Maggie Scarf's Blog, page 3
September 24, 2013
Extending Family Boundaries in a Remarriage
In a first-marriage nuclear family, the members include the biological parents and their blood-related dependent children. In the case of remarriage, the new household will not be complete as it stands, for there will be a family member living outside it (the other biological parent) who must be included within the overall system. Therefore, there will be need to be a “boundary with a hole in it” to offer this parent easy access. This unclosed boundary can be fraught with difficulties.
The new...
September 17, 2013
Not Your Mother’s Brady Bunch
This post originally appeared on The Daily Beast.
When Debra, divorced and the mother of a pre-teen son and two older boys, married Jonathan, a widower and the father of two teenage sons and a pre-teen daughter, the weather smiled. They said their vows under a cherry tree, whose leaves were wafting downward around their shoulders. Their six handsome children seemed proud and excited, and I couldn’t help but think of the Brady Bunch and the film “Starting Over.” A line from Shakespeare ran thr...
Two Different Family Cultures United In One Remarriage
One of the vast challenges for remarried couples and their children is the uniting of two very different family cultures. Each party brings a history and hundreds of familiar habits, rules and routines to the newly created stepfamily. Agreement on everything from whether you can start eating before everyone sits down at the table to whether you hang your coat on a hook or throw it on the sofa to how much TV is permissible, are simply taken for granted by the biological parent and the children...
September 10, 2013
Special Parenting Issues Faced By Remarried Couples
The parenting tasks faced by remarried couples tend to move partners into intense and opposing positions. Before the new marriage, the mate’s single-parent family system has probably become too permissive – for over time families with this type of structure tend to become lax and to bend the rules. The step-parent wants to effect some changes and establish her or his authority, but the stepchildren ignore or defy her requests. They’ve suffered through too many demands for change already, and...
September 3, 2013
Understanding Your Stepchildren’s Losses
The fact is that the biological parent’s gain — a new romantic partner – is often experienced by his or her children as yet another in a series of family calamities. Remember that the stepchildren involved in remarriage situations have undergone early losses and often stressful transitions, such as a move out of the family home and to a strange school.
Also, the initial loss of the intact family – most likely due to divorce – has been experienced as a volcanic upheaval, inevitably bringing dee...
August 27, 2013
The Impact of Insider/Outsider Forces in Remarried Families
The number one challenge I encountered while researching The Remarriage Blueprint was this: When remarried couples have children from a previous marriage, they are highly likely to face the huge and shocking impact of what are called Insider/Outsider Forces.
These Insider/Outsider forces tend to shift the members of the couple into vastly different positions. The outsider (the stepparent) is struggling to enter the family system and make some changes of her own. The insider (the biological par...
August 21, 2013
Why Do Remarried Couples Face Unique Challenges?
It was Samuel Johnson who made the famous observation that second marriage ‘represents the triumph of hope over experience.’ How accurately does his jaundiced view of remarriage actually gibe with our present-day reality? The rate of divorce among remarried couples is 60% — higher than the divorce rate among first marriages, which is 50% and falling. However, remarried couples who stay together through the first five years have a much better chance of remaining married.
So, remarried couples f...
May 29, 2013
The Sleeper Effect
Happy stepkids can become conflicted about their stepparents during adolescence
Many stepparents think they can exile absent, out-of-touch, disengaged bio-parents into a forgotten past, while their stepchildren often feel as if they have a hole in their heart where the real dad or mom ought to be. This sense of loss and possibly a loyalty bind (“If I love my stepparent, will I lose whatever shreds of my true father that remain to me?”) frequently lies dormant until the stepchild reaches adoles...
April 22, 2013
Amazing Statistics
As sociologist Andrew Cherlin stated in his recent book The Marriage-Go-Round, “Both marriage and divorce contribute to the larger picture of a country (the U.S.) in which people partner, unpartner and repartner faster than they do in any other Western nation.” When it comes to intimate partnerships, Americans seem to be on speed.
After a divorce, as Cherlin notes, ex-spouses in this country seem to find a new partner more quickly than happens in other nations. They often form cohabiting (livi...
