The Trend of Blended Families

With divorce becoming more and more acceptable in today's society, blended families continue to be created. A blended family is created when divorcees marry one another. What happens is that the children that were born to the previous marriage end up being forced into becoming step-siblings.

Even though divorce is accepted by society, it continues to be a very hard transition for the children involved. Not only are they upset about their own parents splitting up, they are also upset that one of their parents is deciding to create a life with someone else. Most children of divorce hold their hopes high, for their parents to reunite. Even years after the divorce, that hope can still be present.

My parents divorced over 19 years ago, and both of my parents have been remarried. Along with stepparents, my brother, sister and I gained 2 stepbrothers, and 2 stepsisters, which we never asked for. For years there was great tension between the newly formed families.

I think the biggest ordeal that a blended family has to overcome, and work on, is treating each other equally, especially in the case of children. I don't know how many times there were obvious differences in the treatment of true family and step family. For example, my mother and son always had a pretty good relationship. My son was her first grandchild, so it made their relationship even better. Immediately after she got married, everything changed in their relationship. She no longer wanted to spend time with him, and he grew to resent her, and at times I did as well.

Many times in a blended family one is made to feel inferior. The best advice I can come up with is to just remember that your parents continue to love you. Often times they may seem like they love you a lot less than they used to, but this is only due to the fact that they have more people to spread their love to.

If you are a parent in a blended relationship, you should strive to make sure that all of your children are treated equally, with the same rules as everyone else. Make sure that your stepchildren realize that you are trying to develop a better relationship with them and that you want everything to be fair. Make sure your children know that you love them just as much as you always have and that having more people in the family can actually be a good thing.