Can a Step Parent Ever Replace a Real Parent?

This topic was recently debated on the Richard Bacon radio show on BBC Radio 5 Live. As the author of a book titled Stepfamilies, I had been invited to the show to discuss the positive side of the case, whilst Philip Parkin, General Secretary of the Teachers Union Voice, was to argue against. In the event, we both (I think) found ourselves singing from the same hymn sheet. Stepfamily problems – the sort of harmful results that Philip Parkin said he found among children in primary schools – tend to arise from unresolved hurts following the breakdown of the original family unit.

Stepfamily Problems? Or Unresolved Past Insecurities?

As I wrote in my blog, Successful Step-Parenting: Do You Know What It Takes? unlike a first marriage, the union that creates a stepfamily is always the result of a traumatic experience: divorce or death.

Unless we understand that, and deal with the raw emotions arising from the event, we’re unlikely to achieve the harmony we crave in a second marriage and stepfamily.