“Brady Bunch” is the term people use for our type of family configuration: man, woman, his kids, her kids. It conjures up a flat but happy picture of a family in garish 70s colors, so unterritorial that six kids can share one bathroom with ease.

I knew better than to expect anything like that when my partner and I moved in together. The unfixable loss of divorce is that you never reclaim the wholeness of the original family. There are always conflicts of loyalty, as parents try to decide how to share out their time and money among their kids, their step kids, and their new spouses. The conflicts last until death do us part, and parents must divide up their assets in their estate plans.

For years I thought I should aim to re-create the closeness of an original family within our blended family. My stepdaughter moved in with us full-time, and every day I would put aside the problems of the day before and try for one more tiny step towards togetherness. I was never happier than when I finally admitted defeat, whooshing down those icy slopes I’d been trying to climb and ending up in a laughing heap at the bottom.

Now that I’ve become an every-other-weekend step mom, I’m seeing a new possibility. Maybe this awkwardly joined family offers advantages over the traditional model. For example, when my partner is saddened by his teenage daughter’s nasty hysteria, I can be dispassionate. She’s not my kid. I sit back and remind him that this is a characteristic of her age, and that they have been very close in the past and will probably be so again. And when I talk to him about my son’s budding neuroses and my daughter’s defiance, he listens quietly and tells me I seem like I’m on the right track to addressing those issues.

But if we were co-parents, we probably couldn’t do this for each other. We would both be enmeshed in the issues of each child. We’d have our own deeply held convictions and experiences and would be caught in our concern and occasional disagreements, unable to let go. Instead, our top priority in our relationship is each other. We get involved in kid issues to the extent that we need to in order to support each other, and no more. Frankly, we just don’t care about each other’s kids to the same all-engrossing degree that we have to care about our own.

They say that it’s tough on a relationship for both partners to work at the same company or be in business together. The business ends up taking over the relationship, leaving no space for playful couple time or even down time. Well, I say it’s tough for partners to be parents together. The parenthood ends up taking over the relationship, leaving no space for playful couple time or even down time.

Maybe blended families are the ideal, after all. Just look at Mr. and Mrs. Brady—they’re smiling.

By Meridian James

Labels: Meridian James

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