Jan. 26--It can take as long as 10 years to truly blend a stepfamily, marriage and family experts say in a fascinating article in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, and a good chunk of that time should be spent staying out of each other's way.
"Each spouse needs to parent his or her own children," writes columnist Elizabeth Bernstein. "Dads cannot subcontract out the parenting of their children to their new wife. And stepparents must always take the nurturing, 'good cop' role with their stepchildren."
(Always?)
"The way you get in with kids is by being as supportive as you can be," William J. Doherty, a marriage and family therapist and professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota, tells Bernstein. "They should see you as the nice parent."
When they see you at all, that is.
Some couples, experts say, arrange a "living apart together" arrangement. Rob and Heidi Sykes, the couple profiled in Bernstein's piece, bought a townhouse near their primary home so Heidi Sykes and her three daughters could have their own space when the family wasn't gathered for vacations, movie nights and the like. They lived separately for four years.
"It was one family under two roofs," Rob Sykes says.
Here's the part where the divorce statistics for second marriages pop into my head.
My husband and I are a few months shy of three years into our blended arrangement -- he and I, his son, now 15, and my kids, now 10 and 6, moved in together in July 2013. We are nowhere near having everyone's temperaments and needs figured out, especially because they continually change, as human temperaments and needs do.
But a few of my guiding philosophies run counter to the advice in Bernstein's piece.
I agree that parenting shouldn't be subcontracted out to the new wife (or new husband), and stepparents certainly need to be, above all, loving, nurturing forces in their step-kids' lives. But stepparents are still grown-ups, and grown-ups are in charge.
When I hire baby sitters, I look for people who are kind and fun. But my children still have to obey them. When my kids are at my parents' house, there is much laughter and hugging. But I still want my kids to honor their rules about where they can eat snacks and when they should take off their shoes and all the rest.
I don't think it does kids any favors to give them the impression that their biological parents are the only people they have to listen to. I think if another adult is washing their clothes and preparing their meals and carpooling them to activities, that adult gets to do a little parenting.
Now, it's a different story if your spouse's parenting style is harsh or unhealthy. But that raises questions about why you would invite him or her into your life -- and, more importantly, your children's lives -- in the first place.
Obviously there are a million variables in and among blended families. Age of the children at the time of the blending, how often they're with their stepparents, how often (if ever) they're with their other biological parents, whether any of the children has special needs and so on.
Rob and Heidi Sykes had three kids each from previous marriages, and wildly different parenting styles. Continuing to butt heads over rebelling, resentful children seemed more detrimental to their marriage than living under separate roofs temporarily, it appears.
"We deblended our family to save it," Rob Sykes tells Bernstein. "And when we did that, I was no longer the bad guy who negated their ability to do what they wanted to do. I was someone who loved them and wanted what was in their best interest."
It's a fascinating decision. I'm not sure I would make the same one.
But it speaks to the countless complications that spring up in blended families, which describes a whole lot of us. Forty percent of new marriages in the U.S. are remarriages for one or both partners, Bernstein points out, and a little more than 40 percent of the U.S. population has at least one step-relative.
I'm grateful for any and all conversations about the realities of that, even if I don't plan to adopt all the advice.
hstevens@tribpub.com
