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The Web address of this article is http://sfhelp.org.03/sf_means.htm

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        This is one of over 150 articles focused on healing psychological wounds,  building high-nurtur-ance family relationships, breaking the [wounds + unawareness] cycle, and preventing divorce. This introduction describes the Web site's purpose and the best ways to use its resources. Each article is part of a mosaic of ideas, so the more you read, the more sense they'll all make.

        These articles augment, vs. replace, other qualified professional help. The "/" in re/marriage and re/divorce notes that it may be a stepparent's first union. "Co-parents" means both bioparents, or any of the three or more related stepparents and bioparents co-managing a multi-home nuclear stepfamily. 

        Before continuing, reflect: why are you reading this - what do you need?

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        A WIDESPREAD HAZARD that promotes typical co-parents' wrong re/marital choices and much post-re/wedding heartache and conflict is...

• minimizing or ignoring their stepfamily identity ("Yes, we are a stepfamily"); and/or...

• not learning and accepting what that identity means to their adults, kids, and descendents.

This puts co-parents, kids, and relatives at risk of assuming stepfamilies and intact biofamilies are "pretty much the same." Paradoxically, that's true in some ways, and not true in over 60 ways!

        This hazard promotes stepfamily adults' using groups of up to 60 unrealistic (biofamily-based) expectations as they merge their multi-generational biofamilies, work at their many merger-adjustment tasks, and forge complex new family roles, rules, relationships, and rituals. Unrealistic expectations cause and compound many other stepfamily problems. The antidote is stepfamily education and awareness!

        This article summarizes the key things that membership in a typical stepfamily means to the adults and kids who comprise its several generations. See how many of them you already knew...

Belonging to a typical stepfamily usually means that...

        1)  Co-parents, kids, and relatives can potentially satisfy all the normal needs that cause people to live in families, and gain the special advantages that average stepfamilies provide - if all co-parents...

• fully accept that their odds of psychological or legal re/divorce are significant for five reasons, 

• adopt a long-range view and a meaningful family mission statement, and

• co-commit to helping each other with 12 long-term family Projects, ideally starting in courtship.

        2)  These stepfamily facts apply to all members, supporters and friends;

        3)  One or more of their three or more co-parents is probably from a low-nurturance childhood, and is denying up to six major psychological wounds. Until identified, accepted, and substantially reduced,  these wounds will combine and...

• degrade communication effectiveness,

• hinder healthy grieving and bonding,

• stress all family relationships,

• eventually impair co-parents' health, and...

• will pass on to their kids despite the co-parents' best efforts.

        And belonging to a stepfamily usually means that...

        4)  Both stepkids’ bioparents, and any present or future new mates of theirs (and any step and "ours" kids) are full emotional, legal, and financial members of the nuclear stepfamily, whether they’re active or not, or dead. If co-parent mates discount or ignore ex mates' dignity, values, needs, and opinions, they risk complex webs of stressful family- membership, values, and loyalty conflicts and relationship triangles over many surface disagreements, as long as the ex mate/s and youngest stepchild live. And your stepfamily identity also means…

        5)  Each minor stepchild needs informed help from all their adults to fill their unique mix of over 60 concurrent developmental and family-adjustment needs. To nurture (fill needs) effectively, stepparents,  bioparents, and family supporters need to...

• want to proactively reduce any barriers to building an effective co-parenting team, and...

• accurately assess each child's status with all these needs, and negotiate...

• which co-parents are responsible for helping each child fill their mix of primary needs over time.

        And being in a multi-home stepfamily means that...

        6)  Typical co-parents and their kids and kin will never encounter a stepfamily composed like theirs, because there are over 100 structural types of nuclear stepfamily. This often promotes feeling alien, strange, and alone, which can increase normal new-stepfamily anxieties and discomfort; and...

        7)  Average stepfamily co-parents and supporters also need to learn, accept, and adapt to...

• ~40 environmental differences between traditional bioparenting and stepparenting, and...

• ~20 environmental differences between traditional biofamily child discipline and typical stepfamily child discipline; while they...

• admit and resolve significant values conflicts over co-parenting; and...

• help each other mesh their communication styles, and develop effective communication skills.

