Or so Katherine Hepburn is believed to have said. Much is being written these days about whether blended families can ever really, well...blend. In the Home & Garden Living Together section of the New York Times on November 17th - just in time for Thanksgiving, a holiday very much centered around families and relationships - Penelope Green published an article entitled, Blending Like the Brady Bunch? Let's Not Go Too Far.
And in The Opinion Pages of the New York Times on December 20th - just in time for the end-of-the-year and New Year's holidays - the Room for Debate post by Sharon Sassler, entitled Why Remarry? The Higher Risks of Cohabitation, is part of a series of articles by six respected voices on families, divorce, law and marriage (the links to the left of the article take you to the other voices in the debate). There must be something about holidays in general that makes people question the nature of their relationships.
The characters in Green's "unblended or partly blended family" drama included a couple, each with children from prior marriages, who lived together for years, parted ways, then chose to renovate a house so that they could each live with their respective children under one roof, although on separate floors, everyone maintaining the continuum of support, community and sense of "family" they had grown used to.
Not too long ago it was out with The Brady Bunch and in with the thorny stepfamily. Now it's out with the thorny stepfamily and in with the what, exactly? People seem to work very hard post-marriage to maintain a living scheme that resembles that of the original, traditional, biological or nuclear family, but can never be the same as that family simply because, well...it isn't.
Green quoted Dr. Susan Stewart, a sociologist at Iowa State University, who says that, "Children are a disincentive to marry or cohabit. It's why fewer women marry after divorce than men," citing the financial and professional independence of middle and upper-income women as a factor in not wanting to remarry.
But what about the single women who have financial and professional independence, yet still choose to marry someone with children from a previous marriage? What about the women who have been there done that with the marriage and children thing, yet opt to do it all over again? After all...the stepfamily community outnumbers the biological family community, so clearly the number of stepmothers is growing.
Is remarrying like poker, where someone has a hand of potentially winning cards and therefore elects to ante up, or hopes to draw better ones as the game progresses only to decide it might be wiser to throw all their cards on the table before losing everything? Or is it like starting a business, where someone has a terrific idea, reasonable financial backing, and an extreme amount of energy but, laboring by the light of the midnight oil, they hope and pray they'll survive the first five years?
Green also quoted Julie Friedman, a real estate broker with a Ph.D. in social work, who finds housing for "blended" families. Friedman said, "While it's beautiful to put your children's emotional and physical needs paramount, by denying a bonded relationship with a new partner or spouse, you are sending a clear message to the children that they don't have to adjust to new, possibly difficult scenarios and that the parent will defer to the child through sacrifice and martyrdom."
In life much is required of children: their interviews for schools are so rigorous their parents cringe at the process; they learn the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat on sports teams; they gain confidence at summer camp and independence spending a year abroad. Adults, on the other hand, wrestle with the realities of the work force: promotions, demotions, start-ups and downsizing. Children and adults alike have thick skins, except, it seems, when it comes to family life, where we seem to want everything to be very particular. And these personal particularities make it difficult to live with people who are, well...different.
Perhaps in the end marriage and remarriage are acts of creative faith, much like those acts of faith undertaken by any kind of adventurer or artist. No painter is guaranteed that their work will sell. No filmmaker can be certain that their movie will get distributed. No writer knows if their book will be published or, if it is, whether anyone will buy it. The creation of anything, including a family, is a work in progress if ever there were one.
The truth is that falling in love is a risk. Marriage is a risk. Relationships with other people are risky. Life itself is a risk. Not everything is decided by money. If that were the case, no one would ever start a business or open a restaurant or begin a new venture. And I, for one, tend to side with those whose hearts and minds are open to the possibility of coupling or recoupling successfully, rather than with those who have been frightened off by all of the scary things that can happen when one ventures down the road hand in hand with another human being.
Reading through the various comments on the Room for Debate series of articles, I couldn't help thinking that most of us fall into one of two camps: believers in marriage or non-believers. And I couldn't help posting a comment myself, citing a Simon & Garfunkel lyric from their song America: Let us be lovers we'll marry our fortunes together. I've got some real estate here in my bag.
Or, as Sassler writes, "But for those interested in establishing intimate relationships with new partners, there are many reasons, well supported with the scholarly research, to put aside the fear of failure that divorce represents to many Americans, and engage in "the triumph of hope over experience."
Join me during this holiday season, when I begin a multi-part interview with Paula Bisacre, founder and publisher of reMarriageWorks.com, an in-depth online resource and support system that champions stepfamilies and marriage and remarriage adventurers, as well as author of the brand new Journal for Stepmoms.
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