To think MN is horrible about blended families?

And going back to the strangers thing. When you first meet a parent's partner, you will probably do mostly fun things. Go out to dinner, ride bikes, picnics, visit the beach, meet their pets, watch a movie. The children might be fine with all that. It doesn't mean they are ready to live with the individual! The average child probably has good memories of doing fun things with the staff at Brownies or Scouts. But they don't want to live with them!

You can't answer the question because you know it'd be damning to your argument.

I think part of the issue is that children are offen dealing with more than one blended family at once these days.

If parents divorce and remarry they tend to look for people like them I.e. people with kids already. Those step siblings are probably going back and forward between other blended families too. So things get very complicated. There ends up being so many people involved all with different rules, expectations preferences etc.

Yes yes!!

I didn’t belong at home, because that home belonged to what felt like my half siblings family. I was a mere guest in their family. Even though it was my resident home!

Hilariously the golden together child is pretty much low contact themselves. Birthday Christmas Mother’s Day and Father’s Day is all they do.

One of the things that has kept coming up on this thread is 'belonging'. I don't 'belong' to my step relations in the way I belong to my biological family. If you looked at my very big, very complicated family, and if you could see the threads of affection and belonging between us all, you'd see that they vary enormously. If you're not an experienced step kid, it's very difficult to describe.

How I would like to experience just being part of a family that all belongs together and feels more or less equal affection and belonging between them all!

Your parent might of known them 6 years. You might of met them 6 months ago. Thats moving in a stranger to the child, their children who they have likely met less. Stranger.

And just because you then share a house doesn’t mean you will form a connection and bond they could basically still be strangers. Look at house shares and rent a room. Living in the same building doesn’t make you family or even friends.

I've often thought that I prefer neutral strangers to my step relations! If either of my biological parents died, I'd probably have next to no contact with my step parents who I have known for decades. As a PP described, we just exist in the same space (although thankfully I no longer live with them).

I think that's more likely to be the case when the children are teens when it happens. I know several blended families where the families blended when the children were toddlers and there's no differentiation between biokids and stepkids and home is just home. There's also situations where the Dad goes awol (or as good as) and the stepdad becomes Dad to all intents and purposes. If you didn't ask, you wouldn't know which kids were "his" and which ones went off for a few hours to see their "Dad" 3 times a year.

I find it really odd that you would describe someone who has been part of your life long enough to move in as a "stranger".

It's so wrong that so many kids are forced to share their bedroom with a strange man/womans children and have no choice whatsoever.

I often think WTF! when I read a poster naively writing 'my DS/DD shares with DSS/DSD for 50% of the time, we're a happily blended family!' and then go on to state how their child is misbehaving at school or is being moody or upset and wonders why!!

Then spends pages and pages trying to convince everyone themselves that their partner is a good parent and a happy addition to their children's lives and how the kids will be grown up and gone soon anyway and what are they supposed to do, stay single??

The old trope of 'well if they had siblings they'd have to share' is always trotted out. The difference is the siblings would be ones they'd grown up with and were very familiar with, not random resentful kids! I think people willfully miss that point.

I feel so desperately sorry for kids having strangers forced on them with no say and their parent refusing to consider that they're doing anything wrong.

There is no need to force kids into sharing rooms with strangers just so you can have a relationship or more kids. Just wait until they're gone and parent the kids you already do have! not hard to put your kids first. The world would be a much better place all round if more parents did this.

I've been the dc. Was awful. Everyone suddenly om their best behaviour. Your home no longer your home. Couldn't wait to leave

She does have a point though.

The only plus side to many of the children in extra income in the house.

The trade off though is a strange man/women moving in with their children who again are strangers really and then maybe even a new baby or two.

Up thread a women posted how one her step dad and step brothers move in she was never comfortable enough to have a pj day or pj movie and pop corn because of the strange males in her home. The step brother with digestive issues just wanting to be away from the strangers again.

So many of those child would have rather eaten only beans on toast forever than of lived with these strangers.

