Download or read book Stepfamilies written by James H. Bray and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011-08-17 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a landmark longitudinal study, the nation's leading expert on stepfamilies reveals his breakthrough findings and offers the first detailed guide to easing the conflicts of stepfamily life and healing the scars of divorce. There are more than twenty million stepfamilies in America. For most of them, the simple, daily issues that challenge every family are even more anxiety-provoking. After conducting a comprehensive nine-year-long study funded by the National Institutes of Health, Dr. James H. Bray has written an invaluable book that explains why over half of all stepfamilies fail and reveals the strategies that help the others succeed. A stepfamily is assaulted on all sides by difficult and often divisive questions. How much control should a stepparent have over a stepchild? How much authority should a nonresidential parent exert over a child? How should a difficult former spouse be handled? How does an "ours" baby change the emotional dynamic in a stepfamily? Why is there a lack of "honeymoon effect" during the first years of stepfamily life? The purpose of Stepfamilies is to answer all the important questions of stepfamily life--to fill in the knowledge gaps that undermine so many stepfamilies today and, crucially, to learn the effect of stepfamily life on children. Based on one of the largest and longest studies of stepfamily life ever conducted, Stepfamilies interweaves the stories of real families to illustrate such study findings as how: a stepfamily has its own natural life cycle a stepfamily takes several years to develop into a family unit a stepfamily is at greatest risk during the first two years a stepfamily ultimately coalesces into one of three forms a stepfamily must solve four basic tasks in order to succeed a stepfamily can help heal the scars of divorce Filled with emotional, gripping stories, Bray's findings pinpoint the three major transitions in stepfamily life and identify the riskiest issues that can throw a family into crisis. Bray is the first to identify the several distinct forms that stepfamilies take and to explore which types of stepfamilies are more vulnerable than others and why. He also describes the natural life cycle of stepfamilies and basic tasks all stepfamilies must undertake to succeed. With a wealth of insight into the positive effects of remarriage, Bray shows how a loving, well-functioning stepfamily can lessen the trauma of divorce and restore a child's and family's sense of security. Most stepparents remarry with the highest hopes and new resolutions for a better life. Never before have their unique needs been addressed in depth. Through insightful case studies and practical advice, Stepfamilies reveals how a strong, stable stepfamily is as capable as a nuclear family of nurturing healthy development, of imbuing values, of setting limits and boundaries, and of providing a structure in which rules for living a moral and productive life are transmitted, tested, rebelled against, and ultimately affirmed. Bray's positive message and fascinating findings--many of which defy intuition--will put stepfamilies on the road to lifelong harmony.
Download or read book The Smart Stepdad written by Ron L. Deal and published by Bethany House. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While resources abound for stepmothers, stepfathers are often left to travel a difficult road without clear directions. Ron Deal offers advice for men navigating the stepfamily minefield, including how to connect with stepchildren, being a godly role model, how to discipline, dealing with the biological dad, and keeping the bond strong with one's new spouse. He gives perspective on what the kids are going through and why things don't work the same as in a biological family. The Smart Stepdad provides essential guidelines to help stepfathers not only survive but succeed as both dad and husband.
Download or read book Becoming A Stepfamily written by Patricia L. Papernow and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2015-07-17 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What determines whether stepfamilies remain together? What helps stepfamilies overcomes the difficulties of remarriage and become mutually supportive family units? How can mental health professionals better support this development? This book brings both clarity and depth to the unique and complex dynamics of remarried families. Patricia Papernow draws on interviews with over 100 stepfamily members, up-to-date research, a solid theoretical framework, and an empathic clinical sensibility to present an insightful model of stepfamily development, the Stepfamily Cycle. This details account of the sages of forming a lasting, cohesive group is richly illustrated by stepfamily members' own stories. Becoming a Stepfamily describes the developmental challenges involved in building nourishing, reliable relationships between stepparents and stepchildren, in the newly married couple, and between different family groups who must learn to live together in a remarried family. Papernow discusses the factors that influence the pace and ease of development, and she provides four full length case studies illustrating the varied paths through the stepfamily cycle to the successful remarried life. The author offers therapists, clergy, school personnel, and others involved with stepfamilies a range of effective interventions, including preventive, educational, and clinical approaches. She provides practical guidance for helping family members deal constructively with the differing attachments of children to their biological parents and stepparents, assisting stepparents as they cope with feeling excluded from the powerful biological parent-child bond, and guiding biological parents torn between their spouse's need for intimacy and privacy and their children's needs for support and attention.
