A great deal of research has been done to understand how children cope with being part of a blended family. The apparent failure of 60 per cent of re-married families to succeed as a unit suggests that many blended families do not cope, and often fail to make the necessary adjustments. While research indicates that the biggest cause of failure in re-married families is the impact of ex-spouses and co-parents, a close second cause of failure is unresolved problems that arise with regard to the children.
The good news is that research has also shown that children growing up in blended families that stay together successfully can become more resilient than other children who have not had the opportunity to grow and learn in a challenging family environment. This means that despite the factors that may prevent a child from adapting to the new situation, if they do make the transition, indications are that your child will be more resilient in the future. Not only that, but they’ll be better equipped to manage the emotional demands of relationships that will no doubt be part of their life experience in the future.
As parents, it is essential to first develop an understanding of the way things look from the children’s perspective. We cannot presume that the addition of a new parent and, perhaps, step-siblings, will be greeted with enthusiasm, despite the obvious benefits to the step-parents. The blending of a family often brings a degree of financial relief, as two households and their costs merge. It may also provide more child-care, and allow more attention to be given to the children. The sharing of parenting tasks gives each parent the necessary relief from their duties to allow them to spend more time seeing to their own needs. Chores around the house are shared, and responsibility generally lessens. The joy of finding love again and having the on-going emotional support of a partner can make the prospect of blending families very attractive for the parents.
So let’s see which challenges the children may find it most difficult to cope with, and how we can help them in dealing with them. Starting with a few quotes from youngsters in that situation, we’ll work systematically through various coping and adapting strategies.
‘No one asked me what I wanted. All of a sudden she and her kids just moved in, and my dad expects us to be a family. They are not my family.’ Bruno, aged 10.
‘I don’t like living with them. His kids are lazy, and don’t help my mom.’ Abeda, aged 11.
‘I hate my step-sister … she is the most irritating person on the planet.’ Amanda, aged 10.
‘I don’t mind. We have a much bigger garden now, and we have DSTV.’ Sipho, aged 10.
‘I can’t stand it when they hug and kiss all the time. It’s gross!’ Dana, aged 14.
‘Why should I have to share my bedroom now? It’s not fair.’ Ntsiki, aged 12.
‘Things are much better since my mom got married again. She is happier now, and we have more money.’ Crystal, aged 16.
Do you know how your child feels about being part of the blended family?
How do you think your child would express these feelings in words, as these others have done?
‘I like my step-father, but he tries to take my father’s place, and that is not OK with me. I don’t like it when he puts his arm around me in front of my friends.’ Jaco, aged 13.
‘I have to be like two people – one when I’m at my dad’s house, and one when I am at my mom’s.’ Elsbeth, aged 15.
‘I like having a proper family now.’ Marco, aged nine.
‘Sometimes it is OK, and sometimes it is not OK.’ Khanya, aged 12.
As a parent, your task is not necessarily to make your child happy, but to provide a secure and stable environment where their best interests are at heart. The decisions about how their lives would be arranged may have been determined in consent papers after a divorce, or by economic factors, or perhaps older children have played their own part in the process. Whilst nothing is set in stone, the ways in which you have arranged your lives are perhaps fixed now, at least for the time being. These decisions may be hard for your child to accept. They probably did not want things to change, even if you or your child’s wellbeing was at risk.
Presumably you have established that the environment in which your child is now living is safe, secure and relatively stable, where their basic needs are being provided for and where they are protected from any form of physical, emotional or sexual abuse. Are there any reasons to believe that the environment in which they are living now is unhealthy for them in any way? If so, you may need to revise your decisions and find a way to improve your child’s situation.
Once you have established that you have their best interests at heart, you can reasonably assume that your children can now begin to make the necessary adjustments to living in a blended family. However, they are going to need ongoing support and focused attention in order to deal with the challenges of living in the new family.
