The Brady Bunch
I loved the Brady Bunch growing up. It was a novel show about a type of family I knew nothing about and had only one friend who had a divorced, remarried and step family situation. The Brady Bunch romanticized step families and while I still love the tv show for its nostalia, I think it has led several generations to have an incorrect idea about what step families are and what to expect from them.
The phrase broken family went out of vogue several decades ago, but let's face it, that's what step families are comprised of. They constitute people whose dreams went wrong for one reason or another.
I write this as my 26 yr old stepson lives in my home that I opened to him and his two kids over ten years ago. She is now 30 and recently disowned us. He asked two and a half years ago to live here for one year to save up for a down payment on a house.
Princess disowned us because as she, her spouse and two young grandchildren travel around the country collecting state and federal money to do do, has determined we don't do enough to see them or our grandchildren, thereby showing we care. The stepson, pee, gets drunk every night and hasn't held a full time for a period of three months since we took him at his word and agreed to letting him move back in.
I don't think things work out very well for the majority of step families. I think we have hopes and expectations that have never been grounded in reality. Step families exist because of previous familial wounds. It's like trying to build something good on a pile of rot. How realistic is that?
He thinks his kids are great, I think my kids are great and we mostly hate each other's kids. And oh my god, the damage that causes how I see it in the step family, I don't know what it does to them. I have been emphatic with my two sons: If you ever marry and have kids, see the problems through because what you will inherit is far worse than anything that could happen if you as biological parents stay together and work it the fuck out. That barring abuse that cannot be stopped. Of course no one should stay in a truly abusive situation.
I am cynical, jaded and seethe with resentment. If I had known what creating a step family would hold for the furure I would never have done it. As much as I love my second husband, I would never have done it.
While life damages us all, you are taking on the trauma and unresolvable issues a family breaking apart causes the children and the parents.
We fight almost every night over his kids or mine. We both think we are right, and neither of us are. We compensate in unhealthy ways to try to make right what can never be made right to these mostly adult children.
I don't see an end in sight. Even if we divorced none of these kids would come away happy. They live in this eternal longing and speculation of what would their life be if their mom and dad had not completely disrupted their existence by getting divorced.
For years it seemed we all got along after a very rough 5-6 years. But from what has errupted recently and how they have all responded to it, his adult kids and my 19 and 16 year old want nothing to do with each other.
His daughter disowned us, his son is a drunken gun obsessed leech, my 19 year old hasn't lived here for a year because he does feel safe living with a gun and conspiracy oriented drunk and my 16 year old just tries to stay out of it.
It is so fucked up.
If the godamn adorable Brady Bunch had depicted anything, just anything, approximating what a real step family is like would everyone have been so eager to believe you actually get a second chance?
I get it about socially acceptable norms and behaviors. If the Brady Bunch had tried for any realism there never would have been a warm, simple 30 minutes of every afternoon family uptopia on the TV waiting for us after school. And I know media did portray less than perfect step families in the years following.
But no one ever was honest about what step families are really like.
As I said, they are made from broken pieces and if you've ever tried repairing anything broken, you know it can't be done. Either the broken thing just can't be fixed and you finally throw it away or you keep trying different products to make it look like it was before it broke.
And that's what we're all doing here, trying to fix a broken thing with damaged and missing parts.
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Comments
I'm sorry everything is so
I'm sorry everything is so hard.
While the Brady Bunch is fiction, I do think many stepfamilies work out fine. Those families generally contain sane adults (all 4 - the couple and their exes) who are decent, good enough parents and spouses. They can communicate effectively and establish household rules that all of the kids have to follow. They don't allow the kids to divide them and they don't tolerate poor behavior from the kids any more than they would have in an intact family. They can co-parent with the child's other parent to work on challenging behaviors and so the kids can't manipulate them.
What we have here on Steptalk, and what you have, is families in which the spouses can't communicate, one or both puts their kids above their partner, and the parenting is seriously lacking - kids don't grow up to be successful adults. And in some cases, throw in a high-conflict ex and you have even more difficulty.
I don't know why you are blaming yourself, pretty much everyone would be fed up with an alcoholic, free-loading 26 yo stepkid living in their home. Your DH has failed him, and it probably has just as much to do with your SS's addiction as it does being a stepfamily. Your DH sounds like the classic enabling parent.
Learning about stepfamilies
Learning about stepfamilies from the Brady bunch is like learning about sex from porn. It's inaccurate because it's fantasy.
The closest approximattion to real stepfamilies is that "wife swap" show where the mom goes to live with a different family for a while and there is an inevitable clash between the mom and the rest of the family. But even in that scenario people often end up getting along well enough because they know at the end of it they are going home to their real family and none of the changes have to be permanent.
Welcome back
Welcome back princessandthepee!
Of course, The Brady Bunch
Of course, The Brady Bunch was a TV show, a sitcom, meant to entertain and make people laugh and feel good.
They did have some episodes that touched on the difficulties of step families, but they were early on. After that, the fact that they were a blended family was not really mentioned.
Also, the other bio parents were not an issue. One was dead, and the other was? Supposedly divorced but they never talked about the father of the girls and he was not in their lives, at all.
I don't think that it led to generations of people having false expectations about blended families. I just think that we want to believe the best about people, are hopeful that things will work out, but some of these kids and their bio parents are just really screwed up.
Could not agree more
I am so with you on this. The Brady Bunch fantasy is what caused so many problems for SO and me. He wanted the Brady Bunch (and said so) and I was more realistic and gave up on it when it transpired that our broken pieces didn't fit neatly together. He still hasn't given up on the idea. In my case there is one particular member of the union (SD) that has prevented this fantasy from playing out, but that will never be SO's view.