To think MN is horrible about blended families?

What an unpleasant thread. I agree with you op

One person's opinion does not a fact make.

I've just looked him up. He's not considered a credible source. There are numerous studies that show otherwise. It's fair to point out the increased statistical risk of abuse, but not to post exaggerations based on non-existent evidence and the unfounded opinion of one man, just to try to justify your beliefs.

...yeeeeeeees? I'm sure most people would agree on that.

People make bad choices which impact their children in all walks of life - trying to shoehorn it into blended families = always bad is reaching.

You said that. Your fictional woman is staying with an abuser because she thinks she'd be even more miserable if she couldn't move in another man.

Your ideas are childish ("your internet posts might force a woman to be vilely abused!!!!").

What are you looking for OP? I think you’re being a bit dismissive and cruel. Lots of people have bad experiences with blended families. But because yours is going well other people aren’t allowed to talk about their negative experiences? This is what they call toxic positivity. You’re not leaving any space for other people’s feelings and experiences when they’re not as positive as you think they should be.

Listen to or read the research of Dr Gad Saad who talks about this a lot.

Not sure how you could weigh up the increased risk of your child being abused for the sake of sharing a home with a New Romantic partner.

Oh well it’s only a 20/30/40 percent chance what’s the worst that could happen.

Then the odds of just a very unhappy childhood even if not abused.

You can date and have sex and cuddles and holidays all without mixing and matching children from different families.

I agree with you OP. Every situation is different so you can't just apply a set of rules around how people should live. The families that I know like this (over the decades) are strong and supportive. Sure they have their ups and downs- all families do.

But who has said that? Who said they feel as though they need another man/woman in their life to live?

Most people want someone else in their life, another adult and partner to share things with.
Your views on how people aren’t being considerate of their children simply because they too deserve some happiness are terribly outdated.

I do think it's interesting that there is quite a widespread cultural attitude, not only in relation to blended families, that a couple is not truly committed to each other unless they live together. As marriage rates decline, cohabitation seems to be replacing marriage as the mark of true commitment.

Of course there are practical benefits, and it's much more expensive to live apart than to live together, but the attitude is pretty deeply ingrained and in my experience committed couples who don't live together are looked at askance and considered pretty weird. I wonder if this is a factor in some single parents rushing to move their families in together.

I do think parents should refrain from moving in/moving in with new partners until their children are adults. Not saying they should not date but they need to keep their dating life completely separate until their children are grown.

Source? Because a quick Google tells me that it does increase the odds, but by nowhere near 100 times.

It's very sad if they think life isn't worth living unless they're cohabiting with a man, but it isn't my fault.

I do struggle to understand why parents can’t wait for new partners to move in until their own kids are adults (and therefore have their own more independent lives, even if they are still living at home). I say this as a single mother - surely it’s not hard to prioritise your kids for a decade or two, it’s not a whole lifetime!

I would never say it in RL as I have lots of family and friends who are in blended families - but to be honest anecdotally imo it rarely seems to work long term unless the “kids” were grown up already. I often feel sorry for the younger ones, who are trying to balance all the challenges of growing up whilst living in new family situations at the same time.

Maybe people think this because of this statistic:
The biggest predictor of child abuse is a stepparent in the household. Households with stepparents are 100 times more likely to have child abuse.

I have a friend who seems to have successfully blended her family with her partner's. Kids are all growing up now and they all seem to be very close still. It's often the children's relationship with each other that seems to cause the most friction, rather than children not getting along with a new partner. There can be far more problems to overcome in a blended family as a result. My friend and her partner have worked very, very hard to make their children happy and have had to be very self aware and selfless, which not everyone is capable of. Too many adults put themselves and their relationship first, my own mother was a wonderful example of that!

I absolutely agree with you that of course there are situations like that - but i bet you ANY amount of money there are more women out there that stay with abusive vile men because they are the father of their children and people like you have made them feel as though they should stick it out - either that or be on your own miserable and lonely for the next 21 years 🤦‍♀️

I agree with this. From my own experience and the experience of others I know.

