Stepfamily Statistics
This morning I read the following link:
http://www.stepfamily.org/stepfamily-statistics.html
Really eye-opening.
"Over 50% of US families are remarried or re-coupled."
"50% of all women, not just mothers, are likely sometime in their life, to live in a stepfamily relationship, when we include living-together families in our definition of the stepfamily, according to research compiled by Professor of Sociology Larry L. Bumpass of the University of Wisconsin."
Wallerstein reports that:
"Only 45 percent of children "do well" after divorce.
41% are doing poorly, worried, underachieving, deprecating, and often angry.
Fifty percent of the women and 30 percent of the men were still intensely angry with their former spouses.
"Most felt the lack of a template, a working model, for a loving relationship between a man and a woman."
Divorced parents provide less time, less discipline, and are less sensitive to the children as they are caught up in their own divorce and its aftermath.
Many parents are unable to separate their needs from the children's needs and often share too much of their personal life with their children, placing the children in a precarious emotional state, vulnerable to grandiosity or to depression within what is left of their families.
The majority of parents of divorce are chronically disorganized and unable to parent effectively.
As diminished parenting continues, it permanently disrupts the child's once normal emotional growth and functioning.
The good news, according to the study:
"The children of divorce tended to do well if mothers and father, regardless of remarriage, resumed parenting roles, putting differences aside, and allowing the children continuing relationships with both parents.
Only a few children had these advantages."
Agree
It is difficult NOT to speak ill of the other parent but I have managed to accomplish it. There was an incident a few months ago...
We are walking thru a Lebanese Cultural Fair and I decide to purchase a fruit. Older son tells younger son, DON'T EAT IT! Dad said you were allergic to it and you landed in the hospital when you were younger.
I almost lost it....1) I was always alone including emergency trips to hospitals 2) I remember that day. We had been watching older daughter play soccer. Young son, probaly 3 year old starts swelling up in face. He has an allergic reaction to something. Hospital says it was probably the pesticides in the grass. He had seen quite a few cases lately. Huband was NOT with me.
I never said it was easy but I do make an effort to find the postiive aspects....sigh...
speaking well of the ex
My trick for this is to remember that the kiddo is half of the ex. If I express exasperation with the ex, the child feels criticized, too. There is research that how much couples critique each other doesn't matter as long as they say more positive than negative things over all. So I try to throw in some random positives: "Daddy was great at baseball at your age, too"; "I think you get your love of XXYZZ from Dad." Trying to build up the kid, not the ex.
Regarding statistics, I was
Regarding statistics, I was reading the summary of a book today, called something like How to Raise Your Children to be an Unselfie, and the author quoted that: 40% of today’s youth have less empathy than their previous generation’s counterpart. 40%! So, some of those approx. 30 years younger than us, have 40% less empathy than we ever did! You tack that on to what was mentioned elsewhere, and, unfortunately, you can see where a SM’s road is bound to just get harder and longer.
SMs have always had it rough, but when you combine that with children whose empathy appears to be ever-decreasing, you are going to be left with a child who acts unbelievable narcistic and be at a total loss of what to do about it. You feel to the 10th degree. They feel to maybe the 6th. What is the solution? I have no idea, other than maybe give ‘em back to mom and dad? *wink*