How often have you heard of empty nesters, either divorced or widowed, falling in love and marrying and thinking to yourself, "how fabulous and how perfect?" After raising a family, it's now their chance to have a dream relationship, where they can focus exclusively on each other and nurture their marriage without having to deal with raising each other's kids.
Younger single parents who remarry face the typical blended family stressors of co-parenting responsibilities, transitioning kids, dual family finances, step-sibling rivalry, and ex-spouse issues, all of which deplete the energy of the adult relationship, and leave little chance for the couple to focus on each other.
As a matter of fact, most step family literature is geared towards younger blended families because it's assumed older re-marrieds avoid the usual blended family issues and are perfectly poised to concentrate on each other and enjoy healthy extended blended family relationships that only add to their combined happiness. It sounds too good to be true, and usually, it is.
In their break-through book,
Step Wars, Grace Gabe, M.D. and Jean Lipman-Blumen, Ph.D. describe the interesting and unique dynamics of the adult step family. After analyzing in-depth interviews and focus groups among a representative cross section of remarried parents and their adult children, the authors have written a seminal book about the real story of step families and adult children.
Gabe and Lipman-Blumen have outlined five prevalent anger issues, called the Five Furies, that surprisingly, both the parental couple and adult children share. Although these widespread fears and concerns are crucial factors in stepparent relationships, there are differing views about who causes the problems.
1.
Fear of Abandonment and Isolation. The fear of losing a relationship that you depend on for emotional and/or monetary support.
2.
Fidelity to Family. Worry about changes in loyalty, especially when members of the original family worry that the parent will lose his or her old loyalty after remarriage, when stepchildren feel the new partner's family has too much influence, or when either spouse feels there is too much loyalty to the old family.
3.
Favoritism. Worry about who is number one in each family and whose wishes are given top priority.
4.
Finances. Anxiousness among adult children that they may lose money or property that they were expecting, and for parents, the suspicion that their adult children are more concerned about their inheritance than about the parent.
5.
Focus on Self to the Exclusion of Others. Anger that a parent or an adult child is concerned only about her or himself and no longer cares about others.
Step Wars highlights a multitude of actual relationship examples that illustrate the major issues between adult stepchildren, their parents and stepparents, and provides practical and encouraging advice and strategies for parents and adult children alike.
About the Author
Sheena Berg lovingly writes articles for the StepHeroes
stepparenting advice newsletter. She will be interviewing Doctors Grace Gabe and Jean Lipman-Blumen September 30,9 pm EST. Submit your question to them by visiting: http://www.BlendedFamilyExperts.com. Subscribers to the StepHeroes Newsletter will be invited to attend the interview for free. To subscribe, visit http://www.About-Blended-Families.com
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