A message of hope for blended families, from a couple who have been in the trenches – and made it.
Blending a family is far more messy and complicated than any television show portrays. Beyond the Brady Bunch is a heart book, not a how-to book. Christians who find themselves in the midst of step-family life often feel hopeless and far from God, struggling with grief and unforgiveness. From personal experience the authors have found that all the how-to steps in the world don’t work if there isn’t first a heart change. Speaking with honesty and vulnerability they share their own mistakes and how God dealt with their hearts. The book will help stretch hearts, minds and homes past the image of “perfect” and another “happily ever after” into the hope of God’s promise to restore, heal and rebuild.
Read more…Beyond the Brady Bunch: Hope and Help for Blended Families
Don and Karen Jones expected the children in their blended family to giggle and whisper back and forth in their bunk beds, just like the kids on the Brady Bunch used to do-but it was quickly apparent that things at their house were anything but Brady. Mrs. Jones’ twelve and fifteen year old daughters teemed with daily resentment. Mr. Jones’ six year old girl always felt left out. The children argued constantly. One afternoon when the older girls were in the yard, kicking a soccer ball, their younger step-sister felt jealous. After a few taunts and hair pulls, the argument escalated, and the teens locked their step sister in a closet.
Mrs. Jones knew that her step-daughter had provoked the others: “I don’t usually jump in, but once it gets physical, I feel like it’s important to intervene,” she notes. So, she freed her step daughter, and called all three girls into the living room: “You don’t have to love each other, but you do need to show common courtesy. Hair-pulling and locking each other in a closet are out,” she recalls telling them.
Read more…When Siblings Are Rivals – Part 11: Step-families | Psychology Today
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A groundbreaking and truly stepmother-centered way of understanding the tensions that seem to define relations between women and their stepchildren
Half of all women in the United States will live with or marry a man with children. And what woman with stepchildren has not—in order to defuse the often overwhelming challenges of the role—referred to herself as a “stepmonster”?
As Hope Edelman does in her book for motherless daughters, Wednesday Martin’s empowering and original Stepmonster unlocks the emotional mysteries of why stepmothers think and feel and act the way they do. Martin draws upon her own experience as a stepmother, interviews with other stepmothers and stepchildren, and fascinating insights from literature, anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology to reveal the little-understood realities of this most demanding role.
Stepmonster illuminates the harrowing process of becoming a stepmother, considers the myths and realities of being married to a man with children, counteracts the cultural notion that stepmothers are solely responsible for the challenges they encounter, identifies the “Five Step-Dilemmas That Create Conflict,” and considers the emotional and social challenges men with children face when they remarry.
Finally, in an unexpected twist, Martin shows why the myth of the Wicked Stepmother is our single best tool for understanding who real stepmothers are and how they feel.
Read more…Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do
