Most Stepfamilies Are Not 'The Brady Bunch'

YOURS, MINE, OURS  

Despite the challenges they've confronted, the Baxters and Brattains say they've created strong, extended families in ways they never expected. When Randy's older daughter needed help taking care of her baby, Randy, Joy and Randy's ex-wife put aside any differences they had and worked together to make sure she had their support. "You can move through this," Joy says, offering advice to other stepfamilies. "You can work together as a collaborative parental group for the betterment of your kids."    

Joy and Randy's ex-wife have even talked to groups about dealing with ex- and current spouses when couples remarry. Joy and Randy also have created new family traditions with his ex. "We celebrate all of our holidays together, including her birthday, my birthday," he says, admitting that the situation was awkward at first.    

And the girls have forged a relationship with one another. When Joy's daughter was married in June 2006, Randy's younger daughter was her maid-of-honor and Randy gave her away. "There is a closeness there," he says. "It's not like they're estranged in anyway."  

Many couples who remarry embark on the relationship as if it were their first time saying “I do,” says Elizabeth Einstein, a marriage and family therapist in Ithaca, N.Y. Her Web site, stepfamilyliving.com, offers advice to remarried couples and their children. Such couples are often unprepared, she says. "They carry a trio of 'uns' into their remarriage. ... unresolved grief, unrealistic expectations and uninformed adults.” 

Unresolved grief can happen when couples remarry too soon after ending their previous marriages, says Einstein, co-author of “Strengthening Your Stepfamily” (Impact Publishers, $17.95). They haven’t done the emotional and psychological work to find out what went wrong with their previous marriage or to grieve the death of a partner. "Whatever people don't resolve gets dragged into this new family as emotional baggage," she says.    

Sometimes, even if adults examine the reasons for the failure of their previous marriage through counseling, for example, they don’t include their children, she says. Children need to grieve, too, and when they don't, that can lead complications when a new stepparent enters their lives. Troubles also can arise because of a couple’s unrealistic expectations, Einstein says. Couples may have an ideal image of a family in which stepsiblings get along like Marcia and Greg Brady did after the bunch settled into their split-level ranch-style house.   

A husband and his new wife may think that they’ll form a united front to discipline the children, for example. But that doesn’t always happen because biology can have a tighter hold on parents -- particularly if they feel guilty about the breakup of their previous marriage and the effect the split has had on the children.  Rude awakening  Joy Baxter thought her experiences as a child of divorce would help her bond with her two stepdaughters.    

But the girls weren’t interested. Until Joy came along, the girls had formed a closer relationship with their father, Randy. When Joy and Randy were married, the roles changed and his daughters probably thought they were losing their father, she says. “They really didn’t care what my experiences were,” she says, “so my wisdom was, ‘OK, so much for that.’”  

Seemingly minor steps Joy took in her new home life led to problems. She redecorated and moved furniture around the house as she took on the role of mother and wife. “That went over, like, forget it,” Joy says.  Then, there was her husband’s mail. She went to open it one day and her older stepdaughter, who’d become her father’s confidant until his marriage to Joy, told her she couldn’t. “It’s my dad’s,” Joy remembers her saying. 

“That was just something I didn’t get into with her,” she says. “That’s something her dad handled.”