Blended Families : Parents, Stepparents Will Be Tested By Heidi Williams

The most distinctive trait of American family life, then the trait that differentiates it from family life in other western countries, is sheer movement: frequent transitions, shorter relationships. Americans step on and off the carousel of intimate partnerships (marriages and cohabiting relationships) more often. Whether an American parent is married or cohabiting or raising children without a partner, she or he is more likely to change living arrangements in the near future than are parents in the rest of the western world. It is consequential and we should be concerned about it, both as parents and as a nation, because it may increase children’s behavioral and emotional problems. Simply pu, some children seem to have difficulty adjusting to a series of parents and parents’ partners moving in and out of their home. It is not just parental divorces and breakups that are hard for children. Even transitions that bring a new partner or stepparent into the home can be difficult to cope with. Children whose parents have remarried do not have higher levels of well-being than children in lone-parent (a parent who is neither married nor living with a partner) families, despite the addition of a second parent. One reason is that new

Divorce is one of the most common happenings in the world experienced by children. Most children go through different adjustments to become comfortable with the fact that their parents are not together anymore. Children of divorced parents are prone to lifelong effects. Seventy-five to eighty percent of children have divorced parents and twenty-five percent of those children have serious social, emotional, or psychological problems for the rest of their life. Most adults think that it is best for parents to stay together for the sake of their child because having two parents in different households can become difficult for the child socially and academically.

The divorce rates nationally are just getting higher and higher year by year. The national average is that 50% of marriages end in divorce (mariage and divorce, 2015). Children who have divorced parents or parents who are going through divorce have more hard times. Some of the reasons of this are because, of the loss of the parent that they are not living

Divorce is common in the United States; remarriage is just as common. As a result many marriages result in a blended family. A family in which both of the parents have children from previous marriages. Often the blended family shares a permanent residence. Clair Cartwright and Kerry Gibson state in their 2013 report, The effects of co-parenting relationships with ex-spouses on couples in step-families, that in the United States in 2008, around 9% of households and around 12% of cohabiting households were blended families ( Teachman & Tedrow, 2008). A blended family is an excellent place to observe symbolic interaction theory.

American novelist, Barbara Kingsolver, in her excerpt, “Stone Soup”, taken from, High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never, recounts the outrageous view that society has on divorced families/homes. Kingsolver’s purpose is to impress upon readers that it is okay for families to stem away from the traditional, “Dad, Mom, Sis, Junior”, family. She creates a persuasive tone in order to get rid of stereotypes and judgments of marital issues held by her readers and society. Through the effective use of anecdotes, appeals, and passionate diction, Kingsolver establishes her claim that blended families can get through life happy and perfectly fine by themselves or with close friends and family.

The family dynamics in Max Apple’s “Stepdaughters” and Amy Tan’s “A Pair of Tickets” displays some of the issues that parents, stepparents and teenagers may or may not experience. A mother’s relationship with her children has a very unique connection, especially when it comes our daughters. Being a mother or stepmother is a problematical and rewarding experience: nevertheless, a mother’s love is unconditional. How do you except someone for his or her choices on being different? Is it easier for a step-parent to see things more clearly that the biological parent? Every family has its issues. When it’s a blended family with mothers, fathers, stepchildren and other family member, those issues can become more complex to understand.

This research proposes to explore the relationships that blended families experience and to determine what realistic expectations are, and how blended families use them when working towards becoming a well-functioning family unit. Like the average nuclear family, blended families are unique in their own way. In the article Couples Considering a Blended Family, it is stated that families are to evade the ideal expectations for a nuclear family as one would for a blended family (Fogarty et al., 2006). With this in mind, this research will examine the findings to detect what realistic exceptions are and how much do they differ than those of a nuclear family when looking to create a stable union. While looking to determine what is to be considered a realistic expectation and how that reflects for all blended families; this research will further dissect several articles as researchers examine different factors that tie into becoming a blended family. With several types of blended families in the world, this research will also explore the relationship differences within the types of blended families, and how this can further help researchers when looking into the expectations and outcomes of creating a family bond.

