Divorce and the role of the family unit

 The State of Our Unions 2005, a report issued by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, states that  only 63% of American children grow up with both biological parents -- the lowest figure in the Western world. As a new step-mom I have 3 wonderful children that fall into this category. With all the data showing that these children are more likely to have problems in mental, emotional, or social areas. My role as a step-mom, and life partner to my husband,  is to create a healthy family environment for what is now our kids, our family.

The family unit is our most fundamental social structure. It is no surprise that the breakdown of the family is paralleled in society by the breakdown of basic 'common courtesies' that are no longer common. It is our family unit that teaches us the values by which we will live our life.

The family unit at it's core, it is designed to nurture and meet our most basic needs in infancy and young childhood.  The foundational needs in the pyramid of Maslow's Hierarchy are the needs of food, shelter, and safety. In developed societies these needs are met either independently by the parent(s) or with help from the greater society through government programs. However, to raise healthy children it is the 3rd level of the hierarchy and above that are the critical areas of development. These are the areas that move beyond the physical needs of human development and into the development of an individuals sense of belonging, self esteem, and self-actualization.

Child development specialist agree that the most important years of development are the first 5 years of life. Unfortunately this also correlates with the end of many marriages.  As one example, for first marriages ending in divorce among women aged 25 to 29, the median length of marriage before divorce in 1990 was 3.4 years; (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992, p. 4).  My step-children fall into the masses of children whose parents are divorced before the age of 5. The youngest was 3.5years old when her mother moved the children away from their dad without any explanation or warning. The Boys were 5 and 6 years old when their lives were uprooted. They are amazingly well adjusted considering that they were woke up very early one Saturday morning and moved 245 miles away from their father. Over the next two years they would move 4 times and be in 3 school different school districts. 


The kids are fortunate that there was no ugly custody battle. Their dad was able and willing to move close to where his ex-wife had decided to live when she left him. He only wanted to be near and involved in his children's life.  They actually had an amicable situation (at least from the kids point of view). He allowed her to have full custody as long as she was reasonable about his involvement in the kids activities. Over over the course of time, her living situation did not stabilize, and in fact, became unresolvable for the children to continue living with her.  As life decisions would have it, my husband was awarded full custody without a battle because he could provide the basic needs and a stable environment for them to grow.


I am a lucky step-mother because my children are young enough to not have developed adolescent anger about the situation, and old enough to communicate their emotions about their living situation. Children, overall, are resilient. My three step kids are a mothers dream.  We have had few struggles.  The older boys had significant academic difficulties at the beginning of the current school year. Given a stabile home environment and a step-mother who is a former educator, they are thriving. The middle child shows exceptional growth over the first semester of the year.  His fundamental academic skills have shown remarkable growth.  He repeated 1st grade and is currently in 2nd grade.  At the beginning of the year he was showing signs of being in the bottom of his class average. At the semester grading period he was only 10ths of a point from straight B average. We believe that the stability we have provided has been a major factor in his improvements. We are hoping to achieve similar improvements for the oldest who is struggling through 4th grade. 


When accepting to date & marry a man with children from a previous marriage, I agreed to take all these factors into consideration. I would not change this decision.  I am proud to be a step-mother and I see these children not as a burden but as a blessing.  I am sure there are many challenges ahead, but I am confident that they are normal family struggles. 

single and dating . . .

The divorce rate in the US has been at 50% for the past 10 years or more. The blended family is a social norm. About the time I turned 30 years old I realized that the likelihood of finding a life partner who had not been married was diminishing.  Somewhere between 30 and 33 I accepted that my heart would have to be open to  many situations. Many people in the dating scene will not date someone who already has children.  I believe this is part of the reason for the number of families that are "mine, yours & ours".  Singles don't want the burden of taking on children when they don't have any of their own.  Thus many divorced single parents have to look to other divorced single parents for companionship.

Singles hold out for the fairytale we were made to believe in as kids.  I don't believe there is ONE person for every ONE person.  I believe in our lives we have free will.  It is our personal decision to be open and committed to love. A decision to find someone that matches our level of commitment. If I had decided not to date a man with children I would not have found the wonderful life partner I now have.

Sometime in my early 30's I had decided that I would be open to dating a man who had children.  This is not an easy decision, many complicated situations and decisions have to be handled delicately. The dynamics of dating a mate with children are extremly different then dating another single no strings person. Does the person have shared custody? How often are the children in the custody of your prospective mate? Are there pending custody issues? When is your relationship significant enough to be introduced to the children? Does the person want to introduce you? What will your role as the single unattached partner be in the existing broken family? So many issues that each has to be handled based on the situation.  There is no magic formula for these situations, each one has it own unique blessings and curses.

