Our culture and the new clan
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- January
- 28
You don’t necessarily set out in life to start a blended family. Some of us simply find ourselves in a place where you’re a candidate for it. You start you first family, have a kid, then things don’t work out and you go through a divorce or a split.
As I’ve blogged before, I’ve been fortunate in my situation because my ex and I do remain friends, and split parenting duties amicably. But there’s always a loss, and that primarily comes in the loss of a sense of family — something kids in divided homes will almost always want to recapture as well.
In our case, my ex and I have been lucky: She’s remarried and I live with my girlfriend and her little boy, so we’re both a part of blended families now. In fact, we’re part of a growing trend that, right or wrong, is reshaping the American family. Census statistics say that 75% of divorced people remarry, and 43% of all marriages constitute a remarriage for at least one partner. Yet, there’s still no guarantees: 60% of remarriages end in legal divorce.
Is it a case of, “if at first you don’t succeed, try and try and try again?” Perhaps. But I think single parents in particular legitimately covet that feeling of family for themselves and their children — a growing number of single parents, in fact. Given all this, I want to put a few questions out there:
• What do you think about the changing family dynamic in America?
• Given the percentage of failed remarriages, do you feel children of single parents are generally better off with a lone parent or in a new, blended family?
• What is your gut reaction when someone tells you they’re a single parent?
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 at 12:45 pm by Jorge Fitz-Gibbon.
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Category: Blended families, Census, Childcare, Dating, Developmental issues, Divorce, Emotions, Family, Fatherhood, Growing, Learning, Motherhood, Parenting, Single parents, Statistics, Values
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1. Not much. I think the decline of the stable family unit as a means of rearing children is a major threat to our economic and social stability in the future. Just as we’re waking up to realize that we’ve compromised our economic strength through short-sighted financial decisions born of our need for instant gratification, I fear we’re going to find that we’ve done the same thing to society’s social fabric through our need for instant gratification on the personal side, often at the expense of our children.
2. That depends on the situation. If the parent(s) remarry with a good person, then I think that’s probably better in most cases than a lone parent. But there are some single parents who introduce bad people into their children’s lives by moving from relationship to relationship. The children most at risk of sexual abuse are children of single mothers who don’t live with their biological father.
3. That also depends on how the situation came about. To be honest, my reaction is highly negative if it’s a never-married person with multiple children, particularly if they’re from different fathers. I think it’s wrong to make such irresponsible decisions when children are affected. In other cases, I don’t pass judgment on a personal level, since you never know the real set of circumstances behind the situation. I do have a problem with people saying that single parents should receive all sorts of extra help from taxpayers simply because they’re single parents, particularly if it’s by choice. We have to get past this idea that other people have some sort of obligation to fund our lifestyle choices. They don’t.