To think MN is horrible about blended families?

This - I think what’s largely missing from this thread is any appreciation of the challenges a single parent might have. It’s not a choice between two parents in a loving relationship and living with a wicked stepmother. It’s a choice between a single parent, often living in really difficult circumstances and under huge strain and the blended family.

If a single parent who is struggling to pay their bills and with the exhaustion/ loneliness of doing everything is in a good relationship and blends families partly to make life and finances easier I’m not going to judge that and it’s hard to say what the better option for the children is. I don’t think taking finances into account is selfish seeing as poverty is the no 1. factor which negatively affects a child’s outcomes. Half of single parent families live in poverty so this isn’t a niche issue.

And equally I don’t think that anyone should be telling others that a long-term relationship is unnecessary to their happiness or that they can just wait 20 years and then have one. It’s pretty high on the hierarchy of needs and more important for some than others.

I am very open to living separately from a partner if it’s an option but realistically it’s going to be hard to find and the logistics would be hard (and all the harder as a lone parent).

They are pretty awful to themselves a lot of the time.

I don't think that's the overwhelming conclusion at all, it's not how it's come across to me. It may be the one that you have drawn but you are deliberately ignoring the posts from people who say their blended family was great and worked well.

If you, and others, have experienced a terrible time of it in a blended family then I'm sorry. But I'd suggest that your parents were indeed selfish and made shit decisions, and they would have let you down and not prioritised you whether they stayed together, stayed single, or blended.

Blended families themselves aren't to blame simply because they are blended - it's the people who are shit, not the circumstances.

I'm sure money is at the heart of it for many.

Many single parent families are living in poverty. People love to throw around 'you prioritised a shag' but it's much more likely to be 'you prioritised a second income and/or stable housing'. Which could be, in many ways, a good decision for those kids even though they may not enjoy it.

While I wouldn't, and didn't, move a new man and his children into my home and am an advocate for not doing it, I can't deny that my view on stepfamilies comes from a position of privilege. I've been able to raise my kids on my own, with a good standard of living, without financial help from anyone, and live separately from my long term partner and his kids.

Completely agree @HelloWorldItsNiceToMeetYou , I don't get why some act like people separate on a whim. My ex was a very frightening abusive man too, and I left when my children were babies. I dated casually for 6 years but kept that very separate to my children/homelife. This was our unit, nothing was getting close.

Only recently I'm back with someone and it's changed my view because I now think it's also important for my children to see you can also find happiness post such a situation. Say my dd left an abusive relationship, id completely want her to find joy elsewhere. I have no intention of moving in with my partner or him staying over but I have let them meet and am trying to build a different type of dynamic for us all. They see someone who is patient and kind with them and me both, who we arent frightened off. That can only be a good thing.

Indeed @MrsSunshine2b

You're not wrong. I wouldn't say Mumsnet is the best place to come if you want to see the finest of our society to be honest. I keep meaning to leave as it's quite depressing, but it's weirdly fascinating too.

That's true @MrsSunshine2b .

It's good to know that there are great step parents out there.

Mumsnet stepparenting opening posts are almost entirely and exclusively ops where stepmums slate the ex, then the thread unravels to reveal an absent father and stepmum who wishes to pretend his kids don't exist.

If you are considerate and careful about who you pick for a stepparent, you will have a better chance of a happy blended family.

There's plenty of threads on here where a parent ignores red flags when blending a family, and also you see the same in other corners of the internet. The ones where everyone gets on well don't turn up on reddit or mumsnet with the same frequency.

All children exist because adults wanted a relationship. Some get lucky. And some are collateral damage. Not in any way a concept unique to blended families.

But this thread isn't about people who make shit choices for partners @MrsSunshine2b . Feel free to make a thread about that if you want.

This thread is about blended families and why they receive the reaction they do. And the conclusion overwhelmingly from this thread, is that at the heart of it, is decisions which primarily only consider the new relationship of the two adults, and don't act in the best interests of the children.

I’m not fixated on it at all, I’m telling you what I’ve learned from listening to hundreds of people. That every experience is different and that the initial break up is absolutely the hardest thing for some of them. For whatever reason, some people don’t want to hear that but it’s an important part of the experience which it’s helpful to understand.

It’s interesting that you feel that you’re able to comment on my families individual circumstances with absolutely no knowledge of them and a perfect example of the points that I’m making. It’s very easy to cast judgement on someone else by projecting your own stuff onto them but it’s not necessarily accurate.

Without going into detail of the personal life of my family, I know that my step kids are happy and grateful to have me and their half siblings in their lives because they tell me. Often and unprompted, even as adults with their own kids. However I also know that at least one of them had a terrible experience of being in a blended family, so I know it’s not always a good thing.

It's no more of a coincidence that whether you pick a good "baby daddy" for your bio-child- although another recurring theme on Mumsnet seems to be picking terrible partners and then being baffled as to why your children ended up with a terrible father.

Any parent who is dating should be considering the needs of their children and taking into account the attitudes of the step-parent, whether their parenting styles are compatible, whether they agree on how involved they should be in the children's lives, whether they get on etc..

There's no "coincidence" involved.