As an adult you get to say no I’m not sharing a bedroom or a house with some random friend of a friends. As a child they don’t get that choice.

so would you live with a random man and his kid for an extra £40k a year into your house, you don’t get to pick where it’s spent though but it should help, is a valid question. Because that’s what parents are asking their children to do when they blend families.

You are having a conversation with yourself here, which doesn't really relate to the thread or the points people are making.
I am going to leave you to your silliness.

That's a "no of course I bloody wouldn't" then. Thought so.

You're just being silly now.
Clearly the additional adult support and income in a two parent household Vs a one parent is a small part of a larger complex issue.
Same as people in bio families.
I can also think of situations where people stay in an unhealthy bio family situation, because of the loss of lifestyle that a split would cause.
You frequently see threads where people are contemplating this.

So if someone offered to add £40k a year to your household income, but in exchange a man and a child are going to move in to the house, and you don't have any say in who he is, and you can't leave the house for 10 years and you can't make him leave, are you saying yes?

That's not actually what I said, but I think you're quite aware of that.

I don't need your validation to know that we have a happy family, I was just sharing how it works for us. Which it does.

You have already made your mind up to be outraged on behalf of a child you've never met though.

@Sugarnspicenallthingsnaice competely agree with you about the financial aspect. After all, many two parent households struggle for money. There's huge financial pressure on a single parent which I think many don't understand.

It's emotionally hard and lonely doing everything on your own too. I've found that with having a SEN child and a younger sibling, sometimes you just don't have enough hands. If you're out on your own and your special needs child is deliberately running away and you can't catch up with them because you have a baby or toddler in your arms, what do you do? So you stop going out and you become very isolated. Not everyone has family around or a group of friends who want to spend time around your tricky children.

This is a personal attack and really unnecessary.
It's absolutely fine to disagree with someone and make different life choices.
This kind of personal attack on someone you know nothing about is exactly what this thread is about.

Why are you posting this at me and not MrsSunshine2b, who told someone she knows nothing about to get therapy? She's volunteered lots of information about her awful family setup.

Or yourself, since you just posted that people you know nothing about aren't doing well by their children.

Pot, kettle.

This is a personal attack and really unnecessary.
It's absolutely fine to disagree with someone and make different life choices.
This kind of personal attack on someone you know nothing about is exactly what this thread is about.

FWIW I am the product of parents who ' stayed together for the sake of the family'.
The outcome of that is that unhappiness and unkindness in a family were normalised to me, and I sleepwalked into an abusive marriage because I was conditioned to tolerate poor treatment for the sake of ' keeping the peace'. It took me a long time to understand that these weren't key traits of a 'good mother'.

Some of those who are very sanctimonious, are not doing as well by their kids as they think (obviously not referring to the many happy and emotionally healthy bio families, I know there are many of these).

I'm going to be really controversial. You just sound like a family. No further labels needed.

Edit: sorry that's being a bit sarky to the people trying to belittle your family, not you! Xx

Tbh a lot of the upsetting threads are not the ones where the partner has moved in with the children. The ones that often stick out to me are the new family that the Dc “visit,” usually with the new stepmum posting about the strain this unreasonably places on her. Of course she is always a paragon of patience, knows exactly how to raise Dc even if she has none/ hers have not yet reached that age, knows the ex has clearly got it all wrong, and of course even though her new man left the ex because she was so sub-standard ( obvs), in a strange trick of storytelling, the ex also somehow orchestrated the situation precisely so that she could get child support to spend on trips to the Maldives and fags.

Agree here, I've noted the same. Hardly any though but a friend has a partner who has no kids, the biological dad is a druggie so no access to the child (not even wanting to change). The child is absolutely doted on by the partner/his family.

My own partner has no children and having been in both situations, it does help when there is only one set of children to focus on, and with an ex who isnt as present.

These are the successful ones that I know of.

No you don't need to be single for ever. You can have a relationship with someone without moving them in.

I do know two or three blended families that the children have thrived in but in all of these cases there been no step children involved.

I split with DH in the summer and I can say with 100% confidence that I won't live with another man until they are adults. That doesn't rule out a relationship though.