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This is one of a series of lesson-7 articles
on how to evolve a high-nurturance stepfamily. This series extends
the concepts in Lessons 1-6, so study them first. These articles augment, vs.
replace, other
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
related stepparents and bioparents co-managing a multi-home nuclear
stepfamily.
One of five widespread
stepfamily
is co-parent
including lack of
vital know-ledge on at least
Some
mates believe they're experienced enough in marriage and family life to
co-manage a stepfamily well enough. Others - specially childless new
stepparents - suspect they need to learn some things. They seek knowledge
from...
-
books, articles by - and consultations with - "experts,"
-
stepfamily Web sites
and chat rooms,
-
TV programs, and...
-
friends in stepfamilies.
The paradox is,
seekers
- including human-service and media professionals -
don't have a reliable way to
separate accurate information and practical advice from inaccurate,
impractical, and harmful counsel.
Based on 30
years' professional stepfamily research and experience, this article
offers
-
guidelines for choosing
qualified sources of stepfamily information, and
gives...
-
examples of common
misinformation and impractical or harmful advice.
To better understand
these, consider this...
Perspective
Premise: typical courting and committed stepfamily
co-parents and lay and professional supporters need "relevant information" and "practical advice." What
are those?
Relevant
Stepfamily Information
Families exist to fill their members' dynamic array of current and long-term
Mates who form
stepfamilies via mutual commitments want to "succeed" - i.e. to
consistently
fill everyone's needs well enough, in satisfying ways. Widespread American
psychological or legal
implies that millions
of American stepfamily couples weren't able to do this.
One reason is that the couples and their supporters
lacked "relevant information" -
accurate, specific answers to core
questions like these:
-
What is personal
and how can adults evaluate the wholistic health of their family adults
and children?
-
What are the traits of a healthy /
functional /
family?
-
What core
does marriage
fill, and what are the core requisites
for a stable, resilient, satisfying stepfamily marriage?
-
What do courting co-parents
to make wise
re/marital
-
Compared to intact biofamilies, what special
needs do typical stepfamily adults and
kids have, short
and long term?
-
What's normal - i.e. what
should stepfamily co-parents and kids expect
of themselves, each other, and society, as they help each other evolve
their identities, personalities, relationships, and roles over time?
-
What common
hinder or block typical stepfamily
adults from providing
what their mem-bers need?
-
What
resources do typical stepfamily adults have
to avoid or resolve these problems?
Typical stepfamilies are
intact
biofamilies in some ways, and differ in over 60 other ways. This means
that providers of "relevant
stepfamily information" must know (a) all these differences and (b) what
they
to average co-parents, kids, and kin. Otherwise, the
providers' information and advice will probably be irrelevant
(pertain to biofamilies not stepfamilies) or harmful.
For perspective, typical stepfamily authors mention under ten of these
significant differences. Since 1979, not one of well over 1,000 co-parents
and human-service professional I've met could name more than a dozen differences.
This leaves them at risk of accepting and acting on
irrelevant stepfamily infor-mation - and not knowing that.
Impractical, Superficial, Misguided, Incomplete,
and Toxic Advice
By
definition, practical
or useful advice (on anything) provides clear ways to fill
current
Most of us need practical (clear, factual,
accurate) advice to fill out our tax returns. Parents need specific
suggestions on how to help kids with significant school or social problems.
We all need practical medical advice on how to maintain our physical
health.
Problems are current discomforts - unmet needs. Typical people (like
you?) don't know how to
below current surface problems
(symptoms) to identify (a) the
primary needs that cause them and
(b) who's responsible for filling those needs. Example: "I need my
stepdaughter to have good table man-ners" (surface need) is caused by primary
needs like...
-
"I need to (a) preserve my integrity and
self-respect as a
competent stepparent, and to (b) earn others' approval of my
role-performance, starting with my mate;" and...
-
"I need to (c) respect and enjoy my stepchild," and...
-
"I
need to (d) feel potent, rather than helpless - i.e. I need to trust that I can cause useful
changes in our stepfamily."
