modern family
Instant children, extra parents… blended families are an exercise in commitment, compromise and coping with chaos, writes Sarah Catherall.
On my partner’s recent birthday, my 15-year-old daughter wrote him a card. “Dear Steve, Happy Birthday. I’m so glad my Mum met you.’’ When I met Steve almost two years ago, I was like one of those Russian doll sets – you get me, but I come with these smaller people standing beside me.
“I want Steve to move in with us. Is that OK?” I asked last summer, as I took each of my three daughters on a separate beach walk.
I was nervous. As we blended our worlds, I expected there would be lumps and bumps.
However, my fears were unfounded. When we went on a three-week holiday last winter, Steve missed me, and he also missed “the girls’’. He watched my daughters dancing in their end of year dance performances with a proud smile on his face.
When my eldest moved into a university hostel in late February, her stepfather carted her belongings up and down the stairs and helped her to settle in. “I miss her,’’ I said that night, and he nodded too.
According to Jan Pryor, the adjunct professor of Victoria University’s Roy McKenzie Studies of Families Centre, my family is a “simple stepfamily’’: the most common stepfamily arrangement, where the children primarily live with the mother, aided by a non-resident father and a stepfather without kids. With about one in 10 families now either a step family or a blended one, Pryor says my family is part of a rising statistic. Family trees have an increasingly complex array of branches – stepmums and stepdads, step grandparents, half-siblings, stepsiblings, stepaunts and uncles, and new partners of exes and their extended relationships too.
Then there’s the “accordion family’’ – where both partners bring kids into their new relationship, Brady Bunch style. According to Pryor, one in three marriages in New Zealand are now second marriages, and as a result, accordion families are on the rise.
“It’s a growing trend, even though it’s really hard to put numbers on it because so many people don’t actually marry, so they don’t come up in the statistics.’’
Accordion families are the most complicated, forcing households to expand quickly.
THE ACCORDION FAMILY
Stephanie and David (not their real names) are an accordion family, with five kids between them. It’s “fun but it’s f…in’ hard’’, says 44-year-old Stephanie, who was forced to give up her job two years ago to manage their blended family situation.
When they met seven years ago, Stephanie’s son and daughter were aged 6 and 9 respectively. David’s sons were 4 and 11, and his daughter was aged 8. The couple lived in the same Wellington suburb. Their 8 and 9-year-old daughters were in the same class and had fantasised about their single parents getting together one day.
Stephanie and David each had a son with the same name. The two youngest boys blended easily, not
really remembering a time when their own parents were still together. The couple’s older children struggled more.
The couple navigated their blend carefully, moving out of each of their homes and moving into a new, neutral space. Four years ago, they married, and Stephanie took David’s surname.
“We wanted to show our kids that marriages can work. It was also a way of saying I’m committed to David and his kids, and he is committed to me and to mine.’’
They’re lucky that the kids have got along from day one. Stephanie’s kids are with her the bulk of the time as their father is mainly absent. Every second Monday, David’s kids disappear to their mother’s house for the week “It’s calm. There is often just three of us, which my kids quite like.’’
“Then it’s like, “boom’’, David’s kids arrive for a week, and it’s chaos. Suddenly I’m cooking these massive dinners for wve kids and my husband.’’
Despite the exhaustion she often feels, Stephanie loves her stepchildren and has formed a special bond with David’s teenage daughter. Similarly, Stephanie’s son has bonded with his stepfather over sport. “My son’s father has been absent, so David is really good for my son.”
If Stephanie and David argue, it’s over their different parenting styles. She is strict, while he is relaxed and easygoing. “When we moved in together, I said, ‘Nowhere here does it say “maid”. I can be quite tough on my kids, and I expect his kids to follow the same rules.”
That’s the right approach, according to Wellington psychologist Celia Falchi, who studied step and blended families as part of her Victoria University PhD research. “Children have a strong fairness radar. The most important thing is to treat everyone is part of one team, rather than ‘my kids, your kids’ approach. All children should be treated the same in one household, and everyone should know those household rules.”
Statistically, Pryor says that second marriages are more at risk than wrst marriages. “It does seem to be linked to having children in the household, or more likely if there are stepchildren.”
Pryor adds that the younger the children, the easier the transition to a blended family. Children under 10 cope the best.
The most difwcult time for kids to accept a step parent is during adolescence. “Getting a 14-year-old who is going through puberty to accept a stepfather who comes into her world can be hard.”
In her 2014 book, Stepfamilies: A Global Perspective on Research, Policy, and Practice, Pryor examined global statistics to assess the real challenges for adults and siblings.