Download or read book The Smart Stepfamily written by Ron L. Deal and published by Bethany House. This book was released on 2006 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each member has their own unique place in a family. Ron Deal explores the myth of the "blended" family offering practical, realistic solutions for stepfamilies.
Download or read book Stepcoupling written by Susan Wisdom and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love may be sweeter the second time around, but once the bliss of a newfound relationship wears off a little, the reality of being part of a stepfamily sets in. If you are one of the millions of remarried Americans facing the challenge of blending two existing families into one cohesive whole, you are part of a stepcouple—and you know all too well how hard it can be to make your marriage work in sometimes tough terrain. Different parenting styles, finances, relationships with ex-spouses, legal matters, and even seemingly simple issues such as the kinds of chores assigned to children can chisel away at your union if you don’t always make your marriage a priority. Stepcoupling offers advice for stepcouples on how to do just that—all the while strengthening their blended family with a healthy marriage. Susan Wisdom and Jennifer Green provide tips and strategies on dealing with the issues remarried couples face, with a wealth of advice from real-life stepcouples, such as: * Learning to tailor your expectations of your spouse or children and remembering that no family is perfect * Knowing where your boundaries are, whether involving a hostile ex-spouse or a stepchild who demands too much attention * Realizing that traits like flexibility, tolerance, forgiveness, and openness are especially essential in a stepfamily situation * Making “us” time for talking, problem-solving, weekends away, and enjoying your marriage to constantly renew and strengthen your bond as a couple Let this invaluable remarriage manual help you make your stepcouple the foundation of a strong, happy, and successful stepfamily.
Download or read book Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships written by Patricia L. Papernow and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-07 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships is designed to be useful both to stepfamily members themselves and to a wide variety of practitioners, as well as to educators, judges, mediators, lawyers and medical personnel.
Download or read book Stepfamily Realities written by Margaret Newman and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This practical and supportive handbook breaks down the myths surrounding stepfamily relationships and offers workable tools for solving common problems. Stepfamily "newlyweds" generally face a number of challenges unique to their situation. Many couples are overwhelmed by the unresolved anger they carry from previous marriages and by their children's resentment of "intruders"; family life may be complicated by visiting and resident stepchildren.In this straightforward guide, psychologist Margaret Newman helps readers examine their key relationships, identify potential conflicts, and understand how problems arise, as well as what to do about them. Jealousy, personal boundaries, discipline, communication skills, money issues, sexuality, a new child-these are just a few of the many issues Stepfamily Realities addresses.
Download or read book Blended Family Advice written by Shirley Cress Dudley MA LPC and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2009-10-26 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blended Family Advice is step-by-step guide to help blended and stepfamilies navigate the rough areas in their marriage and family. The book focuses on three main areas: marriage, kids, and the outside world. Learn how to communicate with your ex-spouse successfully, create a sense of unity in your newly blended family, how to treat stepparents and stepsiblings, and how to create house rules and expectations in your new blended household. Shirley Cress Dudley uses her skills as a licensed professional counselor, and as a stepmom to help blended and step families learn how to become strong and successful. Blended Family Advice contains the keys to a successful blended family along with several bonus reports: a financial planner, creating successful blended family holidays, house hunting for the blended family, and a guide for grandparents. Blended families and stepfamilies will find this book to be a comprehensive resource and one that every stepfamily and blended family will need in their home. Visit The Blended and Step Family Resource Center http://www.TheBlendedandStepFamilyResourceCenter.com and http://www.BlendedFamilyAdvice.com for more information. Shirley Cress Dudley, MA LPC [email protected]
Download or read book Building Love Together in Blended Families written by Gary Chapman and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Create a Loving and Safe Environment for Your Blended Family Blended families face unique challenges, and sadly, good intentions aren’t always enough. With so many complex relationships involved, all the normal rules for family life change, even how you apply something as simple as the five love languages. That’s why Gary Chapman, the bestselling author of The 5 Love Languages® andnational expert on stepfamilies, Ron Deal, join together in this book to teach you how the five love languages can help your blended family. They’ll teach you: About the unique dynamics of stepfamilies How to overcome fear and trust issues in marriage How to develop healthy parenting and step-parenting practices How the love languages should—and should not—be applied You’re going to face many challenges, but with the right strategies and smart work, your family can be stronger and healthier together.