There's a limit to how welcome she (and her friends) can really be when you're a 3 hour round trip from the rest of her life though isn't there?

I think you're missing a little bit of what people are saying @MrsSunshine2b

There are obviously going to be blended families who are enormously happy, everything has worked and it's lovely. And that's great.

But the point people are making is that that's a very lucky happy coincidence.

The very initial decision to blend is a fundamentally selfish one between the two adults who want a relationship with each other.

They don't embark on their relationship because they think it will be wonderful for their children. They do so for themselves. Because they want to. Literally the definition of selfishness.

If time does tell that all the kids gets on, and absolutely love it, then that is simply rather a lucky coincidence rather than the driver.

Most studies show that the best outcomes are when children live with both bio parents. There is always trauma from divorce or losing a parent. Plenty of step-parents love, cherish, hear and want their step-children, and don't view them as burdens or interlopers. I certainly have never viewed my SD as a burden or an interloper. We've always made it clear that she (and her friends) are always as welcome in our home as my DD always will be.

Two patterns are very stark in this thread:

1. Almost all children of blended families saying they were miserable but their parents would have sworn they were happy.

1. Almost all adults of blended families swearing the children involved are happy.

The implications are very clear.

It's a good effort at circumstantial ad Hominem but you can't really pull it off. Keep trying though!

The ideal situation is obviously for a child to live with both parents, but that doesn't always happen. Some blended families- just like some bio families- are dysfunctional and unhappy. Being brought up by a single parent doesn't get great reviews either.

I disagree that the ideal situation is for a child to live with both parents.

I think the ideal is for the child to live in a safe protective home where they are loved, cherished, heard and wanted.
Where their interests and needs are front and centre and they are not seen as a burden, interloper, viewed with suspicion, or ‘someone else’s child’ by ppl who actually has the power to chose to be in their life.

I do truly believe that my parents / stepparents thought they were acting in all of our best interests. They loved each other, and each other’s children. They were prepared to (and did) model patience, kindness, forgiveness, compromise etc.

I don’t think they were prepared for us to never ‘gel’. We didn’t hate each other, we weren’t having screaming rows everyday (there was arguments obviously but they were nothing you wouldn’t expect), but we were never close to what you could consider friends. We just existed in the same space. As adults we’ve never arranged to be in the same place. Outside of bumping into them at family occasions, I’ve not seen them since my teens.
It hadn’t occurred to our parents how excruciating 12 year old me would suddenly find sitting in my pyjamas in front of teenage boys I wasn’t related to. So weekend breakfast family late film nights. Everyone wore their pyjamas I was always dressed. They used to joke about how much I liked clothes / fashion. It never entered their head that was really uncomfortable.
They hadn’t considered my stepbrother being mortified that he had a truly awful ibs flare up while me and my sibling were staying. He was literally begging my stepmam to send us home.
They hadn’t planned for how would it work when my oldest brother and stepbrother were setted together at school from year 9. They spent all Friday afternoon together, were in the same house all weekend, then went back to school together for their first lesson on Monday. Normally you get a break from you siblings at school, then go home and get a break from classmates. They didn’t have that.

I don’t think they acted selfishly as such. I think they wanted it to work so badly that they didn’t fully consider the reasons why it wouldn’t.

I mean this genuinely, have you had some therapy about your experiences?

1 in 3 families are blended families. It must be really very exhausting and depressing for you to spend your life thinking that the lives of 1/3 of families are so miserable and bleak. That all these children see their baby siblings as nothing but a threat to their relationship with their parents and feel unloved. That no step-parent has ever been a positive force in the life of a child.

You obviously believe that this is the case but from the outside it's obviously immediately false that every stepfamily is miserable. Yes, there are complications that might not present themselves with a bio-family but just like bio-families, all the members usually care about each other and want to work out the best solutions for everyone.

I know that I love my SD and that she loves me, and that she loves her sister and her Dad. We don't always agree on everything but we are happy when we are together.

You accusing me of projecting is very amusing!

It's ironic that you would call someone else out for being fixated.

It's obvious you had some sort of traumatic stepmother experience in your childhood, although you haven't gone into detail on this thread, and I'm sorry that that was the case.

Extrapolating your situation to mean every child with a step-parent or step or half-siblings is miserable, any parent who splits up with the other parent and remarries and has more children is selfish and doesn't care about their children, and any child who appears very happy and to have loving relationships with the step-parents, step-siblings and half-siblings is hiding their true misery, is nonsensical.

The ideal situation is obviously for a child to live with both parents, but that doesn't always happen. Some blended families- just like some bio families- are dysfunctional and unhappy. Being brought up by a single parent doesn't get great reviews either.

Yes they always have clothes that are too dirty and too small. Often with nits. Act like starved dogs around food. Have zero manners.

They also shouldn’t get as much spent on them for Christmas / birthday / inheritance as they have two homes whereas the new joint child only has them.

But obviously the father doesn’t think it would be fair or appropriate to go to court for full custody despite how neglected and abused they are.

oh and she’s always moved hours away even tho he pays or it’s council 🤔

Aye, and mum is neglectful/abusive but not so much that she shouldn’t be sole carer 12 days out of 14…