Each year as families are progressing to be built there are more familes decreasing. The online database “The Effects of Divorce In America” connects to how many children will grow to see there parents divorce before the age of 18. “Mounting evidence in social science journals demonstrates that the devastating physical, emotional, and financial effects that divorce is having on these children will last well into adulthood and affect future generations”. This problem that is occurring with children being involved in divorces is causing the world to be kept at a low with violence and education. Which is allowing behavioral effects and the rate of divorces to be kept at a high. With the lowering of children having families also only “42 percent of children aged 14 to 18 live in a “First Marriage” family”. Having such high rates with divorces, child influence is a major factor when separating.

Although blended families will probably never be considered “traditional”, they are becoming more common every year. Some common myths about stepfamilies are that children of divorce are considered damaged. Some children do have problems adjusting to a new family. They may feel resentment for new

Handling a blended family could be very challenging even for step parents who have a great relationship with your stepchildren. I think this week’s movie clip "The Scoop on Blended Families" offers realistic guidance from teens that have experience what it’s like to live in a blended family and how they have adjusted to their new step family. All family sometimes struggles to be happy, but blended families often face greater obstacles than others. For example, the quality of the relationship between stepparents and stepchildren cause a great impact on the level of happiness of a blended family. Loyalty to biological children and know how to discipline also add significant complications. This movie could be very helpful and educational to anyone

Blended families are created from a diverse sets of needs as a result of family life changes, such as divorce or death, and these changes result in situations where both adults and children find themselves living with step-family members stemming from both sides of the no longer intact family structure. Deal (2014), a leading author and marriage therapist, likens the blended family to a 3-D puzzle that a person is trying to complete without the benefit of instructions or even a picture as a point of reference. Each family is different in roles and their structure; however, most members desire healthy outcomes and basic principles for creating well-functioning family units.

More than ten million children live with a biological parent and a stepparent, according to the Census Bureau (Clark, 2008, p.82). In the new normal family, blended families consist of at least one parent bringing in one or more children into a relationship. Many of these couples also have children together. With the increase in numbers of blended families society has had to adapt in order to accept and work with the blended family model. This adaption occurs within the court system, school system and welfare system.

Specific thesis: The blended families and multicultural families become increasingly familiar. Understanding the basics of these families, is, therefore, critical for the family embraces its strengths in working through their differences. According to the research carried out by Michele Martin on the experience of the remarried couples in the blended families, differing loyalties cause various challenges for both biological and step-parents. Just like blended families, the shadow side of multicultural families can loom heavily in the relationships leading to various challenges. Chang and Chin-Chun (page 24, 2014) agrees that it is caused, primarily, by differences in culture and the differences in the cultures makes the parents face difficulties in raising children.

In recent decades the family institution has undergone a dramatic transformation focusing on increased divorce rates, cohabitation rates, and the number of children raised in step and single marital families (Amato, 2000; Bumpass & Lu, 2000; Graefe & Lichter, 1999). Due to the increase of divorce rates children move more frequently and deal with additional family transitions throughout their childhood (Brown, 2006). As these changes slowly increase, about 40% of kids who are born to wedded, two-biological- parent families have a higher chance of parental divorce prior to reaching adulthood(Amato,2000). In addition, these children will likely experience a multitude of family disruptions and transitions as parents decide to remarry and progress with new partners. The family atmospheres during these times are incredibly detrimental to the growth and development of these children (Sun& Li, 2009). Research studies show that parental divorce can compromise educational success for their children. Children in two-parent families have noticeably higher test scores than children who are in single parent families and also had lower chances of graduating from high school (Sun & Li, 2001). One of the rationalizations for the academic difficulty in divorced

Each and every day a child somewhere in the world is experiencing major changes within their family. One of those major changes is divorce or separation of parents. Divorce is “the action or an instance of legally dissolving a marriage”(Webster, 2011 p1). Today’s reality shows that couples only have one in two odds of remaining together. “ The U.S. Census bureau – involved in research about counseling children of divorce- estimating that approximately 50% of all American children born in 1982 lived in a single-parent homes sometime during their first 18 years. Mostly are due to divorce”(Children of Divorce, 2008 p.1). The rapid increase in divorce rates is a factor that has contributed to the large decline of the typical family. “Over 1