To think MN is horrible about blended families?

I grew up with half brothers (but not step, which might matter) back in the 90s. We all love each other dearly, get on well, and are a close, happy family. Our mum died many years ago and we did briefly worry what would happen, would we fall apart, but in retrospect this was ridiculous. My brothers love their 'step' dad and their relationship with him is the primary parental relationship in their lives. In a way, I think this might be what bio parents fear more.

What absolute drivel. People in 1993 weren't divorcing for the sake of it, because it was such a laugh. If a marriage needs to end it needs to end, staying in it so as to not 'do that with their own families' is absurd and harmful.

I grew up in a blended family and I'm not scarred from it. In my experience it was much better our parents being apart because we didn't have to live in a war zone. I don't understand why everyone thinks kids from blended families will need a lifetime of therapy, my therapy came as a result of my parents toxic marriage.

If you think it's tickety-boo to do this, go ahead, fill your boots. Lots of us are wary with good reason.

NB who is 'screaming' LTB, hyperbole much.

The only blended family I have ever seen be positive for the children was a widowed woman with 3 kids marrying a childless man. No step siblings, no exes, no split homes and he was a good dad to those kids.

Frankenstein families?! What a horrible way to talk about families!

I grew up in a blended family and wouldn’t change it for the world. I adore my step father, he is a far better dad than my own, and I am thankful my mum found a wonderful man to share her life with after picking a bit of a dud the first time round.

I am now in a blended family and genuinely believe our children are very happy. Our children cheered when we told them we were getting married and proceeded to proudly tell everyone. They adore their step parents and each other. One of my son’s nursery journal entries when he was 3 (he’s 7 now) was his key worker talking about how proudly he spoke of his bonus daddy and sister.

Of course there are blended families where this isn’t the case. Equally there are non-blended families where kids are miserable and not put first.

In my limited observations of blended families only one worked and in that case both parents had lost a spouse to cancer so the children were all together all the time with no comings and goings from the other parental home. My very old fashioned view is once you have kids you need to prioritise them until they’re adults.

Please tell me how blended families aren't in the best interests of children? When they are successful and happy and everyone gets along.

I don't think anyone is talking about the latter, or about your family. They're responding to threads where things aren't successful and happy or else the posters wouldn't be on here. Even you talk about bitter ex-wives and how they shouldn't pass that onto the kids, so you're as judgemental as the next. You see yourself as having succeeded and as if that's 'as good' as being a traditional family. Did you never read your Tolstoy?

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"

Some happy families will be trad, some blended, some other forms, but they're not posting on here because they're happy and getting along with each other. There's plenty of trad family problems posted about on here too, but when it's blended, the risks and issues are more known and clearer and sometimes the answer is that it's not gonna work out and that the kids are the ones to suffer. If you don't believe that, then you're way too far gone in your happy bubble.

As a child of a 'blended family' back in the 90's.... I agree completely.

Let's be honest, my DM didn't meet her partner and move him and (EOW) his kids in with us because she thought it'd be a great and exciting thing for me. She did it because she wanted a relationship. I can appreciate that, as adults often want to have a partner to share their life with.... but it added nothing to my life whatsoever. I (and my sister from the same parents) would always openly say I preferred my life with my bio-parents split, but before my step parents came along dragging their annoying kids with them and their chaos into our lives.

That probably sounds harsh. But is true for me. I'd have preferred parents to wait until I was at uni or something before they moved their partners in. I had no objection to seeing partner now and again, but living with them plus their kids was another matter. To the outside, we probably looked like a lovely blended family all playing happily together...

Blended families aren't second class and can work really successfully. But with the addition of more and more people into a family (like a couple splitting and each remarrying and everyone bringing kids into the new relationships) it's creates a great spread and potential complications into everyone's relationship dynamics. I think they are just more difficult to manage but it can be done.

Please tell me how blended families aren't in the best interests of children?

Because essentially it's the parent who wants a relationship.

That's not to say blended families never work.

But it's always the adult's need for a relationship be it sexual or otherwise, that means they become a blended family in the fist place.

@SereneFish , that’s exactly the situation in my family , my ex dropped all contact with dd when she was 5 . My dp had no children when I met him . We had two more together, the younger two don’t even know that he isn’t dd,1 ,s bio dad .