Do any of the children have any special needs that may prevent or make the adjustment more challenging than for the others? Have any of them experienced trauma in any form that may impede the adaptation process? Perhaps they have challenging personality traits, learning difficulties, or mental or physical disabilities? If this is the case, you may find that you need to put additional support in place to ensure that your child has the necessary help. Resources you can access for this kind of help may be your child’s school, your church/ synagogue/mosque, other family members such as grandparents or aunts, professional facilities, or individuals who can give you and your child the assistance that is needed. A list of available resources is provided at the back of the book.
A major factor which will determine your child’s ability to make the adjustments necessary to blend with the new family is the age of the child and/or their stage of development. Research indicates that younger children make the adjustment to changes in the family more easily, and are more likely to accept step-parents into the home. However, older children will need to deal with some complex issues around their and the blended family’s sense of identity.
Teenagers may have the more challenging time, and are likely to demonstrate their distress in a range of possible behavioural problems. It is important to note that the presence of teenagers does predispose blended families towards a break-up. This is because the teenager is at an age when they are trying to loosen emotional ties with the family and create their own self-identity and independence, at just the same time as the blended family is attempting to create new and lasting bonds together and create an identity for itself as a family. Remember that some decisions may be difficult for teenagers to accept.
‘My son seemed to drift away from me. He was 13 when I re-married, and I don’t think he feels like he belongs in the family any more. He prefers go to his dad for the holidays. It breaks my heart.’ Lucy, mother to Darwin, aged 16.
Older teens may adjust more easily if they have developed their self-identity and have a strong peer support group. For a teenager to develop a coherent self-identity, they usually require stability, continuity and a firm framework within which to explore their sense of self. Teenagers also need to create their own identity by letting go of some of the emotional ties that bind them to the family, and in so doing slowly become more independent.
However, this may be at odds with the goals of a blended family, which are about attempting to create new and lasting bonds together and create a sense of identity as a family.
This role-confusion can create problems for the teenager, as the achievement of family unity may dominate the landscape, preventing the teenager from developing his or her own individual sense of autonomy. Alternatively, the teenager’s attempts to break away may prevent the blended family from achieving its aim of coming together.
‘My oldest son never really integrated into our new family. He was 16 when I re-married, and he did not want to join us on the outings and holidays that made us feel like a family.’ Louisa, mother to Juanita, aged 12, and step-mother to Brittany, aged 10.
Issues around sexuality may come up as the teenager feels usurped by any evident sexuality that is being expressed by the parent and new partner, creating shame or confusion in the teen.
‘It’s gross when they kiss and hug each other. They don’t act like parents should.’ Tom, aged nine.
‘I don’t fit into their new ‘perfect’ family. I don’t want to do the things they do. They don’t understand that I have my own life. I don’t want to hang around with a kid step-sister. It should be me having a baby, not my mother.’ Maria, aged 17.
Research helps us, in that we now have some indications of areas and situations around which aspects of blended family life can cause the most difficulties, and which tools may be the most effective for dealing with these problems.
Which of the following commonly challenging adjustments has your child had to deal with?
‘It’s not fair that I am not allowed to stay up and watch CSI with my step-brothers. I used to be the oldest, and now it feels like I’m the baby.’ Andrea, aged 13.
Now consider each of the factors noted above, and examine in turn whether there is anything you can do to make it easier for your child to manage the changes.
Here are some examples:
Are there any challenges for your child that you can do absolutely nothing about?
How can you make it easier for your child to manage these unavoidable changes?
Does your child know that you understand how difficult all this may be for them?
‘I felt so hopeless not being able to protect my daughter from being forced to spend weekends with her dad and his new wife. I had to just trust that she would find a way to deal with it, even though she hated it so much. It helped that I would let her talk about it when she came home, and I tried not to criticise her dad and make it worse. She is still so angry with him for leaving us. All I can do is tell her that I hear her.’ Francesca, mother to frances, aged 12.