Superficial advice focuses on
surface problems, not the primary needs that cause them. A sure sign
that people are using inaccurate information and/or superficial
advice is - the surface problems keep recurring.
Misguided advice is occurs
when someone (a) misjudges what another person really needs,
and (b) acts on or offers irrelevant or inaccurate information. For example,
many unaware stepfamily pundits counsel frustrated stepparents "Don't take
(your stepchild's disrespect or rejection) personally."
How many people have
you met who could use "will power" to make hurt, frustration, and irritation
"go away?" Better advice: "Clarify your
rights as a dignified person, and
choose to improve your abilities to
and
what you need from
your stepchild and your partner, without undue anxiety and guilt."
Typical stepfamily
and
are VERY complex!
Typical role and relation-ship "problems" like "I don't get along well with
my stepchild" usually have many simultaneous causes - e.g. inner
wounds + stepfamily ignorance + ineffective communication skills, +
incomplete
grief + lack of co-parent teamwork and informed support. If stepfamily
advice-givers (a) are not aware of all these causes and how they affect each
other, and/or (b) limit their advice to only one a few of the causes, then
they give incomplete advice.
Have
you ever gotten "bad advice"? Would you agree that it (a) didn't reduce your
original problems, and/or (b) created new problems?
Bad or toxic stepfamily
advice (a) reduces someone's
(b) lowers a family's
and (c) makes it harder for co-parents to solve their current role and relationship
problems (fill their primary needs).
|
In my stepfamily research and experience since 1979, I estimate that
well over half of the infor-mation
and counsel offered by stepfamily authors,
"experts," and commentators is impractical, super-ficial, misguided,
incomplete, and/or potentially toxic. The tragedy is, typical
co-parents and most human-service professionals don't know this,
or how to judge it, and/or
where to find better information and advice. |
The Problem With Stepfamily
Research
Common sense suggests the most credible information and advice
are from reports of formal "stepfamily research." For
my Master's degree thesis, I spent two years analyzing scores of formal
stepfamily research studies in accredited professional journals like The
Journal of Marital and Family Therapy (JMFT) and Family Relations. These included
studies of studies, which summarized formal research trends and findings.
What I learned during and since that time is :
-
there are over 100 individual variables that
affect biofamily
and dynamics - for example, adults' ages;
prior marital and parenting history; race; ethnic background; education
and income levels; number, gender, and ages of living children;
geographic location; urban vs. rural environ-ments; religious
preference/s, family cohesion (bonding and loyalty), problem-solving
styles, and years married). This
makes (a) designing effective research controlling only one or two variables
very difficult, and (b) findings guesstimates at best. And...
-
typical stepfamily
have more
and variables
than intact biofamily systems. This makes designing and performing valid,
replicatable stepfamily research even more challenging. And...
-
Classic research design is based on previously-validated criteria. This means that newly-emerging
(unvalidated) criteria get less weight in designing family research or evaluating the findings.
For example, most psychological and psychiatric research prior to the
1950s did not factor in the ma-jor influence of a "disturbed
person's" childhood or current family dynamics in making "mental health"
diagnoses and treatment prescriptions. Now researchers and clinicians
who reject family-systems and communication theories are in the
minority.
Another example: until the 1980s, mental-health workers were taught to assess and treat
and "mental illness"
separately. The explosion of public and clinical awareness of adult
children of alcoholics (ACoA) since then has begun shifting that
premise - and related family research - toward seeing these conditions
as interrelated symptoms of family dysfunction.
|
The point: most stepfamily research to date has
not considered the reality
and demonstrable effects of (a) psychological
that
accrue from many co-parents' growing up in a
childhood,
and how they interact with (b)
communication skills
and (c)
In my judgment as a professional engineer,
manager, and
veteran
stepfamily researcher, educator, and therapist,
this implies all
stepfamily research to date should be questioned and reevaluated.
Without relevant information and experience on these three vital
variables, most lay and professional "stepfami-ly experts" will
disagree. |
Bottom line: while "stepfamily research" is probably more credible
than personal opinions, it does not necessarily provide accurate, practical
guidance for typical stepfamilies. There are too many variables
to control for, and new criteria are emerging that older research didn't
include. A recent example is the dil-igent study guided by Dr. James
Bray, and described in
Stepfamilies - love, marriage, and parenting in the First Decade
(1999).
