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!

Ratbag... that's the word I was searching for - values. When all the adults in a blended family share the same values..it's not always easy but it can work because communication and trust is there.

SleepUntilMidnight your story is remarkable, but you know what? if you posted about it on here, say in ibu, you would be told that you are bu because they're not your children and why should you take them on, etc etc.

And perhaps this is the problem. People have such low expectations of step families and of how they should work, that we have come to expect less not more, so when people present more it is seen as unacceptable.

I saw a post recently from a sm who invited her dsd's brother into the house for her birthday party and how her dh said he didn't want his ex's kids in his house. There were actually posters who agreed that she was being unfair to the dh.

Perhaps we have set our standards too low as people. Where ex's and new partners get on is currently seen as odd perhaps we need to, where possible, look to change that perception. After all if all parties have moved on then why can they not all get on for the sake of harmony?

I say we were a close family, because their dad died.

When he was dying I spoke to him multiple times of day and his wife. When he died his wife spent a lot of time here. I used to sit with her and just hug her. We would socialise together as well as we liked each other. I never felt she was a threat, I loved that my kids loved her and encouraged that. I never felt any angst at all about her being well loved.

As a kid we all spent Xmas with my dad's ex wife and their children so I'm kind of used to blended families coming as one. My mum and my dad's ex wife (the first one) are still friends. His latest wife (now divorced ) is an evil cow and she was awful, but then again so is my dad.

I am not proud of much in life but I am proud of how well we managed our divorce. We worked together and helped each other out and our children benefited it from it and have had a happy and secure childhood (except for the loss of their dad)

So it can work wonderfully, it really can.

I come from a blended family OP and i agree YANBU. My DSM was lovely and sweet but clearly loved her own DCs much much more than she did myself and my siblings. Whereas my own DM insisted on treating us all equally, which meant that i had a DM who treated me as she would a step child and a DSM treating me like a friend of the family. Not a happy childhood at all.

Still, my right on DM proved to everybody else that she loved us all equally and that was what mattered to her the most. Forget her own DCs feelings, everybody praised her right on blended family and what a good example of a DSM she was. So she was happy and my siblings (step not included) and myself have been bitter up until her death.

wannabe Your point about people finding it odd when folks get on really struck a chord with me.

My DH's first wife died before we met. DS was just a toddler. The amount of people who are baffled by how much other MIL (DS's Grandmother) and I get on is, well baffling to me. People used to comment that she was crazy to babysit for DH so we could go out. Make comments asking why she'd want to help me "replace" her daughter.

Of my friends it's been other women who've been adamant the most that I cannot possibly love DS as much as I do my "own" children. Even one friend with an adopted child used to say I couldn't love him the same because he was not "mine" which I found utterly bizarre.

LineyReborn lol we've got a 4 bed that we've added an extension and a loft conversion to. The 16 and 17 year old share the loft and the others had a room each. Now that the youngest is in her own room DSS sleeps in the extension when he comes home from uni and the rest of the time the extension is used as a family/games/TV/study room so any of the kids can escape from the rest of us if they need to.
It can get loud and crazy in our house especially at Christmas but we've been pretty lucky that the kids have all adapted well and they all get along quite well. I think after a long time of being unsettled and going through miserable times they all like having a happy home environment again

Fafoutis no, it was/is because they had moved to Australia with their DM and her new husband. Stepdad was devastated when they went but she and they wanted to go - they were all in their teens at the time - so he accepted it. They all still live there now so it's purely geography that we didn't/don't see them much, not because of any bad feeling at all.

My stepdad has been in my life for 40 years. He was with my mother 39 years until she passed away. We 3 siblings are his sole heirs.

My dad had 3 marriages after my mother. I didn't get on with wife no 1. Adores no 2 no 3 I was an adult but she sure made my dad happy. Her 2 children keep in close contact with my dad even 8 years after she passed away. They are named in his will.

For me I think step families can work very well so I have to say YABU.

I have 2 dad's left and my mil. Who i also utterly adore. I love all of them

I was very close to my stepfather (actually he is now my ex-stepfather). It probably helped that he is very easy-going and rarely told any of us off. Actually his slobby ways drove us all barmy and we were always telling him off. In a lot of ways he was a better father to me than my real Dad; my real Dad did love us all and we loved him, but he was an odd kettle of fish, ExDSF on the other hand was warm and funny and affectionate, a larger-then-life character that filled the house with laughter until my Mum couldn't take his boozing and getting into debt any more and booted him out.

My Mum bent over backwards to welcome his DCs into our home when they came to stay and we got on well once we got to know each other. However neither my step-sister or step-brother have married, neither have children and DStepSis has had lots and lots of problems over her life which ExDSF tries to help with but there's not a lot he can do really.

So it was great for us, but not great for my step-siblings.