“Children can actually take on three or four parents who love them to bits. It’s when you get negligent parents or parents who bad mouth each other that you get trouble.”
Blended kids are least likely to get on; children are most likely to connect with a new half-sibling. Pryor feels the most sympathy for stepmothers without their own children, who often get a raw deal: mothers usually stay the most in touch with their absent kids, and so stepmothers can be forced to mother children without many benewts.
THE STEPMOTHER
At times, Fran Rigby agrees she is at the bottom of the pecking order. For nine years, the Wellington lawyer has been stepmother to Greg Crayford’s two daughters.
Ella was waving through the car window when she met Rigby at the age of 4. Ten years later, at the age of 14, Ella gave Rigby the greatest birthday gift last year, taking her stepmother’s surname and adding it to her own. “It was a pretty amazing present,’’ Rigby smiles.
Ella and her sister, Georgia-Grace, 18, have grown up moving between their parents’ households. Their father and his partner talk affectionately about “our children”. Rigby smiles. “I don’t have my own biological kids so I don’t know if it would feel the same, but I just feel like they’re my kids.”
Pryor calls step parenting a “crawling occupation”, and Rigby did it exactly by the book. Says Pryor: “They should come into the family quietly and get to know the children gradually. Over time, the child will accept the parent if someone comes in and makes an effort.”
However, the biggest challenge has been the reaction Rigby has got from others. When asked if she has children, she answers in the afwrmative. On further probing, people question how she can call herself a mother when she is not the girls’ biological parent. Crayford is part of an extended whānau, and at times, within it, Rigby feels her role isn’t taken seriously.
Rigby would have liked her own children, but Crayford didn’t want to grow the family (he has three older children to his wrst wife, too).
Sitting on the couch strumming a guitar, Georgia Grace says that Rigby is strong, organised, strict, and funny. Crayford, a musician and head of music at Wellington’s Rongotai College, often performs at evening gigs, leaving his partner to care for his daughters on her own.
Does he ever feel guilty? “I know they’re in great hands. The only thing I feel bad about is that I’m not getting time with my kids and you can’t wind that time back. Fran and the girls have a fantastic relationship.’’
BLENDING TWO GENERATIONS
When she met Mark Pedersen three years ago, Jo Cordner wasn’t fazed that her family would double in size if they became a couple.
A Year 7 teacher at St Andrews College in Christchurch, Cordner had a son and daughter, aged 3 and 5, while Pedersen’s kids were aged 9 and 11. Cordner knew that a new partner might either come with kids or with a desire for her to bear more, and the latter was out of the question.
Sitting in a Christchurch cafe during a free school period, her wedding ring dazzles in the light. In December last year, she and Pedersen made their wedding vows with their children by their side. In doing so, they also agreed to take on the more challenging role of step parenting.
They moved into a new home in July 2016. A holiday early on in their relationship was a struggle. “It could have been make or break, but fortunately we came back intact,’’ she says. The main challenges – still – are their different parenting styles, and the age gap between their children.
Cordner has been told it takes two years to adjust, and says honestly: “I think that’s about right.” From day one, the couple decided to consider themselves a family, making sure time with their children overlapped. Once every four weeks, the couple take a week to themselves.
Her husband’s children spend 40 per cent of the time with them. Her children are with her three quarters of the time. When Stefan, 15, and Emma, 12, go to their mother’s house for eight nights straight, Cordner misses the busy vibe. “I find it quite hard when the kids aren’t all there. It’s very quiet. The bonus is that the house is cleaner. We make it work,’’ she says.
The kids all get on, despite their ages. Emma is a good role model for Cordner’s daughter, Alyssa, while her son, Josh, looks up to Stefan. “You have to learn to accommodate others more when you live like this. We just make it work.’’
She talks about the need to be organised to run an accordion family’ like hers, and has the air of a woman who actually enjoys the challenge.
TOGETHER, APART
To take on a blended family, a person has to be organised, adaptable and happy to compromise. However, not all cope with the extra stress of adding a partner’s children to their load – and choose to avoid it.
A Wellington manager moved in with her partner for 10 months, before moving back to their separate abodes. With five children between them in “a massive house that was always a disorganised shambles’’, she told Your Weekend: “The kids and [my partner] were quite happy and settled, but I found it extremely overwhelming. I was used to having order in my life.
“I felt that, when we lived together, everything fell to me to organise and arrange the running of the home, and all five children needed me, and there was not enough of me to go around. I was just not laidback enough for it all.’’
While the couple continue to be in a relationship and may live together once the kids leave their respective homes, she says the decision to live apart was the right one for them: “If we had not gone back to separate homes, our relationship would not have survived.”