Lay and professional research is often based on surveying "typical" people
in stepfamilies. Typical research volunteers (a) are not trained in
understanding
+ communication
basics and
+
healthy grieving + (step)family-system
realities, merger
tasks,
and dynamics. Typ-ical volunteers and
researchers aren't used to differentiating between primary needs and
surface
prob-lems.
That means their
conclusions about stepfamily problems and resolutions are often heartfelt, super-ficial
and/or wrong.
Who Should You Believe?
Typical stepfamily adults and supporters need reliable information. They usually lack the
experience and training to discern practical advice from superficial,
impractical, or inaccurate counsel. What are they (you) to do? I suggest the
following guidelines. From most to least credible and practical, believe...
1) advisors with...
-
advanced degrees
(below) who...
-
have some years of experience working clinically with
(a) average stepfamily clients and (b) early-childhood trauma
recoverers, and who...
-
have (a) personal divorce + remarriage +
parenting + stepfamily experience, and (b) personal
experience;
and who...
-
acknowledge (a) personality subselves,
(b) blocked grief, and (c) the vital difference between surface
problems and underlying primary needs, who...
-
have designed and conducted one or more
stepfamily-related research studies which include findings from
prior researchers.
2) advisors who lack one or more of the
criteria above, and do have an advanced human-service degree like
these: psychiatrist (MD), clinical psychologist (MS, PsyD,
PhD), licen-sed marriage and family therapist (LMFT), clinical social
worker (LCSW, MSW, DSW, ACSW), certified family life educator (CFLE),
licensed professional counselor (LPC), or other counseling (vs.
sociology or social psychology) degree from an accredited graduate
school.
3) advisors with training and expertise
in general human-service fields like divorce media-tion, law enforcement,
family-life education, family finances, child-development, or family
casework, but without (a) the
criteria above and/or (b) training or experience in all these
foundation topics;
4) advisors without
the criteria above who rely heavily on "Biblical
or Christian principles" and "stepfamily interviews" without equal
training in and attention to psychological and
relationship health + foundation knowledge + existing stepfamily
research findings;
5) "successful stepfamily" couples or
veteran stepparents using their personal experience as their
authority ("If we can make it work,
so can you!");
6) advisors with no
(a) professional training
or (b) marital or parenting experience who (c) have informally surveyed
some number of stepfamily members (d) with or without referring
to formal stepfamily research - e.g. a journalist or human-interest
reporter.
Overall: be cautious about
accepting stepfamily advice from anyone who (a) lacks the first
three credentials above, and (b) who implies or claims authority and
credibility from any of these...
-
creating and/or teaching family-related,
stepfamily, or re/marital seminars;
-
publishing one or more books, workbooks, and tapes
about family-related subjects, including stepfamilies, stepparenting,
stepkids, and divorce;
-
appearing on local or national radio or TV
talk shows, and/or in national print media;
-
being endorsed by family-related or Ph.D.
"experts." or who claim to have "studied stepfamily research"
but lack the first criteria above;
-
having an unspecified "advanced" (e.g. Ph.D.)
degree, or being an ordained minister, pastor, preacher, or rabbi;
-
have glowing endorsements from laypeople or
unqualified experts; ("Dr. Jones' book saved our marriage!");
and/or advisors who...
-
manage a stepfamily-related Web site, and/or
moderate a stepfamily Internet forum or chat room; and/or...
-
publish a stepfamily-related newsletter
written by them or others; or who...
-
include advice from a "stepfamily
(professional) expert" in their Web site, materials, or program.
Though they sound impressive,
none of these factors are
reliable indicators of (a) the advisor's stepfamily knowledge and (b) vision
and wisdom in
applying the knowledge!
Pause, breathe, and reflect - what are you thinking and feeling now? Do the
opinions above feel cre-dible and practical? Useful? If not - why not?
Continue with some real examples of
impractical and harmful stepfamily advice...
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