Help is on the way for stepfamilies

The best way to approach becoming a stepfamily is to take time, she stressed. Before they marry again, parents should allow their children plenty of time to grieve. They should also resolve difficulties with their former spouses. If you didn't go through divorce mediation and counseling with your ex-spouse at the time of the divorce, do it now, before you remarry, Einstein advises.

Next, you should know that discipline will be your greatest challenge. You and your fiance(e) should examine your parenting styles. Perhaps you will want to take a parenting class together.

Also, know that stepfamilies are highly charged sexually, she said. Typically, kids who watched their parents get divorced haven't seen a lot of affection between them. Suddenly, in this new family, affection is out in the open. Teens who live in stepfamilies tend to be more sexually active. Also, incest is more common in stepfamilies.

Before you remarry, you should try to identify your expectations and boundaries. Talk about time and space. Talk with the ex-spouses. (Unfortunately, if one stepparent is insecure, there won't be much room for the ex-spouses in these discussions.) Finally, Einstein advises, you will have to be flexible when forming this new family. You may have to be flexible forever, actually.

In her own family, Einstein lost contact with the stepchildren from her first marriage for many years. But then they called. Now, Einstein sounded delighted to report, they are her friends and have reconnected with her sons, who are their half-brothers.

If the first three stages of stepfamily life are fantasy, confusion and crisis, there is still hope. In the best of cases, Einstein said, it takes four to seven years until stepfamilies find stability. By then parents will have done some "serious learning." Eventually, they can even move beyond stability, to the last and best stage: commitment.

At this point everyone in the family will agree, Einstein said. They'll say they are committed to making the family successful. They'll also say it was a wild journey.

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Resources about living in stepfamilies can be found at www.smartmarriage.com and at the Stepfamily Association of America site, www.saafamilies.org.

From the Stepfamily Association of America comes this list of the ways in which stepfamilies are different from first-time families:

• Stepfamilies come about because of loss. Both adults and children will grieve the loss, even if there hasn't been a death and even if children see both their parents regularly. There is a loss of the dream of what family life could have been.