To think MN is horrible about blended families?

[kungfullama]

I've seen so many posts recently that just leads to think MN sees blended families as second class somehow.

Threads where ex wives are behaving horribly and withholding contact but are being defended because 'they were left' so somehow have the right to pass their bitterness onto their kids.

Posters screaming LTB at the slightest bit of conflict between dc and stepparents as if conflict doesn't ever occur in traditional families too.

Insinuating that new partners are just flash in the pan 'boyfriends' even when the relationship is long term or they're married.

Blended families can be complicated and the dynamics might be slightly different. But I know for a fact my dc lives are so much better with their bio parents apart and made considerably richer with the involvement of their two loving stepparents. I don't see us as being lesser than a traditional family. Not sure why others do.

I just don't think that existing children in blended families benefit from the arrangement in any way and the negatives when they aren't working well or when they dissolve - asking them to give up not just a parent-like figure in their lives but sibling-like relationships too, is absolutely brutal.

MN in general is a pretty hateful place IMO.

Your children's opinions will change when they have children of their own.

You'd do well to listen to posters on here OP.

I think blended families have as much chance as a traditional family of being a shit show. I grew up in a blended family and genuinely I love my step parents so much and my life is definitely better for having them in it. It wasn’t always easy though when I was a child and at the time I wished they hadn’t been around. But I am a step parent now and it has been much harder than I thought it would be, for all of us. In an ideal world, people would only have kids with someone they can then stay with forever happily but that’s just not reality unfortunately. If my marriage broke down though, I wouldn’t be willing to bring a step dad into the mix. It is really difficult for children and I don’t think it does them any good.

Absolutely!

Yep, and imagine how awful it must be to live 50% of the time with a stepmother who openly hates you and is just counting down the days until she convinces your dad to stop seeing you and focus all his attention on “her little family”.

OP, read some threads started on here by unpleasant stepmothers, and ask yourself why other posters may think blended families often don’t work.

I am, but so are the parents who say their kids are happier in the blended family. And it’s a bit of a coincidence that all the behaviour and mental health problems for the kids I’m thinking about happened to start in the 6 months or so after the “blending” took place too.

I just think, while the adults seem to get on with it... new partner =new fulfilling relationship, shared costs and childcare ... and so on, the children are left to deal with it. They are on their own emotionally, as what they are experiencing isn't shared or truly understood by their parents.
Sometimes it works out OK, sometimes it doesn't.

How common is it? I can only think of 1 example who did this for a short period of time. I think two of (non-related!) kids ended up shagging one night as teenagers in the house. At the time I found the whole situation very confusing (I was a teenager) so I sort of disengaged from the drama of it all. I cannot imagine being happy about being forced to live with other random kids when I was a kid? But everyone is different.

When I was at primary school my mum had a boyfriend that me & my siblings hated. He was creepy, his house stank, his car stank, his kids were annoying. Our greatest fear was that mum would marry him. We didn’t dare say anything to mum, so I’m sure she’d have thought we were all happy happy, but boy were we relieved when they broke up.

She married my step dad when I was 15, he’s a good man and a great step dad, but despite that I think there’s no way she should have moved a virtual stranger (to us) into our house at that time. She couldn’t possibly have known how it would go, or the effect on us, but like with the creepy guy she was mostly interested in what she wanted.

I’m sure there are happy blended families out there, but the fact that kids don’t complain does not mean they’re happy.

My parents got divorced and remarried esch other and then divorced again so I've had all options growing up!
In my opinion it often only works really well when there's no other children involved. Being thrust in with dad's partners kids was challenging, we were all around the same age and it was horrible, we should have all got along but I was so jealous and resentful they got my dad all the time now and I only got him on weekends. My step mum also clearly hated us being there.
When my mum had partners it was never an issue as the man didn't have any other children and also she never moved them in and kept our family home. I think it can work but probably the kids have to be quite young. I do appreciate that was a big sacrifice my mum made to keep our lives stable until we grew older

Most of us from blended families are from parents that have parents that never divorced. They have no clue what it's actually like.

Especially as a girl having to live with a new man.

Op, are your parents divorced?

I know several blended families who are very happy. They’re civilised adults who work as a team to support the children.

How old are the children?

They won't have fully formed opinions on the situation until they look back with adult eyes. It can take them having children of their own to really see it too.

