{"id":30497,"date":"2017-12-19T05:45:25","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T10:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=30497"},"modified":"2017-12-18T20:23:56","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T01:23:56","slug":"divorce-has-brought-back-large-families","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2017\/12\/divorce-has-brought-back-large-families\/","title":{"rendered":"Divorce Has Brought Back Large Families"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"cartoon-1769064_1280\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Large families have come back.\u00a0 Not because couples are having more children.\u00a0 But because the prevalence of divorce and remarriage has created \u201cblended\u201d families, which often extends the nuclear family considerably.\u00a0 The family size of Americans with grown children and stepchildren has shot up\u00a066%.<\/p>\n

Ben Steverman, in\u00a0Divorce Is Making American Families 66% Bigger \u2013 Bloomberg<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>reports that nearly 30% of people over 50 have been married more than once.\u00a0 One-third (33%) of couples over 55\u00a0with adult children have a stepchild.\u00a0 Conversely, one-third of households headed by people under<\/em> 55 have at least one stepparent.<\/p>\n

\n

You can read the original paper,\u00a0Stepfamily Structure and Transfers between Generations in U.S.<\/a><\/p>\n

This means about a third of American families have some combination of \u201cher\u201d and \u201chis\u201d\u00a0and \u201cour\u201d children, who, in turn, may have\u00a0four people in the \u201cparent\u201d slot\u2013mom and her new husband, and dad and his new wife\u2013plus multiple\u00a0grandparents, siblings and step-siblings from various households, and a complex network of uncles and aunts and cousins.<\/p>\n

When families get together for Christmas dinner, it\u00a0becomes a big event, requiring lots of tables and folding chairs, though also\u00a0setting up more occasions for conflicts and hurt feelings.<\/p>\n

But \u201cblended families\u201d are nothing new.\u00a0 Through much of human history, they were caused not by divorce and remarriage but by death and remarriage.\u00a0 In the not-too-distant past, many women died in child-birth and both men and women died early from untreatable diseases.\u00a0 Young widows and young widowers typically remarried, blending their families.<\/p>\n

After all, as we blogged about<\/a>, some think Jesus was brought up in a blended family.<\/p>\n

In those cases, there were still only two parental figures, rather than four.\u00a0 Often the new parent who stepped into the child\u2019s life did so seamlessly.\u00a0 Then again, sometimes the relationships did not work so well.\u00a0 Consider the figure of the \u201cwicked stepmother\u201d in fairy tales.<\/p>\n

I wonder, though, if these bigger families might play a role in bringing back extended family relationships, even though, ironically, they began in the breaking of the foundational family relationship.<\/p>\n

I daresay many of you readers have experience with \u201cblended\u201d families.\u00a0 Does everyone get together for Christmas, or is everyone pulled in different directions so that getting together is impossible?\u00a0 Are there lines drawn between who belongs to whom?\u00a0 Have any of you made your \u201cblended\u201d families into one big happy family?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Illustration by Prawny via Pixabay, CC0, Creative Commons<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Large families have come back.\u00a0 Not because couples are having more children.\u00a0 But because the prevalence of divorce and remarriage has created \u201cblended\u201d families, which often extends the nuclear family considerably.\u00a0 The family size of Americans with grown children and stepchildren has shot up\u00a066%. Ben Steverman, in\u00a0Divorce Is Making American Families 66% Bigger \u2013 Bloomberg,\u00a0reports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":30501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,42],"tags":[5986,4107,5988,5987],"class_list":["post-30497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-social-science","tag-blended-families","tag-divorce-and-remarriage","tag-extended-families","tag-stepchildren"],"yoast_head":"\nDivorce Has Brought Back Large Families<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Large families are coming back. 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