Blended Families

A family is like any other living organism… its parts must function with harmony in order for balance and health to be achieved. We believe that personal and family values are the cornerstone of healthy families.

The Grace Village Mission is to help Blended families live healthier, happier, more productive and fulfilling lives. We achieve this by helping family members build personal and social skills designed to develop stronger family ties.

Our programs empower every family member to further develop personal values through self-worth, gratitude, respect, responsibility and purpose. We achieve this through developmental programs that teach emotional, intellectual and spiritual maturity. By strengthening our individual values and maturity, the family naturally grows stronger.

Blended Family Statistics

48% of all first marriage will eventually end in divorce
Re-marriage has become commonplace, with...
- 79% of women and 89% of men will marry again within 5 years
43% of marriages today in America involve a 2nd or 3rd (re)marriage
68% of re-marriages involve children from prior marriages

Resource: TheBondedFamily.com

Stepfamily Statistics

Statistics are Staggering:The majority of families have shifted from the original biologically bonded mother, father and child. We are now a nation in which the majority of families are divorced. Most go on to remarry or form living together relationships.

These families take a multitude of forms:

Divorced with children; the children reside with one parent and visit the other. Most are dating or looking for new partners.
Remarried, re-coupled, living together, with his and/or her children; He/she is in the role of stepparent.
Single Mothers; re-coupled, dating and alone.
Divorced Dads; these dads generally visit their children. Often they are re-coupled, bringing a stepmother figure into their children’s lives.

Stepfamilies are not addressed, assessed and counted---further catapulting those who live in and lead our society into the quagmire of ignorance. The numbers tell the story:

The US Bureau of Census relates:

1300 new stepfamilies are forming every day.
Over 50% of US families are remarried or re-coupled.
The average marriage in America lasts only seven years.
One out of two marriages ends in divorce.
75% remarry
66% of those living together or remarried break up, when children are involved.
80% of remarried, or re-coupled, partners with children both have careers.
50% of the 60 million children under the age of 13 are currently living with one biological parent and that parent's current partner.
The 1990 US Census stated there will be more stepfamilies than original families by the year 2000.
According to the Stepfamily Foundation's research, more than 60% of divorced fathers visit their children. These children do not legally "reside" with their fathers. So, neither government, nor academic research includes these fathers and their children as stepfamilies! The father may be a single dad, but most likely he is re-coupled or remarried, thus creating a stepfamily. These children shuttle between their parent's homes, radically increasing the numbers of stepfamilies. These fathers are ignored and uncounted.
75% of stepfamilies complain of "not having access to resources as a stepfamily," according to a recent Stepfamily Foundation survey of 2000 web questionnaires.
A Boston University psychologist researcher reported that of the career women who earned over $100.000 and had married men with children over 75% said that, "if they had do it again they would NOT marry a man with children."
50% of all women, not just mothers, are likely sometime in their life, to live in a stepfamily relationship, when we include living-together families in our definition of the stepfamily, according to research compiled by Professor of Sociology Larry L. Bumpass of the University of Wisconsin.

THE CHILDREN OF DIVORCE:

Experts differ on the effects of divorce. Here are three of the most respected.

Judith Wallerstein is a psychologist and author of SECOND CHANCES and THE UNEXPECTED LEGACY OF DIVORCE: A 25-Year Landmark Study, which followed 93 now-adult children for about 25 years on the affects from their parent's divorce.

Wallerstein reports that:

Only 45 percent of children "do well" after divorce.
41% are doing poorly, worried, underachieving, deprecating, and often angry.
Fifty percent of the women and 30 percent of the men were still intensely angry with their former spouses.
"Most felt the lack of a template, a working model, for a loving relationship between a man and a woman."
Divorced parents provide less time, less discipline, and are less sensitive to the children as they are caught up in their own divorce and its aftermath.
Many parents are unable to separate their needs from the children's needs and often share too much of their personal life with their children, placing the children in a precarious emotional state, vulnerable to grandiosity or to depression within what is left of their families.
The majority of parents of divorce are chronically disorganized and unable to parent effectively.
As diminished parenting continues, it permanently disrupts the child's once normal emotional growth and functioning.

The good news, according to the study:

"The children of divorce tended to do well if mothers and father, regardless of remarriage, resumed parenting roles, putting differences aside, and allowing the children continuing relationships with both parents.
Only a few children had these advantages.

Resource stepfamily.org