        And stepfamily identity and membership typically means…

        8)  All adults and kids need informed support to grieve sets of special losses (broken bonds) from prior divorce, relocation/s, and/or death + single-parent family dissolution + re/marriage + stepfamily co-habiting. Often, psychologically- wounded co-parents and kids lack inner and social permissions to grieve well, so typical co-parents need to...

• learn good-grief basics, and model and teach them to their kids and supporters,

• evolve and live by a "pro-grief" family grieving policy, and...

• assess for any kids or adults who are incomplete or blocked in mourning their losses; and...

• help each other to free them up. These steps are part of family Project 5, which is best started in courtship with six other Projects; and also...

        9)  Co-parents must learn and master ~30 family-merger tasks and a set of relationship skills with their other caregivers. This means co-parents must learn to identify and assert their primary needs and boundaries respectfully, listen empathically, negotiate and problem-solve effectively for many years - i.e. co-parents need to help each other progress on family Project 2. To sample what they need to learn and apply, try this communication quiz.

        And accepting your stepfamily identity ("We are a normal stepfamily") also means that...

        10)  Typical co-parent mates will need to consciously...

• value and nourish their relationship (Project 8)  while they...

• patiently merge their biofamilies (Project 9) and build a co-parenting team (Project 10), and they...

• find qualified help to manage all these complex sub-tasks (Project 11). 

Stepfamily membership usually means when co-parents seek help, they can't find any informed classes, counselors, media programs, books, and support groups - so they often feel on their own. Or if they don't know how to evaluate stepfamily help. they may rely on well-meant, uninformed or even harmful advice. And...

        11)  Co-parents need to stay balanced enough and enjoy working patiently at all these concurrent family-building tasks and goals while they reduce any false-self wounds, manage careers, friendships and socializing, assets and debts, maintain their home/s and appliances, adapt to unexpected changes and opportunities, grow personally and spiritually, and play, relax, and rest often enough.

        Together, these 11 meanings imply that if courting partners choose to form or join a stepfamily hoping for long-term "happiness," they'll need...

• all three or more co-parents' true Selves (capital "S") solidly guiding their other subselves (inner families),

• education in stepfamily, relationship, communication, grief, and co-parenting basics;

• a genuine wish to define and cooperatively live by a clear stepfamily mission, and a knowledge-based, consensual biofamily-merger plan;  and...

• special supports and resources, and...

• considerable resilience + a sense of humor + a willingness to learn, prioritize, and change + a clear vision of what they hope to build together over many years.

        Pause and notice your thoughts and feelings. How many of these 11 stepfamily meanings could you name before reading this? Do all these things seem do-able over many years, or overwhelming and impossible? Can you better appreciate why many U.S. stepfamily unions fail psychologically or legally?

        These typical stepfamily tasks are daunting, complex, and most of them overlap. So are the  requirements to graduate a four-year college or trade apprenticeship, yet millions of average people succeed at those. They have motivation, goals, a long-term plan, patience, and help along the way.

        With awareness and motivation to reduce inner wounds, learn, grieve well, communicate effectively, and use informed help along the way, co-parents who prepare thoroughly and patiently for inevitable stepfamily challenges can succeed long-term, and protect their vulnerable descendents from the epidemic toxic [wounds + unawareness] cycle.

Recap

        This Project-3 article exists because typical stepfamily adults and supporters don't (a) want to accept normal stepfamily identity, and/or (b) don't want to learn what that identity means to their adults, kids, supporters, and descendents. From full-time research and clinical experience since 1979, this article proposes 11 specific meanings that typical co-parents need to study, discuss, and adapt to fit their unique circumstances.

        Wanting to do this together is a requisite for mastering stepfamily Project 4: replace over 60 common misconceptions about stepfamilies with appropriate realities, and teach these to all family members and supporters - specially minor kids. Projects 3 and 4 are among seven Projects best done during courtship. They require significant progress on Projects 1 and 2.

        Pause and reflect: what are you thinking and feeling now? Recall why you read this article - what did you learn? Did you get what you needed? If so, what do you need to do now? If not, what do you need?

        See also...

This perspective on stepfamily