But that is just as true for the biological of first families. There are absolutely horrific stories here every day about lazy/:indifferent/abusive fathers (or mothers). Some people end up with terrible partners who are also lousy parents.

I think some blended families do work, and it's all about attitude and pace. Imo it will never work if the "blending" happens within about 3.4 seconds of the relationship being introduced to the kids.

From what I've seen, the rare cases that work are usually ones where the other biological parent isn't involved, the step parent was established when the child was young so they grew up with them, and, most crucially, the step-parent doesn't have any other children. It's a rare set of circumstances.

Many of the stories of blended families on MN start with 'DP' moving in, and you just know that it won't end well and little thought is given to the children.

DPs seem to move in alarmingly quickly, with or without his own children, and the OPs children just have to get on with it. No one is saying that single mothers have to stay alone forever but I do despair when I read about some of the family scenarios on here, particularly the ones where a new baby arrives before the current children have had time to adjust.

If your blended family is great for everyone then that's lovely. Fabulous. Not sure why you would get upset that other peoples experience of other blended families are shit. They're not talking about you. If you take something not about you personally, then it suggests that it's struck a nerve.

I think some blended families do work, and it's all about attitude and pace. Imo it will never work if the "blending" happens within about 3.4 seconds of the relationship being introduced to the kids.

But, and I may get flamed for this... I feel that the parents in some blended families are perhaps expecting their kids to be able to behave better, tolerate more, compromise more than they are able/willing to. What I mean by that is if you've got two parents who can't stand each other but coparent well, it means they can get along when they're not forced to live together, but living under the same roof is too much. So it's specifically having to live together that causes friction/touch points.

It could be said that blending a family is shifting that problem onto the kids. The kids of two families are often expected to go from vaguely enjoying some other family's company when they all go to the zoo together to having to live with them, and if they complain, they're often just told to suck it up (in nicer words, I guess, but it's basically just that).

Obviously there are bad ways and good ways to do everything, and blended families are just the same: with time, compromise, effort and care they can work. But the opposite does happen unfortunately.

According to adults you mean

I grew up in a blended family, mum, stepdad, step sister and half brother, no involvement from bio dad since I was very young (mums choice)

My step dad is my dad, I wouldn't have it any other way. Yes we clashed at times as I was growing up, but just normal parent/teen stuff. He absolutely saw me as his own and treated me as such, and that went both ways. We had a perfectly normal, happy family life and upbringing

My ex husband moved his girlfriend into his new home the week we separated. I've been with my partner 8 years and we still don't live together, primarily as I wanted my (then) primary age children to have some stability.

100% this.

It very very rarely benefits a kid to be made to get involved with their parents dating life. I speak as someone who had my mother's various boyfriends and current husband inflicted on my home when I was young.

I can only speak of my own experiences and those of my close family and friends. I have never yet seen a blended family that has really made the children happy.

Please tell me how blended families aren't in the best interests of children? When they are successful and happy and everyone gets along.

Because they nearly always AREN'T happy. They just say they are because they know that's what their actual parent wants to hear.

Is that not a better scenario than having two bio parents together who can't stand each other? But actually co parent well?

No, it's just as bad as living with two parents in an unhealthy relationship.

I don't need to ask my children how they feel in their 20s. I see them everyday and I see what their stepparents do for them to ensure they are happy and loved.

So strange that nearly all children who grew up in "blended" families (Frankenstein families would be more accurate - several individuals hastily stitched together by someone only thinking of themselves) say that it was miserable, but their parents would say they were happy.

Do you really believe that once a relationship breaks down both parents should stay single forever? If that were the case my kids would have missed out on a hell of a lot.

No, date as many people as you like. Just don't force your children to live with them.

I feel a little conflicted about this being a single parent. I’d be very cautious about blending families and may never do it. It does seem to create some specific issues at least sometimes.

But the alternative for single parents is living alone with your children potentially for 18+ years which comes with many of its own challenges- one income, one person to do all the work of running a household, often the parent is going to be quite stressed or at least have limited time because they are doing the work of two people alone, not modelling any kind of romantic relationship for your children and martyring yourself to them to an extent. I think it risks creating this dynamic where the parent doesn’t have a life outside their children and ends up alone and therefore more dependent on children later in life.

I’m not sure that’s the ideal either. There may be in-between options like having a relationship but not living together but easy to see why not everyone finds that appealing.