Because they don't work. It's like putting a square peg in a round hole. Someone will always feel unsatisfied, left out, irritated, etc. There are exceptions, obv, but that's all they are. IMO.

I'm a single mother, divorced when daughter was 3, she's 12 now. I haven't lived with another man since the divorce and not planning to. At least until she grows up and moves out. Neither she, nor me need the aggro and drama.

I do gave a partner, but we don't live together and don't encroach on each others' space. Home is for relaxation, it's a safe space where you can rest, recharge, be yourself, slob around, let go. I fully understand my DD not wanting some dude who is not her family member in her home, I wouldn't either if I'd be her.

I couldn't never love someone's children as my own, and the idlyl would wear extremely thin extremely quickly, should they be 'difficult'. And I'd always side with my own child over my partner/his child(ren). And frankly, I really couldn't be arsed playing families with children who are not mine. So all that said, I cannot expect a man think otherwise, therefore no 'blended families' for us.

One thing that makes me want to bang my head against the wall:

When a woman post on MN that her child has asked her not to move her new partner in, the answer is always "Tell them you don't care, he's moving in and that's that, you can't let a child run your life."

Then you get posters who insist that their children are completely happy to have a stepfather and dismiss anyone who warns them that those children may say otherwise when they grow up.

How the hell do people not make the connection? Children aren't telling their mothers how unhappy they are because their mothers have already outright told them they don't care! They've said point-blank that having a boyfriend/husband is more important to them to their own children's feelings, well-being, and even safety.

This is the best post on the thread so far.

My dad would say we were a successful blended family. As a child I would have agreed with anything if it had made life easier. As a now 40 something woman I've felt able to challenge and push back against my toxic step mother. She's been in my life for 30+ years and controlled access to my dad, who has hugely enabled the situation. Its been far from healthy or positive.

Despite being a step mum myself and having a step mum and a step dad, I'd say in my own experience only a very tiny proportion of blended families are actually healthy psychologically for all members. Most are deluding themselves. When the children are grown and independent of the situation they will be able to find their voice to challenge the IG fantasy family picture their parents have created.

I've now known enough families of all descriptions to understand that, really, the only people to judge whether a family is genuinely happy are the people within it - and even then, perspectives will vary. I don't think I could confidently make a judgement that almost any of the families I know, whether nuclear or blended, are truly happy. Whether or not they are functional, perhaps, but not whether they are happy. Interesting that so many pp seem confident in assessing this.

I know someone who moved her new boyfriend in and that decision drove her daughter out of her childhood home and to move in with her dad. I couldn't blame her. Imagine being a teenage girl, going through so much stuff and then you are forced to live with a man you are not related to.

Absolutely pisses me off that children from blended families are largely ignored! Op is defensive and determined that she's doing the right thing.

I've seen more failures than successes. It depends onthe parents mostly. Do they move the new family in because they the parents want to live together, or did the children come to love the stepfamily in the years before moving in together?

You can have a relationship without moving in together. Plenty of couples live apart until the children have become adults.

The biggest threat to any child is an unrelated adult living in their home. I saw a statistic the other day from maybe Jordan Peterson (or someone similar) saying that the risk of child abuse goes up a 100 fold when an unrelated adult moves into the home.

I think it's impossible to form a full judgement. You can't re-run three versions of a childhood for the same person - one in which they stayed in their nuclear family, one where they grew up with a single parent and one where they were in a blended family.

It's so easy to scapegoat the notion of the blended family. We don't know if the alternatives would have been any better... or worse.

I know people who call their step parents 'mum' or 'dad' and have a better relationship with one of them than with the bio parent. I also know people who hated being in a blended family. I find it difficult to draw a conclusion that blended families are a 'bad thing'. It surely depends on the blended family and the individuals involved.

What does having children of your own change, in terms of looking back? Genuine question.

I can’t believe the negativity spouted here!!

Blended families can be absolutely beautiful, and when they are, they are far far better than any family living in a toxic household with both biological parents.

i do think there is something in the kids meeting eachother when young though. I think is far easier to integrate then, rather than introducing older children.

I remarried and we first introduced the kids when they were 1,5 and 7 and I can honestly say everyone is very happy and loves eachother very much. Of course there are moments, as in all families, but I can say without doubt, for us it works and the kids lives are far better than they would have been like should I have stayed with their father or been on my own.