Download or read book Secrets to Stepfamily Success written by Gloria Lintermans and published by Gloria Lintermans. This book was released on 2010-06 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SECRETS TO STEPFAMILY SUCCESS offers tools that can significantly lower the alarming 70% rate of step and blended family divorce, helping families evolve into highly nurturing, reliable refuges of warmth, safety, encouragement, strength, caring, and joy. Step and blended families have a unique dynamic with which couples must cope, along with all the other normal challenges of life and marriage. See how these families differ in up to sixty structural and dynamic ways from typical intact biological families--including consisting of two co-parenting homes and ex-spouses--and learn how to successfully recognize and manage these challenges. For most couples, trying to build a successful remarriage can mysteriously bring out their deepest personal fears, longings, shames, and hopes. The key to not only survival, but living this journey well, begins with discovering opportunities to heal and to succeed; it is not about blame or badness. With the right preparation and resources, a multi-home step or blended family can be a stable and solid foundation for co-parents and children. Gloria Lintermans is the author of THE HEALING POWER OF GRIEF: The Journey Through Loss to Life and Laughter, THE HEALING POWER OF LOVE: Transcending the Loss of a Spouse to New Love, THE NEWLY DIVORCED BOOK OF PROTOCOL: How to Be Civil When You Hate Their Guts, and RETCO CHIC: A Guide to Fabulous Vintage and Designer Resale Shopping in North America & Online. Her articles have appeared in local and national magazines, and she is a retired newspaper columnist whose column has been syndicated in English and Spanish language newspapers worldwide.
Download or read book Stepfamily Relationships written by Lawrence H. Ganong and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume focuses on a wide range of behaviors and outcomes in stepfamily relationships, both positive and negative. The authors use the normative-adaptive perspective to seek out and study adaptive, well-functioning stepfamilies and find how they differ from those who struggle to cope. It will be a welcome text and reference for all those who study and work with stepfamilies and families in general.
Download or read book Preparing to Blend written by Ron L. Deal and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Premarital Guide for Blended Family Couples If you want to enter a blended family marriage well, this is the book for you. Aimed at engaged or pre-engaged couples who have at least one child from a previous relationship, Preparing to Blend offers wise counsel on parenting, finances, establishing family identity, and daily routines for your new life together. Within these pages you will learn how to: · predict common issues · define expectations · create solutions You, your soon-to-be-spouse, and your children will benefit from exercises designed to accelerate family bonding and help you better understand each other. There is even a chapter to help you plan your wedding with your children in mind, so you can build a strong future together. Preparing to Blend is also an ideal premarital counseling tool for marriage coaches, mentors, and pastors wanting to prepare couples for complex blended family dynamics. If you are considering forming a blended family, Preparing to Blend is the resource you've been looking for.
Download or read book Strengthening Your Stepfamily written by Elizabeth Einstein and published by Impact Pub. This book was released on 2005-11 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of three Americans is now a stepparent, a stepchild, a stepsibling, or some other member of a stepfamily. Stepfamilies are different. The "old rules" that govern traditional families don't necessarily apply, and each stepfamily must define its own "new rules" that will work for a unique blended family. Einstein and Albert bring to this manual decades of experience as stepfamily counselors and consultants, acclaimed writers, and stepparents themselves. The result is clear, down-to-earth, expert help for couple relationships and parenting in what some call "the jigsaw puzzle family." Among the many challenges dealt with in this comprehensive guidebook: overcoming unrealistic expectations, debunking myths, decision making, building effective communication, establishing sound discipline, handling stepsibling rivalry, working with non-custodial parents... and more.
