To think blended families don't work?

[4China]

I actually would quite like to be proved wrong here and hear lots of happy stories about it all coming together well.

I suspect it's more likely to work when the kids are very young and grow up with another person in a parent role, rather than if families are blended in later life.

My own experience of a blended family is negative and has led me to think that children hardly ever like their step-parents and step-parents don't really love stepchildren like their own (which I think is understandable) although they may care for them and do their very best by them, and that the dynamics of two families living together - some perhaps part time (like I was) - just don't work and lead to all kinds of tensions and resentments. Biological parents have to juggle spending time with their own children and forming a relationship with stepchildren. People co-parent side-by-side despite families having different parenting styles and some children being raised differently for half or a percentage of the time by another party.

Not sure if I can think of a better way to do it though because lots of people split up and lots of people fall in love with new people that they want to be with and that's understandable. I guess maybe people need to stop trying to pretend it's a thing and just parent their children separately. In my case I think half the problem was the parents having this 'rose-tinted' view of what our new family would look like and finding it hard to accept that the kids didn't like each other or their step parents!

Completely agree as one who grew up in two and I REALLY like my sm. Just so easy to see the disparity in how children are treated and time spent with each which is not really anyone's fault. I've not had step siblings but half siblings is hard enough.

No easy solution at all. Parents are entitled to love lives but my experiences made me very cautious and had children later as a result.

I think it's a different situation if a man with no children of his own joins a family with children and no proper dad in the picture and they go on to have more children. That's not quite what I think of as 'blended'. That's more like adopting a dad, to me. I really mean when two people with children get together and live with both sets of children at least part of the time.

Fafoutis I completely agree. I had a miserable childhood from when my parents divorced, and couldn't wait to leave home.

Memeto3boys I think that's a great attitude. One of my big bugbears is people prioritising their new partner over their child. The children should always come first IMO and the partner should even be told that and be well aware of it.

Totally agree with that meme. I took my relationship with DP slowly and waited until did was comfortable before he moved in etc. (left it a year and a half for that).

Also dd is young which helps and ex-h is very supportive. I'd imagine it might have been different in different situations

Ours works well, but it is admittedly one of the more straightforward ones. One partner had dc, one did not, met, married, added dc. It's all good.

N/C for this. I think YABU.

My children's biological dad lives abroad and they haven't seen him for a few years (their choice; they're now late teens; he's not an easy person to have a relationship with). BTW, before I'm flamed, please believe me when I say I've done my best to facilitate their relationship.

When my DC were primary-school age I met and a few years later married my DH. Since the day he met my children he has taken them on as his own and loves them as if they were his. They love him too, despite the usual teen strops and angst, and we have a normal, happy family life. Perhaps it's been easier for us in a way because the DCs' dad isn't around although it would be helpful if he supported them, but that's another story.

Of course there have been problems along the way, but my DH and I have pulled together and we have coped. We took our relationship very slowly at first and didn't move in together properly for several years. We've always tried to put the DC first and I think they understand that. And, crucially, I don't think the issues we've faced have been to do with being a blended family. Every family has highs and lows and you just have to get on with it.

There are plenty of examples of successful blended families out there.

You might be right about the age of the child 4China. My younger sister feels quite differently to me, she was only 2 when my mother left my father. My sister even has a 'blended family' herself now (in which I can see my poor nephew is utterly miserable).

My OH and I would like to live together (been with each other for 2.5 years) but won't because we know a blended family of teenagers just wouldn't work.

Dawn That's awful. My dad and step-m were similarly self-involved and she didn't have DCs.

My experience as an observer(teacher) was that while most second families 'rubbed along', the parents assumed a far rosier view of the situation than their children, who had a vague hope that their birth family would get back together one day.

It horrified me to see the speed with which the parents rushed into new relationships and expected their joint children to settle down and live with other.

TBH many non blended families don't work that great either

Worked okay for me living with mum, lovely stepdad and his son who is about 8 years younger than me. From the age of 10.

I also used to visit my dad and "stepmum" (they are still not married) at weekends and I always got on fine with her and thought she loved me, I was only about 7 when they got together.

However, I later found out from another family member that my stepmum once complained about me getting in her way and following her around everywhere on a family holiday when I was only about 8. I felt shit hearing that as I thought she liked having me around at the time, or I wouldn't have got so close to her. I was a child away from my own mother on a holiday so I saw her has a motherly figure! It hurt to hear I was just an annoyance to her at that time. Wish that person never passed this info on to me, it's just not nice.

I tend to agree OP. I know of one family who've managed it successfully but that's it. Some of the threads in step-parents make me incredibly sad for the children. I've been a single parent since my son was born 8 years ago, I made a vow to myself not to introduce any men into his home and I plan on sticking to it (I'm very content single though). I don't think he nor I would take too kindly to someone else 'parenting' him now.

I think blended families have the potential to go spectacularly wrong...but they can and do work. Having been on my own with my children for several years, I met my dp. He also has children. We knew very quickly that we felt seriously about each other so we let our children meet quite early because, for both of us, if their dynamic didn't work, there was little point in dp and I pursuing a relationship. Dp had been in a blended family as a child in which he loathed his step father. So he was sensitive as to how we parent our children together and apart. I am not his children's mum, nor do they see me as such. They've got a perfectly good mum who lives nearby. He is not my dc's dad and doesn't attempt to take on that role. We are both, to our respective sc, an interested, loving and involved adult in their lives. It's not all been plain sailing and it has been quite difficult at times but it's a successful family unit. Btw, I came from a traditional nuclear family which was absolutely toxic, and in comparison my large blended tribe is far happier.