In my experience the hardest part of dating a parent is that you are in a relationship with more then just one person.  This means you are giving your emotional energy, time, and hopes not only to  the partner you choose but also to his/her children and all the baggage that comes with it.  Thus if/when the relationship falls apart, you are grieving the loss of not only the adult that you started the relationship with but with the children that you built a relationship with as well.  It is a side of the equation that most people don't pay attention too.  They will warn parents about introducing a partner to the children too soon for fear of hurting the children, but what about the partner who has opened up her/his life to the children?  As a former single unattached dating partner, the pain and grieving that is normal when a relationship doesn't work out is multiplied by the number of persons you have given your heart too.

180 Degrees is complete opposite . . .

I saw a glimpse of my old life yesterday. The life before I had kids, when I was a single, working, thirty-something woman. Small house of my own, no one else at home when I arrived from work. My pets were the only ones who needed feeding daily and I could watch ANYTHING I wanted on TV ANYTIME! Peaceful, quiet, my house, my way. Ahh the life of a working gal.

Occasionally I miss the routine and the organization of my former life, but I love the life I have choosen.  Up early in the morning, nip the kids heels to get them ready on time, snacks packed, homework checked, "get your jacket on, the bus will be here soon." Laundry, clean the kitchen, vacuum, bills, shopping, menu for the week, cook, wife, mother. . I manage a household and I love it!

My days were previously filled with intellectual stimulation, juggling e-mails, scheduling visitors from around the world and country, publicity for events, plan board meetings, answer phones, talk students through crisis and course selection for their BA degrees, financial reconciliation of MULTIPLE accounts, tasks I can't begin to explain. I titled myself "Event Planner Extrodinaire".  Graduate students came to me to figure out the complexities of getting paid to do their research, travel to the archaeological dig sites.

My nights could be a quiet dinner at home, walk the dog and watch TV, or happy hour with the gals from the office, and if I wanted I could find a dance spot and boogie my tush off! All a far away world from where I am now.

Now my nights begin at 3:40 when my 3 stepkids run in the door after school. It's "hand me your homework folders" figure out who has the most homework, and prioritize who I need to spend the most time tutoring. I usually let them play a bit which means I have to answer 50 questions from each of them about "do I have to change out of my school clothes? What can we do? Can we watch Avatar (yes I now know cartoon network shows) Can we shoot the BB gun? Will you come jump on the trampoline with us? What is for dinner (they ask this at least every 10 minutes)". After about an hour of this banter, I set them all up at different places in the house to start their homework as I cook dinner.  I have learned to make a menu, if I plan ahead what the main course of dinner will be it is one less decision to make at 5pm when my brain is trying to do 2nd & 4th grade math, figure out strategies to teach them HOW to study, and try to listen to at least one of them read aloud as I am cooking dinner.

TV is a treat in our house.  I have long believed that kids don't need to be entertained as much as they need their brains stimulated to learn.  Before the invention of the TV families had dinner together, kids learned from their parents, discussion among the family happened. Kids read books to learn information. I want that for my kids, I want them to learn how to learn. I want them to talk to us over dinner. So they get maybe an hour a day if they are lucky. We sit down to dinner at my grandmothers table almost everynight, I know she would be proud.

 My poor husband has had to learn that the kids learning is a priority. Most nights he would both like to 'tune out' by tuning in to the current sporting event. I would love to 'tune in' to the evening news, prime time crime show and all the other entertainment. Alas, we try to keep the TV off until after 9pm when the kids go to bed. The kids just can't help but be captivatied by WHATEVER is on the TV.  They become zombie like as soon as it is turned on, so we just leave it off. A far cry from my previous life when I turned the News on as soon as I came home.

I glimpsed at my former life through the eyes of one of my husbands customers.  She had her house broken into just weeks after he had sold her all new windows, so in effort to save her some money he offered to order replacement windows and install them when they arrived.  She had a little old house in an older part of Mobile, tiny kitchen, two little dogs, and a nice porch which she obviously liked to use.  Much like my own house in San Diego.  She mentioned how much she liked living alone, and how at the end of her busy talkative day she liked to come home to just the dogs. I  was a nice memory looking back to that time in my life.

I wouldn't trade my new life for anything.  I love being a wife and a mother.  I knew in my heart that although I may never give birth, I would someday have children. That day has come and I embrace every moment even when I am tired of hearing my name called 60 times in 2 minutes. I love helping them experience new things in life, I love helping them learn, and I love when they beg me to stay in their classroom or beg me to fall asleep with them when I say goodnight.