I agree @kungfullama . And the advice on any post to do with step children is always "that's not your problem, let their bio parents worry about taking then to school/hobby/sports/social life" or "of course it is perfectly reasonable of your partner to want to go on holiday with just you and his biological children, without your children from a previous relationship tagging along and ruining everybody's fun".
Or "can you go out whenever your step children visit?"

That said, I think there are some genuine issues that have a much bigger impact on the children than the parents realise, issues that step families encounter that biological families don't, for example, teenagers suddenly being forced to share bedrooms for example which obviously can cause a lot of disharmony and upset.

I know a couple of people with blended families where it has worked extremely well for all concerned, and others where it has been a disaster.

Sometimes things go wrong or became unbearable very quickly. With others they hang on and try to make it work and, when it becomes impossible, the children's situation is just the same as it was when their parents split. Back to square one.

I don't think people should be on their own forever just because their marriage has broken up but I do think it is best not to set up home with someone until the kids are grown. You don't have to live together to be in a meaningful, committed relationship. I realise two people maintaining two homes is more expensive than having one home, that wouldn't matter to some, it would to others and I feel that is what drives many couples to live together. If they can afford to live apart it might well be better. They can see a fair bit of each other, go away together sometimes, maybe with children from both.

I knew from quite yung that I would not get too involved with a man who had young children, I would expect him to put his kids first and I wouldn't have wanted to have a child or children with him, far too risky and complicated.

When I read posts on Mumsnet from women (usually women), who have married or live with a man who has kids from previous, maybe have a child of their own, and all the problems they encounter, I just hope young, single women read and take heed. Find a man unencumbered, it makes life easier.

My mother would also say our blended family
is lovely and was amazing and fabulous.

Nor me or my half’s has the heart to tell
her it wasn’t so she thinks it’s the bee’s knees and would tell anyone who asked that step
families work great just look at hers.

There’s a reason most step children don’t want step parents for their children, they lived it.

Plenty of you live in a fairytale where you forced some man and his children onto your kids, moving him into their home, and tell yourselves they're blissfully happy with it and their lives are enriched and everybody skips across the grass singing The Sound of Music.

Threads where ex wives are behaving horribly and withholding contact but are being defended because 'they were left' so somehow have the right to pass their bitterness onto their kids

Yeah. Two sides to that story, eh? If you believed my ex, I grow horns and turn green on a regular basis. It's not true. Not even nearly. But there are plenty of people out there happy to listen and pat him on the back.

And the word 'bitterness' is a loaded one. It's not 'bitter' to be frustrated and upset when things didn't go the way you'd planned. Frequently, when relationships end, one person is way ahead of the other and thus is playing catch up, potentially for years. Personally I think 'bitter' is used to silence women who are playing that catch up game, who have been let down, who are finding it hard to adjust and who know that they will be carrying the children alone (regardless of the 50/50 split of care) from now on.

And lots of ex husbands behave dreadfully. But somehow it only matters when women do it. Why is that?

I'm with you, OP. There are lots of women here confidently proclaiming that blended families are mostly shit. There's also a tone that you're somehow selfish if you have the audacity to seek another relationship while you have kids.

Personally I think there are some women being bitter and insecure - insecure that their husband might one day leave them and want someone else, or their children might one day be close to another woman. Or some women in unhappy marriages but stay in their misery because you know, at least they're not selfish enough to leave and pursue happiness. So they have to proclaim that blended families are the worst possible thing. It gives them someone to look down on, and a sense that that would never happen to them because they are just so sensible and unselfish.

There's a heavy dose of 'well if I was in that position, I wouldn't', when in reality, people often don't know unless they are in that position.

In reality, plenty of 'nuclear' families don't work, and plenty of blended ones do. And vice versa. There's no blanket rule, all people and all families are different. All I hear on here is 'well I knew someone who didn't like growing up in a blended family'. Fair enough. My husband didn't like growing up in a nuclear family where his mum should probably have divorced his alcoholic father, but didn't. We all have our experiences.

Of course, people tend to post on mumsnet when things are going wrong, so by that rule, all blended families are shit, but so are all men, and so are all first marriages.