DB is in the adopted dad scenario that you mention and it has worked well. Partly because he is the only one in the Dad role and has been for the last 16 years (DN bio dad has never made an effort and doesn't see him). DN is the oldest and his half siblings have grown with him as their older brother in the same house so it doesn't feel blended.

This: 'TBH many non blended families don't work that great either'

I think you can say this about any family, not just blended. I think they have a few more obstacles to overvome, but as long as no one's a wanker, they can work, very well.

PurpleTreeFrog People who pass on messages like that always have their own agenda, are usually lying or embellishing, and are struggling at least temporarily with an emotion such as envy.

Please don't let that person cloud your memories of a childhood holiday and a person you've came close to.

I think it depends on how parents handle it. My dm was very much new guy he's your dad now like it or lump it. That being said I get on great with my step dad now they've split up. It was really rough though and I always felt I was on the outside looking in. He's my dad he tried hard and was thrown in the deep end. My df never did meet anyone else and died when I was 15 so I can't comment on the other side of it.

My dh has been in ds life since he was 10 months old. Ds is now 6 he simply has two dads who he loves equally and dh loves him as his own.

YANBU, in my experience they are a total disaster and I never want to be part of one ever again.

I was very young when my parents split up. And my dad has been with my step mother since then, she's never forced our relationship and never tried to replace my mom. Her and my dad now have kids together. I'm closer to her than my mom and we're very much a family.

However I've never been particularly fond of any of the men my mothers had in her life, and I think part of that is that they've tried to father me, despite being a teen or an adult when they've come onto the scene.

Her current boyfriend likes to present a united front, to the extent that I'm unable to have a conversation with my mom without his input

In my experience it's the forcing of the relationships that doesn't work. I'm happy for my mom, I don't dislike her boyfriend, I just dislike being forced to be part of this new family unit when I have nothing in common with any of them.

I had experience of both good and bad growing up. I am very close to my Mum and Stepdad, he's been around since I was 11 and he's brilliant. He has 3 children of his own but they are all older than me and we never really saw them much. I don't have biological siblings so our little family of 3 (we do have a much larger extended family) works really well and always has done. On the other hand I have been completely NC with my Dad and his wife (and by extension their 3 children) for about 8 years now. She was the OW, he left us for her and things were always difficult with him after that - mostly because she didn't like any reminder that he'd had a life before he met her and he's a spineless twonk so basically after he left I very seldom saw him. Thank god for my Stepdad really, I just think of him as my Dad but that has been entirely my choice, it's never been forced on me. He never tried to discipline me and I was never made to do things or act in any way that I didn't want to in terms of us being a family. The result of that was that I actually chose to spend a lot of time with him; we're both very outdoorsy and he taught me to rock climb, mountain bike, kayak and shoot. We've had a wonderful relationship and I'm very grateful for it.

I think from what I've seen with friends who have had Step-parents, issues have often arisen when they've been forced into acting like a family when they're not ready to or they just plain don't want to e.g. one good friend was forced as a child by her Mum to give the Mum's new DH birthday and Christmas cards with 'Dad' on them when she was still very close to her actual Dad and felt really disloyal to him doing that. She was also forced to spend time with the new DH's daughter even though they really had nothing in common, with the result that things deteriorated to the point that she went to live with her Dad and his new DW and to this day over 20 years later has very little contact with her DM and Stepfather and none at all with the Stepsister.

I think that some blended families are so very unhappy, but there are some blended families that are very happy.
There are 3 families that I know that are blended, one is happy, one is not so happy, the other is us, and we are very happy.

One of my friends had two children then got married, her youngest who has just turned 9 is very happy because for the first time in her life she has a dad, her husband loves all the children equally and they are a lovely family.

The other family have 5 kids, 3 of which were the husbands kids before they met.
2 live with them full time, the other lives with them in the holidays.
Then they have two younger girls together, the older boys seem so left out, because if we do something. The boys aren't invited. She loves the boys and takes care of them, but I find it so hard that she doesn't invite the boys cos the youngest boy seems quite hurt by it. So I can see why some families are unhappy.

When it comes to my own experience, if my husband didn't love my daughter the way I do we wouldn't be together.
Her father has never been a dad to her, so it means so much to her that they get to share the special bond that they do, she calls him dad, and frequently asked if she could have his last name and when we got married it was changed. In the pudsey days where they dress up as their heroes for school, my daughter and my husband have raided his van and she's gone in with builders stuff on. She says her dad is her hero. Everyone in our lives jokes that he is her biological father.
All I can say, is our blended family really works and we all really love eachother. I think it does help when the step parent is in a child's life from quite early. My husband met my daughter when she was three.

"He has 3 children of his own but they are all older than me and we never really saw them much."

This suggests your step father's children might have a different view banff.

One of my oldest friends - her stepdad left his wife and 3 sons for her mum when she and her sister were under 10.

She, her sister and her mum were really happy with their stepdad who was more involved than their father. But the 3 sons always looked miserable when they came to stay.

Their dad had left them to live with this woman and her children on the other side of London, and they only saw him eow.

I remember the sons coming on holiday with us all (her family and my family) and they never felt relaxed.

The stepdad ran off with someone else after 30 years with my friend's mum, and when he died the sons didn't invite my friend and her sister to the funeral, despite the fact he'd been their dad for 30 years. I understood how hurt they must have been to do that.