Of Breeders and their blended families

A local publication has a new feature from a guy who is writing about his blended family. He and his now-wife have many children between them and they have One Of Our Own^TM.

He's one of those Yuppie Food and Wine Snobs who can't stop talking about how woke his kids are in that department. But if that's not annoying enough, he goes on to write:

--- They had One of Their Own because they needed some glue. Yes, he used that exact phrase, "needed some family glue." Way to give a kid a job before it's born. And why do you need glue for your marriage? Might be a sign something is wrong.

---He refers to the glue baby as the center hub, and mentioned the kid ties the rest of the family together. Delusional.

I've heard other people say this, Amy Grant for example. they typically refer to the NewKid uniting the family or some bull crap, probably to assuage their guilt for leaving their spouse and dragging everyone through the Next Family. (I believe Amy Grant and her current husband both left spouses to be together. They profess to be be "good Christians," whatever that is. I remember reading an article where her kids were understandably angry over the arrangement.)

I wonder what the kids would say if asked? Most kids know they are back of the couchers.

--He calls himself a former lousy husband, now reformed. He left his ex when his youngest was two years old. He gives details that seem to indicate he left his former wife for this person. There was no gap.

---He writes about the temptation to show favoritism and how the kids point it out.

It doesn't sound like the happy adventure that he makes it out to be, in fact it sounds like a giant cluster fuck.

I found myself feeling tremendously sad for the kids. No wonder they are confused. Father splits when they are young and they have a second family now.....it's just way too much to ask from a young person.

Why can't Breeders be content with the # of kids they have? Why can't they breed in stable marital situations and if they must leave their spouses, why not just raise the kyds they have? Why do they have to drag their kids through all their successive relationships? Why do they think Breeding with NextHusband or NextWife will yield a better situation?

(I myself am the product of a blended family. My father died young and my mom re-married an asshole. They divorced 12 years later, thank Dawg, but by that time I was out of the house and my mom couldn't continue to overlook his bad behavior. (She always blamed it on the stress of having kyds.) I had step siblings, two of whom who had genetic defects. (One was the violent type.) I looked up the only one of the bunch that I liked, and he committed suicide when he was in his 30's. If his father had been my bio father I may have chosen the same fate---he was just a lousy individual and a bad person. I have no desire to get in touch with the others.)

Dr. Whora is a giant jerk, but I find myself agreeing with her that divorced parents shouldn't marry again until their kids are grown, if at all.

yeah, it means not being with The One You Luuuuv right away. Suck it up, Breeders.

75% of second marriages with minor children end in divorce. No wonder divorced Breeders with kids want to date childfree people. Um, no thanks!

Ugh, poor kids. I think you get one baby daddy/baby momma per lifetime, and if you have multiple kids by multiple people then you are trash. And anyone who thinks a kid is glue - especially in a blended situation - is too stupid to live.

Even if you don't treat the kids from the previous relationship as behind-the-couchers, the kids are bound to come to the conclusion "(Ex) wasn't good enough, and I am half (ex), therefore I must not be good enough, either" when a breeder makes 'one of our own' as 'glue'. The selfishness of breeders knows no bounds.

Maybe if having children was treated like the serious decision it is, they'd put a little more thought into who they reproduce with to begin with. Perhaps they'd start looking for traits like emotional stability and maturity, instead of whatever it is that most of them seem to look for in their first mates.

If your marriage needs "glue," then you shouldn't be in it, period. If your relationship is like a dish that has had tons of pieces broken off and glued back on, it might look just fine and totally functional at a glance, but the truth is it's one bad day away from completely shattering and no amount of glue will hold it together anymore.

You cannot go into an already-broken relationship thinking you're going to magically fix it with some hugs and babies. Plus, giving a kid a job from the moment it's born is just going to lead to disappointment and resentment. Because you know that when - not if, WHEN - the marriage fails miserably, the parents will blame the glue baby for not holding them together like it was supposed to do. If someone was a piece of shit in a former relationship, they will not cease to be a piece of shit in any subsequent ones. They're the same piece of shit they always were, but just in a different toilet.

And when your kids are able to see your favoritism as well as point it out, you're not being very subtle about it. Former lousy husband, but continuing lousy father, must be. He probably doesn't give a shit that his kids can tell when he prefers one of them over the others. I'm sure the glue baby gets the most attention because it has a job to do while the other kids are just kind of in the way, especially if any of them are not Duh's bio-brats.

Yurble, I totally agree many people choose their partners for the wrong reasons. A lot of them latch on to the richest or most attractive person they can get, and completely ignore other traits which are much more important in the long run. Some are desperate types that will take the first piece of shit who pays attention to them.

Back in the 90s I had a co-worker who came from some crazy blended family. His two brothers both committed suicide, and it was clear the younger one was imitating the older one. The co-worker seemed to have no clue how to run his life and made tons of bad decisions. He married some bitch he barely knew who hated him. After the two of them totally fucked up raising a kitten and a puppy, they had a baby the wife obviously didn't want. They were in debt up to their eyeballs and always receiving notices from bill collectors. Following the inevitable divorce he got involved with another co-worker who was a single moo with issues of her own.

It was sad because he was a nice guy, just damaged by his insane parental units. It is also sad to know his kids will probably follow his fucked up example.

I think The Brady Bunch gave people an unrealistically rosy view of blended families. In real life they seldom if ever turn out well.

These blended whacky families are part of the reason I outright refused to date guys with kids, and that was before I decided to be CF.

I have no experience with step this and step that. I was lucky to have the normal mom/dad 4 kids nuclear family. My DH is not as lucky but his mom and dad are awesome and his half sisters are sweeties. But. His one niece married her girlfriend. She was previously married with 4 kids. The oldest recently had a baby making niece's wife a grandmother at 35.

So we go to their place for holidays now because my MIL is just too old to cook and clean. Now I have been married for 12 years. His niece's stepkids have been in the picture for at least half that time. To this day I do not know the names of all the kids. They just play on their phones anyway. But the whole situation is whack. Niece recently complained that since they got married they don't get as much in food stamps. Well thems the breaks.

I don't understand why someone would want add the One Of Our Own. Kids are a lot of work and $$...why would you add to that? How would having to feed and clothe another kid who just happens to have a particular blend of DNA act as "glue" in a marriage? Parents of blended families already have so much on their plate. I have never understood this concept, as you can see.

I know someone who was the glue baby. Six or seven older half-siblings that he never really knew that well because of the age difference. His parents even divorced at one point when he was a little kid...really they should have stayed divorced because it sounds like their relationship was pretty fucking terrible. From what I gather, he was a nervous, depressed kid who hid in his room and didn't develop social skills until he escaped for college. And yeah, he did feel like everything was his fault because he was the "why" for his parents staying together. He was likely one angry, sad kid and it took years to work that shit out in early adulthood.

ETA: remarriage doesn't even necessarily make people family. My parents divorced when I was in my late twenties. My dad has since remarried. I am polite and respectful to his new wife, but I do not refer to her as my stepmother (nearly thirty is waaaaay to late for that), nor are her offspring my step-siblings. They're my dad's wife, and her kids. They're not really part of my life. Her kids are all young adults/older teens off doing their own thing. I'll probably see them a handful of times in my entire life.

Someone needs to remind these people that you only put glue on things that are broken.

Lock him up or put him down.
Stolen from Shiny.