Negative Effects Of Blended Families

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

Children and young people may find themselves going through a parental divorce or be part of a single parent family or they may have become part of a step family. They may

When a blended family grows in tolerance and gets and understanding of each other, the families gain respect and happiness with each other. This can cause the families to bond as one, putting all hate and past problems behind them. For example in chapters 23 - 27 Jake understands stephanie more and has tolerance towards her along with the other family members, bringing everyone closer together. Jake understands stephanie and knows what she's been through so he grows tolerance towards her, making the family a better

A family helps mold each person into who they eventually will become. The family is a guide for the success of a child's future. The stability of family creates a building block for how the child will progress throughout life. When parents divorce, the children are left with no stability causing them to lose basic concepts of childhood that may carry with them throughout life. Children of divorced parents have less success and happiness creating less productive citizens in our nation.

No matter what background you come from or how you were raised, family is extremely important. According to Malinowski, “Family is a necessary institution for fulfilling the task of child rearing in society”(Conley, 2013). Society has come a long way when it comes to family and it is much different than it was in the 1950’s. Not all families are nuclear families. A nuclear family is having a mother, father, and children that are all biological (Conley, 2013). This kind of family is what some would call more “traditional.” Today in the twenty first century it is getting harder and harder to find families that have actually stayed together. There are so many different kinds of families in today’s society, and more and more families are becoming blended families. A blended family is when two families come together (Conley, 2013). Many families today have single mons, single, dads, and even same sex parents. Family is not always the people that live in the same house as you, family also consists of extended family. An extended family is a network that goes beyond the main “nuclear” family (Conley,

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.

Having a new step-family is a big change for some children, this may affect their emotional development, as they

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.

There are various family backgrounds a child may come from. If they grow up in an extended family circle, in close relationship not only with their parents and siblings but also with their grandparents and cousins, they might feel more protected by the people who surround them and have more opportunities to develop socially through frequent interactions with their relatives. A bigger family tend to give moral values and education to the child that also supports their social and cognitive progress. However, coming from a smaller, nuclear family does not mean that the child is not provided with the same values, and vice versa a child can have negative experiences, e.g. feeling of being lost in a house crowded with their family members. Reconstructed or one-parent families also have the potential to work well if the child is able to accept the changes and see that e.g. their parents are happier separated or with their new partner. Still teaching staff has to give closer attention to those children coming from broken up families because if they are unhappy or cannot deal with the changed circumstances, their academic and social development will be affected negatively.

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.

I am a part of a blended family; therefore, I have a huge family with a number of sisters and brothers. At home with my mother and stepfather, Sidney, I live with my older brother, my younger sister, my older step-sister and younger step- brother in our home in Desoto. Twice a month I get the opportunity to visit with my dad in Dallas, the Bishop Arts District. When me and my other siblings go to visit with my dad we live with our step-mother, Stephanie, my younger sister and younger brother. I like having a blended family, I get more

Today, non-traditional families dominate the scene. The “normal” family is now uncommon in our society (Shields 562). Teachers have to be cautious when assuming every child has a mommy or daddy. Social workers must no longer be surprised when their clients are actually grandparents taking care of their grandchildren. Some children may have two daddies, or some only have a mommy. The list goes on. The culprit creating these unusual families is not always divorce and can include the death of a parent, unwed mothers, or single-sex parents (Shields 562). New families are not required to be biologically related. In an article about her non-traditional family, “Why Do We Marry?” Jane Smiley points out that people with numerous marriages or partners extend the definition of family (564). She writes, family dinners consisted of “me, my boyfriend, his daughter and son by his second wife, my daughters by my second husband, and my seven-year-old son by my third husband” (563, 564). Relationships begin to resemble several broken, rerouted, and

The percentage of blended families in America is, “68% of re-marriages involve children from prior marriages” (The bonded family 2015). A majority of the families that you see are blended in some way or form. 48 percent of marriage will end in a divorce (The bonded family 2015), which says that many children are living in blended homes. The article talks about how parents struggle with keep tabs on everything that is happen at school for their children. Another issues that the article talked about was how if both parents were remarried that there was a lack of communication between the two parents about the child. “The parents likely couldn’t problem-solve then, when they were married, so I can’t really expect them to now” (H. Williams, 2014). This is an issue because the children are being effected by the bad communication between the

Communication is a key factor in any family, but much more so in a blended family. Not only do the children need to communicate with their biological parents, they also need to feel comfortable communicating to with their stepparents. Communication between each set of parents is also essential. This leads us into co-parenting. Co-parenting is important because it keeps all the parents on the same page for discipline, activities, grades, and so forth. The rules and regulations that are enforced at one parent’s house need to be implemented at the other’s. If this does not happen, the children will learn how to “play” one parent off the other. Sometimes a child is more likely to confide in a stepparent because it is not their “real” mom or dad and they feel more comfortable. It is important that the step parent communicate to their spouse

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.