Single Parenting: Children Complicate Remarriage

    When two people remarry with one or both having children, they must double up their adjustment. They do not have the simple luxury of simply marrying as partners. They must commit to the complexity of learning to marry as parents too. This parental dimension to their union requires additional communication as they not only work out how to function as a couple, but as a family as well.      
     
If they want to keep their marriage together, they must keep their parenting together. They must never allow the child to become divisive of the marriage, to cause them to feel they are on opposing sides in the parental relationship. They must always stay on the same side, both wanting to support dialogue and decisions that preserve the union they have created. “We really see this situation differently, and that’s okay. Let’s talk until we understand each other’s point of view and work out a position we can both support.”     

THE ENTRY ADJUSTMENT

Although before remarriage, honeymoon harmony may have reigned among them all, everyone on best behavior, playing together but not living together; once they actually form a blended family unit, the easy-going shine quickly wears off and hard reality sets in. Now differences between stepparent and stepchildren over household conduct, between parent and stepparent over child raising, between parent and children over respect for the new marriage, begin to irritate family relationships causing conflicts as incompatibilities become hard to deny and harder to accept.
  
     “Your kids never pick anything up!”       

     “Our stepparent is a neat freak!”      

     “You care more about your new marriage than you do for us!”
 
     “Who comes first, your kids or me?”
 
     “Why can’t you both just get along for my sake?”
       
Complaints, complaints! Unhappily, the couple may wonder: “Why can’t everyone just enjoy each other’s company?” That’s a good question. Knowing some of the answers allows the couple to develop realistic expectations and make effective choices that can help remarriage with children work.


ADJUSTING TO REMARRIAGE         
    
It can frustrate a mother or father who remarries to have a child whose discontent threatens to spoil the happiness that parent seeks. “Why must you make things so difficult at a time when I want everything to go well?” At this point it is worth remembering that remarriage is an adult decision, selfishly made, at least for one of the parents, for his or her personal happiness. Like divorce, it is not a decision either made by the child or for the child’s sake. And it is not a decision that necessarily pleases the child who may feel jerked around by family changes over which he or she had no control.   “I liked things better living with my parent alone, and I still miss having Mom and Dad and us all together.”   

Divorce and remarriage both create a powerful conflict of interest between parent and child. These family changes are chosen to advance happiness of the parent, to some degree at the child’s felt expense.   


LIFE'S CHANGES  

The transition from parental marriage to parental divorce to parental remarriage creates a host of changes for the child to accept. Divorce ends living all together in the original family and creates separate households, while remarriage means learning to live on daily intimacy with a step parent whose ways are unfamiliar and who is in many ways a stranger. “It feels awkward living with some adult I hardly know.” 

Divorce and remarriage also alters caring. In the original family caring felt unconditional, then divorce questioned the constancy of caring (as parents lost love for each other), and now in remarriage caring from and for the step parent can feel conditional. “We like each other when we get along, and we don’t like each other when we don’t.”  

In the original family, both parents were fully there, divorce meant one parent was always gone, and now with remarriage the resident parent is only partly there. “I get less time with my parent now that my stepparent is here.”In the original family, the child assumed parents would always be together, divorce meant accepting they would never be together again, while remarriage means parent and stepparent will be together for the foreseeable future. “First they tear up the old family, then they expect me to get used to a new one!”  

In the original family, parents were the same as the child had always known them, with freedom from divorce each parent starts making personal changes, and with remarriage the influence of the stepparent changes how the mother or father has always parented. “What I hate most about your remarriage is the way you’ve changed!”  And these are just some of the adjustments a child must make.