No One's the Bitch - Mom/Stepmom Partnership Revolution

Who’s in your extended family? How often do you see them? Who can you call when you’re in a pinch? Most families are spread far and wide these days, so when you need a parent, sibling, grandmother or grandfather to step in, you’re out of luck.
But sometimes, the two linked households after a divorce and [...]

I'm joining forces with three other good friends* in the hopes of getting more publicity for blended family and "dual-family" issues, just in time for National Stepfamily Day on Sept. 16th. It's estimated that only 20% of American families are now nuclear families. And stepfamilies have an almost 75% rate of divorce!
The single-parent [...]

Feeling your way into potential stepmotherhood? Are you dating a divorced man with kids and things are looking promising? Here are a few ideas for setting a healthy course from the very beginning that will make you thank yourself later.
Bond over the good stuff, not the bad. Don’t make a part of your bonding experience [...]

Welcome to our first guest post! It's by Katherine Shirek Doughtie, one of the co-authors of a "sister" site, the fabulous, but sadly currently dormant The DHX: The Doughtie Houses Exchange — which is also about creating cooperative mom/stepmom relationships. (Katherine is the mom and Jill Doughtie is the stepmom.) The post is actually [...]

Why does it matter whether you can create an extended family or not?  Aren’t you just better off keeping most of the power in your own hands?  If you form more of a connection to the other family, won’t that mean they just end up getting away with more shit?  How do you create a [...]

When Indiana Jones threw sand out into the precipice,
suddenly revealing an invisible bridge, he found the magical solution to
quickly getting across, away from his enemies.  But… he still had to actually
cross the narrow bridge without
falling.  Trust between you and another person (in this case, the stepmom
or ex-wife) is like that same skinny bridge made real [...]

Imagine
yourself in one of those adventure races – with orienteering challenges,
cross-country running, kayaking, maybe a touch of horseback-riding and cycling. Now imagine how much harder this would
be with a partner you can’t stand — the hidden resentments, the one-upmanship,
the stubborn lack of cooperation. Then… envision
the relief of being spurred on past your limits by someone [...]

Carol (the stepmom) and I (the mom) have been going at this ex-wife/stepmother relationship-thing for eight years now.  We recently had two back-to-back dinners that illustrate what a work in progress our partnership can still be.  Sunday was Sophie’s 17th birthday, so off our two families went to a fancy restaurant.  Sophie and Madeleine’s 3 [...]

It’s a similar refrain on
this site by now: try to get along with the ex-wife or stepmother; it’s worth
it in the long run; take an honest look at yourself to see how you’re getting
in the way — blah, blah, blah. But how do you actually GO ABOUT making this
happen? What does it look like? Why [...]

Sunday evening, I sat on the green velvet footstool in the living room, the one that makes creaky stair noises like a Victorian house on a dark and stormy night. 

Six pairs of hands were upon my migrainous self. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  Massaging my tender head: Carol (the stepmom in [...]