Raising other peoples Children - the Young ones

Some people desire motherhood from the time they first play with dolls. I was not one of those women. One time in an honest conversation with my mother I admitted that I didn't have that desire. My mothers response was that she was not surprised.  I was a 'Tom boy' a girl who like tumbling through the canyon, at one point I thought I was going to be a Cub Scout. I have had moments when I wonder what it would be like to give birth to my own child, but never an overwhelming desire. I also strongly believe that children deserve two parents, and I hadn't met that man yet.

Although, I have ever experienced the maternal drive to carry my own child, I have been taking care of other people's children all my adult life.  My first job when I was a junior in high school was 3 hours every Friday at a nearby pre-school. I was an aide, my mother a teacher. That first job lasted me nearly10 years on-off through college. Summers as an aide or a teacher, occasionally filling in when they needed someone.  A lot of children passed through my life, kids who miss their moms, fell off the monkey bars, some who had hard starts in life. Some with wonderful parents, some with grandparents who stepped in to care for them, some kids were there from 7am - 6pm.  I raised some of them more then their parents. I wiped their noses, cleaned up their vomit, kissed their 'boo boo's' taught them how to ride a bike, throw a ball, play nice. Teachers raise other peoples children, we supplement what they learn at home or give them the stability they are missing at home.

These were some of my first experiences in raising other peoples children. What I learned there is that children, and in fact all people, need stability.  My mother taught 3 years olds for 20 years and worked at the pre-school for 27 years, in that time parents would request their 2nd child be placed in her classroom because of the influence she had on their children. I was fortunate to grow up with this wonderful woman as my own mother. One of the things she made top priority in her classroom and I believe at home, was stabilizability and  consistent rules and consequences.  These are lessons I apply to my new life as a step-mom.

1,2,3, JUMP

48 Hours after leaving our wedding reception (closing the festivities out at 11pm) we arrived in Big Bear and the kids were ours again. Sure we saw them Sunday at church, and dinner at my sisters house, but we did leave them in the care of their Mimi and Aunt Jennifer for the 1st part of our new life together. Just weeks before the wedding Tim had been awarded temporary full custody.  Their mother had been forced by life decisions to move to Los Angeles, CA and it had been agreed that the kids would return to AL for school. This meant that I would now be a full time stepmother.

I had known since a month after our engagement that this could happen so it was not a surprise. I trusted that what was right for the children would be the outcome and prepared myself to be a full time mom and newlywed. This also meant that our Honeymoon would become a 'familymoon' and that the kids first day of school would be the Monday after we returned. Nothing like jumping right into it all. Life has never happened slowly for me, its all or nothing. This would be no exception.

So on Tuesday morning after our wedding we packed the truck, waved goodbye to my folks from the driveway of the family cabin in Big Bear and all six of us (Tim, me, 3 kids and a dog) began our drive home to Mobile, AL. This would be the first of many trips we hope to have as a family. Five days in close quarters will teach you a lot quickly. I thank my own parents for the road trips in my childhood, and especially my mother for helping me prepare the 'road kit' of things for the kids to do. I felt a sadness leaving my home and family but anticipation of gaining my own family that my husband now trusted me with the position of mother.

I was not going to be the kind of woman who sat quietly by and made my husband do all the discipline. Tim and I had agreed that we were co-parenting.  I knew from my experiences with children and young people that you have to set the boundaries firm from the beginning. I wanted to be the step-mom that changed their lives. Taught them new things, taught them how to enjoy life, taught them what stability looks like.  We had agreed that I would follow Tim's lead and when I felt that it was unfair, or saw something that I thought should change we would talk about it first between us and then as a family. This is still challenging as I am not used to keeping my opinion to myself until its "the right time" to be heard.

Mom by Marriage

I have never been pregnant.  In a simple ceremony I gained a husband, a new life in a new part of the country, and three children. Two boys, 10 and 8 years, and a daughter 6 years young. There was a 22 months of phone calls, cross country visits, a few months of living together, a lot more months of living apart, a week of the kids with us in San Diego during summer vacation, 3 weeks of being in their town with shared visits when they lived with their mother. Conversations with other step moms, one very important conversation with a step mom who adopted her step kids when the marriage dissolved.

It wasn't just motherhood "in an instant" I had prayed about it, thought about it, researched it and knew in my heart it was the right thing.  A simple "I do" confirmed my desire and promise to be a wife and a mother. My 'Mom gig' started 48 hours after that "I do".