Research has shown that the primary difficulty children have after parental separation or divorce involves the sense of loyalty they may have towards each parent. This is likely to increase when a new family has been created, and the child has to make the decision to emotionally join the new, blended family. It may feel like they are betraying their other parent, especially if that parent is displaying disapproval, sadness or anger towards the new circumstances. You child may fear that something will be lost or severed in the bond with the other parent.
‘I sometimes feel guilty because things are so happy now with my step-dad, and my step-sister, Jani, is my best friend. I think my mom is lonely by herself.’ Bo, aged nine.
Parents are rarely able to totally protect their children from the extent of interpersonal conflict that can arise between themselves and their ex-partner after a separation. After all, conflict in some form or another is probably why the separation happened in the first place. So it is not hard to understand why ex-partners find it so difficult to co-parent without friction.
However, every disagreement or altercation that your child is exposed to seemingly splits him or her in two, leaving the child to deal with confusing and sometimes devastating feelings of fear, sadness, guilt, anger and even hopelessness. Ensuring that your child is not exposed to any conflict between you and the child’s other parent needs to be your top priority.
Just in case you chose to ignore that last sentence: Your top priority is to ensure that your child is not exposed to any conflict between you and your child’s other parent.
On a gentler note, remember that no one is perfect. There will be times when you may spill over and say things to your children that you regret. Your task at these times is to find a way to own your behaviour, and to apologise to your children, reminding them that the conflict is not their fault. Seeing you make mistakes and then take responsibility for them, even make amends, is an important lesson for your child.
Another common difficulty that your child may experience has to do with the fear that your new partner will somehow replace your love for them. Now that they can see that their fantasy that you and their other parent might get back together has been shattered, your child may feel angry towards you or your new partner. Ironically, they can also become very fearful if they are exposed to friction between you and your present partner, imagining that this relationship may also break up, thereby leaving them in a broken family once again.
Many of your child’s feelings may be ambivalent; i.e. they may like your new partner, but at the same time fear that doing so is betraying the other parent. They may be enjoying the benefits of the blended family, and yet miss the way things were before. We have discussed the impact of any losses your child may have experienced. Your child may be reluctant to trust the relationship and its future, and not wish to invest their emotions in it. Your child may even feel guilty, imagining that they caused the demise of your previous relationship, and fear doing the same thing again.
Confusing feelings of fear, hurt, loss and sadness, guilt, anger and resentment make a potent package that can manifest itself in disruptive behaviour and/or physical and/or emotional withdrawal of your child.
Do you know how your child feels? Does your child know that you understand how they feel? Does your child feel heard? Are you connecting emotionally?
‘My mother never gets angry if I diss (disrespect; denigrate; speak badly about) my step-dad. She always lets me talk, and just listens. Then I feel a bit bad, as he’s not so bad, I suppose.’ Jaren, aged 17.
Your task as parents is to ensure that your child feels safe and secure. This warm, safe feeling may have been threatened by all the changes that have taken place. The children need to feel loved and important in your life. Opportunities for showing your affection and appreciation of your child may have been threatened as routines and schedules change. Your child also needs firm boundaries, which are maintained consistently. Recent changes may have left you less able to reinforce boundaries and follow through on consequences of action. Confusion may have arisen with regard to rules and limits on behaviour, and who will be enforcing them.
All these factors may be coming into play, and so presenting you with what might feel like an overwhelming responsibility. No one expects you, as a parent, to be able to totally protect your child from experiencing these feelings. The key to developing resilience in your child is to give him or her the opportunity to express these feelings and for you to do what you can to make things less challenging where necessary and, of course, possible. Allow yourself the time and space to consider all these factors, and focus on what seems the most pressing issue that your child needs help with. You cannot solve all your child’s problems; you can only do what you can.
One of the most effective ways to connect with your child is to spend time with them alone and without distractions. A walk in the forest, a long drive in the car, a bedtime story at night, a milk shake at the mall… all these and more provide opportunities for your child to express their thoughts and feelings to you. Try to reflect their feelings back to them, or summarise what they have said so that they know they have been heard. Very often, that is all they need.