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Step Children and Biological Children

celtic2025's picture

I'm wondering if anyone has decided to not have children of their own after marrying into an already established family?  Additionally, if you did have biological children, did your step family struggle with the biological addition?

I am doing research and have found that divorce increases dramatically when a new step family adds biological children and would love some more recent anecdotes or feedback on this topic.

Thanks.

 

 

juststressedbeyondbelief's picture

I can surely see it. The divorce rate being way higher. I baby my own child like no other, and hardly interact with the stepchild living in the same home. Not out of resentment or distaste, but just because I love my own child more than I've loved anyone. There will almost certainly be two standards by which children are raised.

I can see a million wives being resentful that their new hubby doesn't baby their previous child. In a way, it seems messed up that a male is expected to treat non-biological children as biological children, especially if he and his wife had that conversation before the "I-do's".

I read a lot on these forums, and just the "disengagement" stories I read, I ask myself "how did this not end in divorce?" I think there may be a difference in the dynamic of a male rejecting a woman's child vs a woman rejecting a man's child. You said you did research, is there any data pertaining to that?

celtic2025's picture

Yes here is a link to a study outlining how hard it is for step parents to derive pleasure/bond with step children after they introduce biological children to an existing faimly, and what that does to the exisiting children.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/019251396017001002

Here is another article that comes at this topic from a legal perspective and cites the most frequent culprit blamed in blended family divorce is stepchildren.

https://www.rajehsaadeh.com/blog/2018/01/stepkid-and-ex-spouses-often-ci...

And finally, an article written that cites the divorce rate of blended families when both parents have children is 70%. 

http://www.startribune.com/the-link-between-stepkids-and-divorce-and-how...

What I'm looking for though is support for these facts.  Data can be manipulated and I'd love some first hand accounts of what step parents go through when they introduce biological children, and/or how the step-children respond.

 

juststressedbeyondbelief's picture

Firsthand, when my daughter was born, everything was ok. "Honeymooning phase". Stepkid was happy. Wife was happy.

After mother's paternity leave expired, she began to alienate herself from my and her biological daughter, (Guilt, maybe?) to spend most of her time with her daughter from the previous relationship.

It fell on me to do the vast majority of the rearing, (feeding, changing, bathing, daycare, 90% of interactions). I became extremely protective of my daughter at this point. Wife began to have conflicting feelings. Stepkid would ask "why does he love the baby so much?". Would sit outside of bedroom door when we slept due to jealousy over the new baby. Would not detach herself from her mother's leg. Began to show resentful behaviors over my interaction with the baby that I never had with her. Would not allow her mother to have those interactions without a full tantrum.

Fast forward to the present. I still do most of everything. It's become the norm that wife and her child interact all day while the baby and I interact all day. It's not a bad norm. Arguments do occasionally arise. Wife and I interact only at night during bedtime. Can't take stepkid on outings with baby present, so we drop her off at my wife's parents once a week, or have nuclear family time during the stepkid's visitation with their father.

As she gets older, the problems will probably get worse. The stepchild is early elementary.

Jcksjj's picture

Personal experience- I already had a bio and have never really bonded with my SD. After YDS was born my tolerance was much lower for SD. My relationship with my husband is stronger though overall but I can say almost all of the fights we do have relate to SD. SD is completely indifferent to YDS and annoyed that were having another one in a few weeks. ODS has a more "normal" sibling relationship with YDS, but they are being raised completely together so different dynamic.

juststressedbeyondbelief's picture

Out of curiosity, are you the custodial parent of your stepdaughter? 

If so, do you see co-dependent behaviors with your husband and that step? Did you find a way to make them less... extreme?

celtic2025's picture

We share custody 50/50.  I'm lucky in that my husband is incredibly aware and is not co-dependent.  When she was younger he was uptight about time spent with her, but as she's aged he's relaxed.

Swim_Mom's picture

Do you want to be a parent? If you do, just know that someone else's kids will always be someone else's kids, and stepkids are no substitute for real kids.  My kids are my pride and joy. Stepkids never, ever could be anything other than DH's kids at best and in the case of my stepson, a feral animal I wish did not exist.

Rags's picture

There are countless examples of parents who have REAL children that they have no biological relationship with.

So I call bullshit on the premise that parental feelings have to be stronger toward bio spawn than non biospawn.  

While I have no known BK's and can personally neither confirm nor deny stronger feelings for a BK verses a non BK, logic and countless examples provide ample evidence to indicate that parental feelings do not require biological relationship.

