Blended families don't work

[picklesandcucumbers]

This comes up time and time again.

It riles me off when I see another thread on here saying "my family life is falling apart, kids and DP not getting along"

Yeah

Blended families don't work

There's a minority that do - but they're an exception

If you get into a relationship with someone and you've got kids, expect it to go badly

Anyone find another thread about kids and DP not getting along, just signpost them here....

I know lots of blended families and none seem happy. There is always an argument between the children or child and step parent.
I couldn't think of anything worse if I split up than to get with a man who has children. Unless they are grown adults. My two are hard enough without anymore grief.

I hear you on nesting BUT

I think nesting often doesn’t work for the following reasons:

1. One parent is toxic/ abusive so will sabotage the arrangement or use it as a way to keep controlling the other partner.
2. One parent has vastly different ideas about how a house should be kept than the other - and as at point (1) someone doesn’t want to compromise.
3. The parents are the ones who do the work around the house, keep things in a certain way, neither can make the house “a home” for the children in the way they’d like to. So the children almost feel like they live in their parents’ workplace where they go when they are “on duty”.

Often the fundamental irony is that the children are supposed to accept and welcome the new partner/ family and just “ put up “ when the whole situation has come about in the first place because the adults couldn’t do that themselves. I think it’s hard to escape that elephant in the room and while children might not articulate it, at some level they absorb the hypocrisy.

Needs to be more protection for children. You shouldn't be allowed to move strangers into your home where children are concered.

Lots of the abuse and murder of children is carried out by a boyfriend/girlfriend/Step parent.
Poor kids what say do they have when an abusive bully moved in?

If we paid more attention to this, we might have less children murdered

Those in the back seem to be hard of hearing. Mines working, it’s working for me.

teachers and step children… it doesn’t work even when the parents think it does 😂😂

It’s not correct to say that they never work. They can and they do, albeit quite rarely.

However. Adults are very rarely honest about the amount of hard work and commitment on all sides that it takes to make it work, and even less frequently willing to put that work in over many years. It is also only rarely in the best interests of the children to blend families.

@girlfriend44 sadly plenty of children are murdered by their biological mother or father. Perhaps you would advise screening people before they are allowed to procreate?

They work when the adults concerned put the children first. Perfectly happy in my blended family here :)

So I was supposed to “put up” with my rapist and stay with him? And DP supposed to with his ex who cheated on him many times? Now that sounds like a harmonious set up (sarcasm)

Incidentally, my two older girls don’t see their dad (they refer to him as Sperm Donor) and they love my DP. He’s there for them, picks them up, drives my 18 year old to uni sometimes, was there to help her move in on moving day. She rings him randomly, asking “dad” questions.

We make it work. Our kids are our priority. We work together, as a team.

If the exes involved have a solid relationship and actually act like adults then it can work really well. My brother and his ex coparent so well and are good friends. Both have remarried and all the kids are treated equally and there's no tension or arguments. There's no awkwardness at family events. I know a few people who struggle with being a stepparent and the common denominator is that the exes are constantly bickering and unable to get along.

Huh??

It’s not blended families that are the problem. It’s the amount of shit people out there (usually blokes) and people (usually women) not having good radars for shitty behaviour.

My parents broke up as my dad met someone else. Was my mum meant to not have any more kids or a partner ever again?

She unfortunately met a shithead briefly and that didn’t work. But then she met my stepdad and he is amazing. I am actually closest with him out of most people in my family. So it’s not blended families that don’t work, it’s just that a lot of people will still crack on with shit people and not consider the kids. I wouldn’t have any siblings if it wasn’t for blended families either.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30247060/

@PilgorTheGoat children are 16% more likely to be killed by a stepfather than a biological father.

It is true that non-bio adults pose a risk, and acknowledging that is part of being a responsible parent.

But it's not as simple as new stepparent = abuse.

Abuse can only happen if the biological parent is already an abuser and enables, permits or encourages the other adult to abuse the child.

So all those children we deal with in schools who are negatively affected by enforced blending are to be disbelieved…because you say their experience is rubbish? Parents not acknowledging their feelings because they want to believe it’s working…is that rubbish? The majority of children in blended families are not happy, these are issue we deal with every day, I assure you it’s not rubbish just because you were one of the lucky few.

@LousySpice I agree we make selfish choices. But there is a huge difference between insisting on pizza for tea even though your kids hate it. And starting a new relationship your child has no say over. I remember telling my mum that I didn't like my potential step dad. She told me that she wouldn't marry him if I didn't want her to and that I came first. As a 10 year old i felt it would be selfish of me to say she shouldn't marry him so I didn't say anything. she married him And it was shit.

No one has suggested staying with abusive partners

No one has suggested staying in very unhappy relationships what has been suggested is that some will too quickly walk away and one to the next relationship

I’m not @GertrudePerkinsPaperyThing but I do date.

I just don’t really commit to anything serious because I personally do not feel blended families work.

I was the child in two when both of my parents remarried - my dad to a woman with kids and my mum to a man without kids.

Whilst my life with my mum was better as it was less complicated, the teen years with my stepdad were difficult because he just wasn’t emotionally conmected to us. When we fell out with our mum as I guess all teenagers do, he exacerbated the situation by being unable to be objective because in his eyes it was almost as if two women were arguing with his wife. He didn’t know us as children and had no relationship with us beyond being the kids of his wife.

And no one has answered all the posters who said
'Why do you have to live together?'

Same reason anyone choose to live together? Finances, wanting to be close, wanting to have more children. Tried and tested living separately and feel ok moving in.

A good question is why do people rush into living together?

@LousySpice so how did your existing children figure in that decision making process? Do you not think they ever just wanted to have some time with just you, their mum?

Exactly!
Plenty of posters are saying “it’s not fair, why can’t I have a boyfriend, why should I be miserable just because my first marriage failed”. That’s not the point. Have boyfriends, have 100 boyfriends, have casual boyfriends, serious boyfriends, or girlfriends, whatever. Just don’t assume you have to move them in!!

@Ethnography I knew a girl in school who was just like that!! Funny thing is her parents were still together (and still are) and she had 2 brothers and 1 sister. So what does that tell us?…nothing…it tells us nothing.

Yup, agreed. People should not be so quick to get divorced.

@MumblesParty exactly. No kid has ever asked for a stepdad or stepmum, as harsh as that sounds.