Customer Reviews

Making It as a Stepparent: New Roles/New Rules

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I have specialized in providing professional education and therapy to divorced, courting, and re/wedded couples since 1981. I am (a) 66, (b) a stepgrandson, stepson, and ex-stepfather and stepbrother, (c) an invited Board member of the Stepfamily Association of America, (d) a contributing editor to 'Your Stepfamily Online,' and (e) the author of six personal-growth and family-relations books.

I recommend this pioneering book to readers who want a cursory introduction to stepfamily life, and an historical marker by which to see how much we've learned about stepfamilies since Berman updated this in 1986. I do not recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the core reasons most US stepfamilies are significantly stressful, and why millions redivorce or endure daily agony. The index in this brief book has no entries for shame, values conflicts, communication, grief, loss, stepfamily identity, or psychological wounds.

Like most stepfamily authors since she published, Berman omits explanation and advice on these essential stepfamily stressors:

1) why and how to assess and reduce co-parents' psychological wounds from childhood (vs. divorce. Most divorced and stepfamily adults appear to be significantly wounded - and don't know it;

2) the origin and impacts of blocked grief in adults and kids, and how to spot and reduce it. All stepfamilies follow (and cause) a series of profound losses (broken bonds);

3) co-parent unawareness of - and indiference to - five key topics: (a) normal personality formation, composition, and function; (b) keys to high-nurturance families and relationships, (c) effective communication skills, (d) healthy 3-level grief, and (e) stepfamily realities, norms, implications, and hazards. And...

4) the implications of little effective re/marital and co-parenting help (i.e. courtship coaching, classes, informed counseling, co-parent support groups) available in most communities and the media.

In my clinical experience, these factors will often promote needy, love-dazed courting co-parents to commit to the wrong people (mate, stepkids, and "other parent/s"), for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time. Then the factors inhibit co-parents from identifying and resolving these core personal, role, and relationship problems:

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