I sometimest think the best gift I have ever given our children is not to have moved i a man in in the 10 years since the divorce. It is so difficult to move someone in as they will often have a very different style of being a parent bad enough when you're genetically connected to a child. When one set of chidlren (mine) go to private schools and a new man's don't even just that type of thing makes a difference or one family is feminkist and women earn a lot and work full time and the other women stay at home and clean - ti's just really complicated and the parents all the time con themselves everyone is happy whereas the teenage step child would like nothing better than that they only ever were with their parent without the step parent around.

It often brings with it messy legal and financial issues too.

I am not saying it cannot work for some however.

I hear you there Ballerina

Sorry didn't mean to imply that not being married and/or having children means you are messed up in some way, it's just that DStepSis definitely is messed up in some way, and her being alone is part of that, and it's hard not to think that some of her problems stemmed from her childhood. I don't know why DStepBro is single and childless, in fact I rather hope he is just enjoying life, but he must be in his late 40s now and it's odd never to have a partner that I know of (and yes I do ask cos I'm nosy!)

I agree with you OP.

I grew up in a blended family. My parents divorced when I was six and they married people who we knew, so these adults weren't strangers to us, but it was fucking awful and 34 years on its not much better.

Step-mother was a bitch from hell from the get-go. She clearly wanted our dad, but she most definitely didn't want us (me and my sister). We had to spent OOW there and she basically ignored us and kept our dad so busy for the entire 48 hours that we hardly saw him, let alone actually did anything with him or had any 'quality time' and he was too spineless to stand up to her. It was a horrible, miserable farce. Her DC, OTOH, could do no wrong and were treated like gold.

Step-father was even worse. He was physically and verbally abusive and again, was quite happy to take on our mother, but very obviously didn't want us. We were yelled at constantly, belittled and it was made clear from day one that we should keep out of his way. He financially abused our DM and still does, while showering his own DC with tens of thousands of pounds behind her back. Personally, I'm just grateful there was no sexual abuse.

I went to boarding school aged 11 (my choice), and left home when I left school at 18. I would never, never inflict a blended family on my beloved boys and I shudder when I hear of people blithely moving their new partner in and expecting it all to be hunky dory.

I know of only one blended family and that is BIL's.

They have only moved in together recently and TBH it seemed to work better when they lived apart and just saw each other at weekends.

Now everyone is under the same roof it all seems a bit intense; youngest has SN, his mother expects other kids to help out with him but they understandably have their own interests also, oldest is 16 and wants her own space, BIL'S ex wife seems intent on causing trouble between BIL and his partner etc.

However this is only one situation. I'm sure it can work.

Well we adopted a dad - dh had. I kids and I had a small cute one - he adopted her and we have four together now. Absolutely nothing I wouldn't expect in any biological family.

My stepchildren are very fond of their sister - the child I had with their father.

Whatever the ups and downs of their relationship with me - there've been a few - I feel sure that they are glad that their father's new relationship/remarriage brought them a loved sibling.

I haven't RTFT... but is the assumption, then, that 'non-blended' families always "work"? Because that sure as hell ain't the impression I get from, for example, reading this website...

I agree with you 4China.

Well, you only have to look at the Stately Homes thread to know that any family has its issues.....

Personally, I like having a relationship but never want to "blend a family" in one house really.... mine is just so for me and DS.

We all need our space, adults and kids. What's wrong with keeping two separate households in a relationship? It's just part of being independent in life.

As a woman I can definitely recommend it. I'm done with being a domestic drudge to any adult man

I was married oh so long ago, thank god I got out. Being independent with my child in our own house is the only way it will work for me. Anyone else is a blessing as long as they keep their own living space with their kids too.

It shows a kind of maturity, be independent and then anyone who comes into your life is a bonus if you both have that.

Also non-blended families don't always work. The years I spent living with my two "proper" parents were the worst 7 years of my life.

YANBU. Blended families are almost always second best and I hate the pretence that some people try to keep that they're just as good. The only time a blended family is ever as good or better for a child is if the nuclear family is abusive. If my XH hadn't cheated on me, (long after I stopped loving him, although we still got along and had a physical relationship) I would have stayed with him until our DS was an adult, just to prevent him from ever having to be part of a blended family or have a step-parent .

but to say "well, sometimes non blended families don't work" is hardly a reason to state that people can't talk about the pitfalls of blended families. Yes, some parents are shit parents, that's not in dispute here. but this is a thread talking about step/blended families.

a "conventional" family often doesn't work because the parents may be shit parents, or have a damaged relationship, for instance. However the reasons blended families don't work doesn't necessarily have anything to do with parenting, it can have to do with step siblings who don't get on, an imbalance of value within the house where one parent puts their own children above the stepchildren, or maybe they are shit parents in which case the family will have been unhappy before that.

I agree that parents will rose tint the reality for their own convenience. My parents divorce & remarriages were hell, but my mum these days is all 'tra la la, I did my best, it was fine.'

I am gobsmacked at the idea of everyone being friends, 6 parents etc. every family event - weddings, graduations, christenings - was wildly tense because of my mum hating my dad (despite her being the one who fucked off with another man).

I will never do that to my children. They will always have a safe haven with people who love them,it is so so precious and you don't know how much until it is gone.

Along with - children are resilient, you know