life with someone without blending a family!