How stepfamilies differ from other families

How do stepfamilies differ from other families?

Emily Visher: We think that stepfamilies differ from first-marriage families in several respects.

They begin after many losses and many changes. For example: the children no longer live all the time with both of their parents; so there is a loss of the full-time relationship between parents and children, whether through divorce or through death. Suddenly, the eldest children may lose their place as the eldest in the family. There may now be six people living in a single house, where before there was one household with one adult and three children, and another with one adult and one child.

John Visher: Another characteristic is that people find themselves at different points in their individual and family life cycles. For example: there may be a woman who has never been married with a man who has three children. Or there may be an adolescent more interested in his peers than in the family activities of his second family, within which the adult couple is trying to create a new family.

Emily Visher: In a first marriage, the adults come together with the expectations that stem from the different situations of their families of origin. But in second marriages, not only the adults but also the children come together with the expectations that stem from previous family experiences.

At first, this can produce a feeling of chaos and confusion, since the members of the new household have different values and beliefs and do things in different ways. For example: two children may be used to going to bed at 8 in the evening, while another of the same age considers that 9 is the right time to go to sleep.

John Visher: An important difference between stepfamilies and other families is the fact that there are parent-child alliances and relationships that predate the new couple relationship. In first marriages, the existence of the couple precedes that of the children within the family. These prior alliances can produce feelings of isolation and jealousy in stepparents, and painful feelings can grow. Parents who remarry frequently feel caught between the needs of their new spouse — which they try to meet — and those of their children. Indeed, they may feel that establishing a relationship with the new spouse is a betrayal of earlier bonds. Yet this relationship is as important for the children as it is for the adults, since it is necessary for the stability of the family.

Emily Visher: In stepfamilies, unlike what happens in first-marriage families, there is a biological parent in another house — or in memories, if the parent has died. Moreover, in the United States and in many countries, many children may go back and forth between the two households. Unfortunately, cooperating in the raising of the children is often difficult for both households. Instead, the children find themselves caught between the anger and hostility of the adults. When there is cooperation in raising the children, their loyalty conflicts are reduced, and the children can benefit from the love and care offered to them in each household.

John Visher: One more characteristic, which may not be the same in other countries, is that in the United States there is very little, if any, legal bond between stepparents and stepchildren. This can lead to a breakdown of the relationships between them if the biological parent dies or divorces this second spouse. When a warm relationship has been established between a stepparent and the spouse’s child, a breakdown produces a loss for the adult as well as for the child.

Of course, the emotional climate in stepfamilies tends to be more intense than in other families, particularly at the beginning, before things have settled and the new relationships have been established. Given that establishing and maintaining relationships is such a conscious process in stepfamily systems, what is crucial is to create and maintain both the new relationships and the old ones. Research shows that it is the relationships within the family that meet the needs of adults and children, not the form of the family. Finally, I would like to say that the most important message for stepfamilies is to be patient and to give themselves the time needed to resolve those differences which, at the beginning, can produce tensions.

The therapeutic interventions that succeed

Which therapeutic interventions succeed best with stepfamilies?

John Visher: One of the most important interventions consists in validating the feelings that occur in stepfamilies, and in normalizing the situations they describe. This increases self-esteem, and it is an essential ingredient that helps stepfamily members find more appropriate ways of resolving the situations that arise in this more complex family form.

Psychoeducation is the main intervention. The therapist’s ability to identify problems and to offer information that can contribute to the solution or the management of a given situation within the family tends to reduce the feeling of helplessness and allows the adults to change the things that are not working well. When the adults feel that the therapist is warm and that therapy is a safe place to talk, they are able to communicate better and to understand the other members of the family, including their spouse and the other children. Another axis of therapy consists in helping to improve communication skills; likewise, strengthening the couple relationship allows the adults to form a working team capable of making the family function better and of developing stronger bonds.

Emily Visher: It is not surprising that, in the research, nearly half of the respondents who indicated that something had not worked well for them in therapy stated that the therapist was not familiar with the dynamics of stepfamilies and their problems. It is possible that this lack of knowledge and understanding results in the therapist not being able to support the couple and validate feelings, or to normalize the situations that people describe.

One third of families present multiple difficulties and require several long-term treatments, in addition to the interventions described. I would also like to add that, usually, we do not recommend seeing the whole family together before the couple has established a good working relationship.

The challenges: training therapists, changing society’s view

Which aspects of your work pose the greatest challenges for you?

