Is there a recipe for ‘blending families’

Although we are all familiar with single parent families, step families and traditional families perhaps the phrase ‘blended family’ doesn’t come so easily. So what exactly is a blended family, and how can anyone becoming part of one make the transition as smooth as possible?

Sixty-five percent of remarriages include children from a previous relationship, so the number of families joining together to make a new group increases all the time.

Perhaps Cinderella’s dad and the father of Snow White have a lot to answer for. We all know about the wicked stepmother and wicked stepsisters. We know about the jealousy and intrigue. But what about the father? What was he doing to ensure the happiness of his child in the new family unit? He seems to be a very distant figure unaware of the cruel family dynamics of these story-book blended families.

Any single mother or father with a child knows the difficult path of introducing a new partner. There is a minefield to negotiate. When to judge the moment to be right? When to decide that this is a ‘special someone’ who should be allowed to meet the children, long before any decision is made about actually living together as a family? A parent who has seen his or her child react with pain or anger at having to meet the ‘other’ parent’s new partner, may be especially wary about letting the child know that he or she has also fallen in love with someone new. And yet this happens. For someone who has been the reluctant partner in a divorce it can be a very bittersweet pill to offer the child. A new love, but one tempered with concern about how the children will react to sharing you again.

Of all the questions which come my way, How to balance a new ‘blended’ family? is top of the list. There are often high hopes that two children of the same age will become close friends, that an only child will relish the idea of having siblings, or that the merging will take place without anyone’s nose being put out of joint.

Many parents are bewildered to find that their children who seemed quite happy about outings with another adult and his or her children, become suddenly angry and sullen when a marriage is announced. Reality seems to kick in, and then the trouble begins. When I wrote my book Making and Breaking Families I devoted a chapter to Second Weddings because I believe that the way the breakup of the original family came about and how it was handled, and the way the union of the couple is celebrated, goes a long way to setting the agenda, for good or bad, with the new blended family.

I was amazed to be told of the different ways that couples arranged their weddings. The attitudes to how the children, of both parents, are considered is an important pointer to the smooth running of the new family. It is essential for everybody to be consulted and plans to be made for the arrangements of the wedding day and after that the continuing family life. One bewildered father of four adolescents (two of his and two of hers) said he could understand why families were called ‘blended’ because he felt for the last six months’ as if he had been whirled around in a blender: life had been so hectic.

It is not unusual for a couple with children from previous relationships to want to have a child of their own, in the hope that somehow a new baby will truly bind the family together. But voices were loud in expressing their opinions about this: ‘Wait until you are truly bonded as a new family’ ‘Be careful, a new baby can upset the fragile applecart.’ The consensus of opinion was that time needs to be given to joining the two families together. Time is needed for the different personalities to find a way to ‘jell’. However well the children, and the couple, may have got along in the courtship days it is only by living with someone that you can truly begin to know them. Be prepared for the new family to have plenty of teething troubles, and arguments over tidying up, money, noise, discipline and all the everyday ups and downs of family life can get highlighted if a division springs up between ‘your’ children and ‘my’ children’. Rules, and compromises, need to be worked out.

But remember you and your partner have decided to blend together to make a fresh start and a new family. If love is there, and plenty of patience and understanding, then together you will know that you have been blessed with a second chance. Take it.

© Jill Curtis 2001