Reply to What do I need to know about marrying a man with an ex and shared custody of kids?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a stepmom and a mom. It has been doable, but not always easy. One of the harder things for both me and DH is the fact that our two children together are likely to have a happier childhood than my stepchild, who has grown up bouncing between houses and did not have a sibling during critical years. I sometimes feel guilty-but there's nothing that would have significantly changed the situation. If DH and I hadn't gotten married and had kids, my stepchild would still have had a lonely childhood--I met DH years after the divorce, had nothing to do with it. But I do wonder if its harder to see the younger siblings with all the accoutrements of a stable nuclear family, which was denied to stepchild. and I think DH feels tremendously guilty at times, like his desire to achieve happiness, which for him meant more kids and getting remarried, only exacerbates his first child's isolation. In fact, he has admitted that if he had understood the impact of divorce on his child, he probably wouldn't have done it.  But this is particular to our family and every famiily handles the split up differently.

I anticipated a lot of things--parenting issues, ongoing relationship with ex, dividing resources, etc, but the complex emotions around adding more children to a family and how it will all mesh, or not, are hard to anticipate. [/quote]

Stepmom here too and this is a good point of view. Supporting your spouse through their parental guilt can be a big part of it. I think for my DH, it's lessened a bit as his son has gotten older and has become more independent, has his own life and interests and will very soon be off to college.  Like he knows that his son is no longer in the "young child" stage and isn't, at 18, going to be particularly bummed if he had to miss an outing we did. But when he was a bit younger, I remember getting the impression sometimes, even if he was not with us, that any good moment we experienced as a family was something he had to feel guilt for. Like it was betraying his son to be enjoying his "new" family. Or like maybe, no matter how good it was, it could still have been better if his son was there. That was definitely something I had to learn to deal with- in the early days, I viewed it as "we aren't enough" but of course with time that shifted to an understanding that it's just tough to parent two children daily and see and be there for all the small things and then have another child with whom that is no longer possible. [/quote]

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