John Visher: Our greatest challenge is training therapists, because we see that many of them are not aware of the fact that stepfamilies are different from first-marriage families and have different norms. It is not a matter of learning a new method of doing therapy; it is a matter of knowing what to expect and what the norms are. For example, a therapist said to a woman who was having problems with her stepson: “Why don’t you act like a mother?” Her stepson already has a mother, who lives nearby and whom he sees several times a month; so the situation continued to deteriorate. We think that this stepmother was trying to play too prominent a role with her stepson, and the suggestion was probably the opposite of what would have been helpful.

Emily Visher: Another challenge is to understand and to change the lack of social acceptance of stepfamilies as a positive family form. As we said above, research shows that it is not the form of the family that makes the difference, but that it is the relationships within it that are crucial to its success. Social acceptance is important for the possibility of achieving this. We continue to want to influence people’s attitudes so that they respond to stepfamilies with acceptance and understanding, through our work with the Stepfamily Association of America. We believe that the United States and other countries of similar culture have difficulty accepting the idea of more than two parental figures in a child’s life.

Which cultural differences should be taken into account for a similar organization in Argentina?

John Visher: We think that this type of group can be very useful in any country. I would like to devote a few minutes to cultural differences. The characteristics that distinguish stepfamilies from other families, pointed out at the beginning of this interview, are the same in every country, except that, in some countries, children do not go back and forth from one house to the other, and stepparents have certain legal rights. This could indicate that organizations for the support and advocacy of stepfamilies could also have similar characteristics. We have realized that in Argentina there is a tendency toward less equality than in the United States between male and female heads of household. This could add difficulties for the stepfamily. Research indicates that stepparents need to come in gradually and to develop solid relationships with their stepchildren before being in a position to impose rules in the family. We suspect that this could also happen in Argentina and that, consequently, stepfathers who expect to play a prominent role in the family before having developed these relationships could go through very difficult times. On the other hand, if the father of the family expects his new partner to be able to take on the parental role before having had the opportunity to establish relationships with her stepchildren, this could also add difficulties.

Emily Visher: We understand that Ruth Casabianca — a recognized Argentine trainer and therapist, who lives and practices in Santa Fe, in the province of the same name — is conducting cross-cultural research in Santa Fe, and she has pointed out that in Argentina, because of the great influence exerted by grandparents and former in-laws, she would need to add a few questions to the questionnaires from the United States. There is no doubt that as more work is done in this field, other differences may appear.

Conclusions

To conclude, do you think that working with other stepfamilies may have, in one way or another, influenced your own stepfamily?

Emily Visher: We did not deal directly with the children’s other household. Most of the time, we made arrangements through the children. We often made messengers of them, much more than we would do today. We should have devoted more effort to trying to establish cooperative relationships — what we call the “parenting coalition” — with the adults in the children’s other household. We should have planned more family meetings. This can give children the feeling of having more influence and control over what happens. Another thing we could change is to try to tell our children our feelings. We first tried to listen to them and to their feelings, and we accepted their anger; but today we could accept it better, because we are more aware of how upset, depressed and angry our children were because of the changes. We would try to understand and accept our own feelings. Perhaps things would have worked sooner if, at neutral moments, we had identified which of our feelings were similar to theirs. That would have produced more of a situation of “togetherness” than a situation of “yes, but.”

The last thing that comes to me is something very valuable for all families. I am thinking of the importance of separate spaces for the relationship between adults and children, and between the adults themselves. We have even heard that some families have found it very important for each child to have a personal relationship with each of the adults. We tend to do everything as a family, and this does not allow my children to maintain a more direct relationship with me, like the one they had during the period when I was alone at home, any more than it allows John’s children to have time alone with him. Furthermore, stepparents and stepchildren can more easily build a relationship if they have private space with their parent, without the children of the other parent in the household.

John Visher: We would remarry and we would work together as we have done from the beginning. In truth, our relationship has been very emotionally satisfying for us. At the beginning, we had to endure a great deal of tension, like all stepfamilies, but today we have a wonderful family. We would continue to go on those lovely family outings that we enjoyed so much and that left us many beautiful memories together. In fact, we still have family gatherings, now proposed by our children, who have become adults. We have also begun to have moments alone with our adult children. It is never too late to begin, in a family. Forming a family this way took us longer than we imagined, but working through the initial period of tension really was very valuable.