Sure, subsequent marriages have a higher rate of failure than initial marriages.  However, those in subsequent marriages are proven failures at marriage at the very beginning of a subsequent marriage.  The addition of a joint biochild to a blended family marriage that ultimately fails does little more than highlight the character flaws of one or both of the blended family spouses that were inherrently there to begin with.

Some kids lose the parent lottery.  Kids born into blended family marriages lose the parent lottery far more frequently than those born to initial marriages because... the parent pool they are stuck with is far more likely to be tragically flawed to begin with.

Fortunately even kids born into blended marriages do not have to lose the parent lottery.  Some are the product of subsequent marriages that are far better matches than their parents may have had in prior marriages. So, children of subsequent relationships might be better off than their elder half sibs by prior parental pairings.

If partners in a marriage make their marriage and each other the uncontested priority, establish boundaries, behavioral and performance standards and parent all children within those boundaries and standards  blended families, including those with  joint BKs, can be successful.  Sadly... far too many adults are too stupid to recognize this simple truth and repeat the same crap that caused their initial marriage(s) to fail.  

The excuse of additional children causings subsequenct marriage failure is just that, a bullshit excuse IMHO.

Just my  thoughts and opinion of course.

 

juststressedbeyondbelief's picture

Yeah, we'll definitely disagree on that front.

Something clicks in your brain when you have a biological child. Life changes. Your thought process totally changes. It'd have to be experienced to be explained.

There would be an incomprehensible difference in how you view a bio that was born into a marriage vs. a step that came with the marriage, according to me, and the journals that he posted.

Not saying that I'm 100% right, some people are wired differently than others. Calling it a "flaw" that you hold a biological child over a non-biological does fight instinct though. Most animals, including us, are wired to preserve the genepool.

StephenJ14's picture

I am in a similar boat. I plan on having a child with my soon to be fiance who already has a 5yr old daughter. We go back and forth with her worrying if I love her daughter like she's my own once we have a child. And I worry about her favoring her previous daughter because of her less perfect family circumstances and the daughter being jealous of the new baby. The hard truth is I already know that I will not love any child the way I would the one that comes from my own body which I'm pretty sure is a totally normal feeling. It's also going to be hard to truly form a bond with her daughter when her deadbeat bio-dad constantly feeds her lies and nonsense when he's with her, putting a wedge between us and making a difficult situation even harder. 

Let's keep in touch on our journeys and be each other's sponser haha!

juststressedbeyondbelief's picture

Oh, it happens, trust me. Parental guilt is a force strong enough to keep a mother away from her baby.

It's been half a year for me, since my bio daughter was born, and it's like I'm a single dad. I do it all, because wifey is either out with her daughter, or playing paints with her daughter, etc etc etc. The only time she really sees her is during the night, because my daughter sleeps in the bedroom/bed with us.

Not to say that it isn't nice. I really enjoy spending time with my daughter, making the bond stronger and stronger, seeing all the firsts, it's amazing. I do love my wife, and while weird, what we're doing is functioning.

StephenJ14's picture

Great to hear. These situations really sound like one mess after another and are fairly off putting. Your share is my exact fear, especially given the jealous qualities towards me my girl's daughter already shows, let alone another kid. Whenever I raise these questions to my girl she assures me there's no chance she'll neglect our kid, but I already spy tendencies that lead me to believe otherwise.

Katylouu's picture

Just early on, I didn't know if I really wanted a relationship with a man who already had kids and I put off meeting my now husbands son because of it.  That was hurtful to him, but I was being honest.  It led to discussions as to how we would handle things when we did decide to get married. Ironically though, my daugther is engaged to a man with kids and our approach couldn't be more different.  But I digress..lol

My stepson was NEVER told he has 2 homes.  He is a member of the family but not a member of the household and a visiting guest in our home.  His home was with his mother.  The reason I did this is his mother WAS NOT vicariously in charge of NOTHING at my home, and oh she tried.  No outside source was making a decision in OUR HOME regardless of the situation.  No kid was going to cause friction or dictate the goings on. I know that a lot of people don't agree with my approach and that is okay.  But that approach alileviated a lot of BS and again, SS's mother tried and finally gave up.I am THANKFUL, my husband stuck to our household.  

My stepson, was happy he was getting siblings.  Of course his mother wasn't, but what could she do?  He once told his dad that he felt WE wouldn't spend time with him anymore.  We asked why he felt that way and of course his mother told him this.  WE told him that of course he has to SHARE but if he ever felt he was being ignored speak up.  We never got that call.FF 30 yrs later, we are all very close, including his mother and her hussband.