Customer Reviews

The Step-Parent's Survival Guide: Positive Advice for Achieving a Successful Step-Family

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This was a difficult read. It is printed in Great Britain and written for that audience. Therefore there are subtleties that were lost on this American. Chapter 2 is devoted to meeting step children. By the time you have step-parent issues, you're probably way beyond concerns about how to meet the stepchildren. By chapter 4 I was done with the book.

I have specialized in providing professional education and therapy to divorced, courting, and re/wedded couples since 1981. I am 66, a stepgrandson, stepson, and ex-stepfather and stepbrother, an invited Board member of the Stepfamily Association of America, a contributing editor to 'Your Stepfamily Online,' and the author of six published books on wound-healing, communications, and high-nurturance family relationships.

Author Boyd is a veteran stepmother, not a seasoned therapist. She provides helpful anecdotes readers can relate to, and offers advice in an authoritarian style. However, like most authors in this genre, she omits at least four critical points that renders her book largely impractical:

1) why and how to assess and reduce co-parents' psychological wounds from a low-nurturance childhood (vs. divorce);

2) the origin and impacts of blocked grief in adults and kids, and how to spot and reduce it;

3) co-parent unawareness of 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, and implications. and...

4) 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 block motivated adults from following well-meant stepfamily advice, as in this book. If ignored, the factors inexorably promote choosing the wrong people to re/wed, for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time - and subsequent stresses and re/divorce. Awareness, acceptance, and discussion of these (and related) factors can reduce the first three stressors, and help to achieve high-nurturance stepfamilies.

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