Download or read book The Smart Stepfamily Marriage written by Ron L. Deal and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Make This Marriage Last a Lifetime Leading blended family authority Ron Deal and marriage and family expert David Olson show you how to build on your relationship strengths and improve your weaknesses. Whether you're dating, engaged, a young stepfamily, or an empty-nest couple, The Smart Stepfamily Marriage gives you the tools you need at any stage to create a remarriage that will last. Each chapter of this book explores one of the key qualities of happy remarriages as identified by research. Like a GPS for your relationship, this book has built-in discussion questions that can help you and your partner discover where you are, where you'd like to be, and how to get there. The online survey gives you a report with personalized results for your relationship. "The Smart Stepfamily Marriage is the road map to a healthy marriage."--Gary D. Chapman, PhD, author, The Five Love Languages and When Sorry Isn't Enough "Remarried or marrying again? This book is loaded with specific, useful ideas for helping your marriage reach its full potential."--Scott Stanley, PhD, author, A Lasting Promise; research professor, University of Denver "This book is a must-read for any remarried couple. It includes the tools needed to create and maintain a wonderful remarriage."--from the foreword by Evelyn Husband Thompson, widow of Space Shuttle Columbia Commander Rick Husband, now remarried to Bill Thompson "The Smart Stepfamily Marriage is the most up-to-date, relevant, complete guide for remarried couples--I know of no other resource like it."--Francesca Adler-Baeder, PhD, professor and director, Center for Children, Youth, and Families, Auburn University; director, National Stepfamily Resource Center "This book will help you thrive in your marriage and beat the odds of divorce. The preventative information is the best I have ever seen, and the practical application covers it all. I have put The Smart Stepfamily Marriage at the top of my resource library for couples who find themselves in this beautiful and yet challenging world of remarriage."--Jim Burns, PhD, president, HomeWord, author of Creating an Intimate Marriage, Confident Parenting, and The Purity Code "Remarriages have unique challenges and different relational needs than first marriages. Based on a national study of 50,000 couples, this book is a wonderful resource for remarriage couples. Take the online Couple Checkup and get a report about your relationship, read the book, and build a relationship that lasts!"--Dr. Gary Smalley, author of The DNA of Relationships "You want a marriage that lasts forever, right? Blended family couples can beat the odds--this book will tell you how."--Dr. Dennis Rainey, president of FamilyLife, author of Stepping Up
Download or read book Stepfamily Therapy written by Scott Browning and published by American Psychological Association (APA). This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors combine successful interventions within an original theoretical framework for stepfamily therapy.
Download or read book The Stepfamily Puzzle written by Craig Everett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do stepfamilies experience greater levels of stressors than first families? Do they also experience more negative manifestations of stress? Find the latest research on these questions and more in this groundbreaking exploration of the complex factors and dynamics that make up stepfamilies. The Stepfamily Puzzle fills a gap in research that has not kept pace with the rapid growth of interest in this subject. It sets some of the pieces of the stepfamily puzzle into an intergenerational framework that includes the roles of grandparents, parent-child interactions, the struggles to define boundaries and achieve marital intimacy, and the underlying effects of financial support on stepfamily well-being. The Stepfamily Puzzle compares the effects of stress in stepfamilies and conditions in other families and reveals that the differences between the two types of families may not be as dramatic as long assumed. It also examines in-depth the emotional and financial stressors that impact stepfamilies and how this stress is exhibited in family relationships. Other groundbreaking research presented in this book includes: the closeness of relationships between children and grandparents in stepfamilies as compared to children and grandparents in first families effects of ongoing attachment to the former spouse on post-divorce relationships stepsibling subsystems a comparison of self-esteem and behavior problems of stepchildren and children in other family structures social support received by children in stepmother, stepfather, and intact families quality of stepfather-adolescent relationships effect of child support on stepfamily satisfactionTherapists, attorneys, and those interested in the numerous therapeutic and psychoeducational programs, self-help groups, and trade literature available on stepfamily relationships will find The Stepfamily Puzzle a valuable introduction to current research in this area. By presenting the complex variables that interact within stepfamilies, this book helps professionals understand the dynamics behind stepfamily relationships so they can provide effective support and care.
Download or read book Becoming A Stepfamily written by Patricia L. Papernow and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2015-07-17 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What determines whether stepfamilies remain together? What helps stepfamilies overcomes the difficulties of remarriage and become mutually supportive family units? How can mental health professionals better support this development? This book brings both clarity and depth to the unique and complex dynamics of remarried families. Patricia Papernow draws on interviews with over 100 stepfamily members, up-to-date research, a solid theoretical framework, and an empathic clinical sensibility to present an insightful model of stepfamily development, the Stepfamily Cycle. This details account of the sages of forming a lasting, cohesive group is richly illustrated by stepfamily members' own stories. Becoming a Stepfamily describes the developmental challenges involved in building nourishing, reliable relationships between stepparents and stepchildren, in the newly married couple, and between different family groups who must learn to live together in a remarried family. Papernow discusses the factors that influence the pace and ease of development, and she provides four full length case studies illustrating the varied paths through the stepfamily cycle to the successful remarried life. The author offers therapists, clergy, school personnel, and others involved with stepfamilies a range of effective interventions, including preventive, educational, and clinical approaches. She provides practical guidance for helping family members deal constructively with the differing attachments of children to their biological parents and stepparents, assisting stepparents as they cope with feeling excluded from the powerful biological parent-child bond, and guiding biological parents torn between their spouse's need for intimacy and privacy and their children's needs for support and attention.
