Chapter 16 Blog

My Summary:

The chapter starts off by talking about common patterns among families after a divorce, dating, and courtship including the different variables of age and gender. It is very common behavior for most divorced people to marry within four years after their divorce. When divorcees remarry they create a lot of changes within the family structure and makeup as a result of remarriage and the formation of stepfamilies. Forty percent of marriages are remarriages for one or both parents. These remarriages vary by gender, race, ethnicity, age, social class, and marital status. The trend is for men to get remarried quicker than women, but remarriage rates are higher for white people than any other ethnic girl. The process of remarriage contains emotional, economic, psychic, community, parental, and legal aspects. It can be seen that some of these aspects involve children who can make things more complicated, but other aspects do not involve children. The differences between first marriages and remarriages are the composition of the family, the children’s experiences, the roles of stepfamily members, family goals and objectives, and family structure.

These remarriages create families that are called stepfamilies due to being related by marriage instead of blood ties alone. These stepfamilies can be diverse in parent-child relationships and the ties they have with biological family members. The ability to have multiple sets of children in the same household can create strained living accommodations. It may not appear to be so but step families have similar qualities to nuclear families. The reason is because they fulfill basic functions and try to raise happy healthy children. Creating a step family is not an easy feat and a number of different tasks need to be done in order to merge the two households. The problem areas that people run into are the legal issues, integration of children into the family, and intergenerational relationships. There are two major tasks that stepfamilies must establish in the areas of discipline and developing closeness between family members. The data behind these relationships is not always clear but it is seen that stepfather- stepdaughter relationships are often more strained than those between stepsons and stepparents. It is a common reoccurrence in couples who have remarried to say that they know each other better, communicate more openly, and are more considerate of each other’s feelings than they were in their first marriages.

Opinions/Questions:

The section I found really interesting was the myths about remarriages. When I read the nuclear family myth the first thing I thought of was about the Brady Bunch. Because I do not think that it would be that easy to just join two families that were at one point distraught or in the middle of dispute. I also found the compensation one to be weird because I understand that a person who is unhappy with someone who they are with is not going to want to find someone exactly like them, but I do not think that they will want to try harder to make their relationship and won’t just rely on finding someone who is perfect in every way. I also think the instant love one makes no sense either. It is just like love at first sight. I personally do not believe in this concept because there is no way to tell a person’s true colors with just a glance. What are others opinions on love at first sight? And for that matter do you believe it could happen twice with this concept of instant love? Finally the rescue fantasy is not a good way to look at a family that you are trying to join. Because no one likes people to try to change them and this is just exemplifying those need to change people to a great extent.

The concept of gay and lesbian stepfamilies also gave me a new and interesting perspective because I guess that is a whole new type of step family. Because the child may not be related to either parent biologically and if in that state only one of the parents can adopt what would the other parent do if they wanted to have custody of the child? I was just confused on how they would handle difficult situations such as that due to the fact that the child is not related by blood to either parent. I mean the one parent would have the legal title, but if the relationship ended on a domestic dispute would that factor change things because the custody is being changed due to personal resentments. What do you guys think?