Blended Family Advantages and Disadvantages Most People Don’t Think About

As I’ve previously shared, my husband and I have a large blended family 6 children in total. Feel free to read more about our unique family here 🙂 Because of my extensive experience, I have learned a lot about blended family advantages and disadvantages!

I always assumed that everyone knew what a blended family was (pretty naïve, huh? 🤷🏾‍♀️). I figured most families could understand our family dynamics on some level, but I’ve realized more and more that this isn’t necessarily true. There have been times that I’ve talked to others about my blended family and the response would be, ” What’s a blended family?”

It’s hard for others to understand blended family advantages and disadvantages, if they don’t really get what it is.

My unique family formed several years ago. There is so much that I wish I had known before my husband and I began our relationship all those years ago. It would have saved me a ton of stress! But I guess that’s just how life works, right?

Honestly, I believe it’s beneficial for everyone to understand more about blended families. Our untraditional family has become much more prevalent in the U.S. Chances are that you may know (or will know) someone in a blended family if you’re not in one yourself. So, we all should learn how to support, and love on, the various types of blended families that have blessed this world!

What’s A Blended Family

Okay, so before we get into the blended family advantages and disadvantages that most people don’t think about, let’s start with a basic understanding of what a blended family actually is.

As HelpGuide explains, “A blended family or stepfamily forms when you and your partner make a life together with the children from one or both of your previous relationships.”

A blended family can also be called a stepfamily or a bonus family. Whatever you feels fits your family unit. As long as there is at least one child from a previous relationship (not between you and your current partner), then you have what’s typically called a blended family.

You can be married to your significant other or not. It’s more about the role that your new partner is taking in raising your child with you. Your children can significantly shape how you identify the blended family advantages or disadvantages for your family unit, because your children will have their own perspectives, hopes, and even criticisms of this major life change.

Furthermore, raising children with a non-biological parent, comes with some unique complexities that can produce deep bonds and major challenges for everyone involved.

My Blended Family

After several years of being in a blended family, I have learned so much about myself, my husband, my kids and about families overall.

My husband and I met through our boys when they were in preschool. We were both single parents, each raising 2 kids.

Our preschoolers were bestfriends and asked for a playdate to spend time outside of school. After a few months of going to parks, beaches, lunches, and everything in between with our kids- my husband (who had became my friend by that point) asked me out on a date!

After a few dates we formed a relationship and now we have a big, crazy, fun, hectic, and united family ❤️

It has taken A LOT of work, sacrifices, love, and grace to make this family work. But isn’t that the case for every family? Or any relationship?

It’s work, but it’s rewarding work.

Blood makes you related; Love makes you family– Author Unknown

Advantages To Being In A Blended Family

Blended families are pretty special and can offer advantages and blessings for everyone involved! Let’s go over some of the great benefits of blended family life! ❤️

Opportunity To Learn About and To Model Grace

I am a Jesus follower, through and through. But I’ve many made mistakes, particularly when it comes to allowing my emotions to lead my actions more than I should. Don’t get me wrong, feelings are healthy and should never be ignored. The key, though, is to ask yourself whether your feelings are pushing you away from your desired goal.

In a blended family, love, respect and having a healthy family life should be the major goals to strive for. Jesus modeled unconditional love and acceptance for everyone, especially those most difficult to love. Even if you’re not a Jesus follower though, most of us can still agree that these are great values to strive for.

As a parent to non-biological children, I needed to practice grace. Honestly, I still do.

Read: 12 Encouraging Bible Verses For Hard Times

A major blended family advantage is that you will have more opportunities to practice and model grace for your children. Raising any child is work and can be stressful, but raising a non-biological child(ren) can be tougher because of the additional complexities that come with blended family life.

I have developed a deeper connection with God because I go to Him for advice, reassurance, peace, and forgiveness. I also share this spiritual connection with all of our children, in hopes that they too will display the love of Jesus to others and build a strong relationship with God.

More Fun And Love For All the Kids!

One of the advantages of having a blended family is that the kids have more kids to play with! This is especially a fun when the kids are younger because they can engage in creative play and other fun activities when mom needs a break!

Another great benefit to blended family life is that the kids can get more gifts and go on more outings because there are more people involved! My kids now have more grandparents and extended family members to bless them for their birthdays and holidays.

This was probably the BIGGEST advantage for my kids lol.

My in-laws have also been ridiculously welcoming towards my kids, and treated them like their actual grandkids from Day 1. (Side note: I honestly LOVE my in-laws, and I have THE BEST mother-in-law to ever exist! Yes I am bragging😊) For my non-biological kids, they also had a new set of grandparents that spoiled them, plus a TON of new cousins from my large extended family.

We’re all very blessed to have each other, and there is A TON of LOVE throughout our blended family. This is truly a gift from God that I try not to take for granted.

Increased Financial Stability

Having a partner provides an opportunity for two incomes to be combined to support the children. This may be particularly helpful for single parents, if they had limited income beforehand. Furthermore, it’s nice to have someone else available to keep track of all the bills that come with adulting!

Whether you’re a single mom or dad, forming a blended family can significantly improve the financial situation for all involved. This isn’t always the case, but there are more opportunities to increase the household income when they are two adults who can work.

If the finances improve through a new blended/stepfamily dynamic, then the children will have more opportunities available for activities, trips, and family adventures. Don’t forget to budget and plan though!

Support With Childcare

Every parent knows that childcare issues can be an absolute nightmare 😭

It’s impossible to be with our children every second of the day. It’s also not beneficial for our physical and mental health to be in non-stop parenting mode.

You can read more about how to incorporate some incredible ways to take care of yourself in my article, 7 Self-Love Strategies Every Mom Needs In Her Life!

Having another person at home, who can assist with the inevitable childcare issues that comes with parenting, can be so helpful! Even just having your partner available to keep a clingy toddler occupied, so that you can use the bathroom uninterrupted is PRICELESS!

Not to mention the fact that childcare is unbelievably expensive, and sharing the responsibility of managing that cost is a welcome advantage of blended family life.

So yeah, splitting childcare responsibilities, especially after living as single parents before we got together, was a major blended family advantage for my husband and I!

Opportunity for Your Children See A Healthy Partnership

My 1st marriage was not a healthy one. I say this, not as a way to place blame. This is just a fact.

Sometimes when a marriage ends poorly it can be easy for us, as humans, to assume that all marriages are bad. It can also be easier for our kids to make the same assumption. A new blended family though, can provide a different experience or point of view on how love and marriage can thrive.

Readers Digest asserts that, when parents are in a more positive marriage, they have “the energy to be better role models for negotiation, forgiveness, generosity, and love.” If the first marriage or partnership was filled with lots of conflict, it may have effected each parent’s ability to be as present for their kids as they wanted to be.

No marriage is perfect (mine definitely isn’t lol!), but my husband and I both agree that our children are exposed to a deep love in our marriage, more than they ever were before. And that makes my heart happy ❤️

“Divorce isn’t such a tragedy. A tragedy’s staying in an unhappy marriage, teaching your children the wrong things about love. Nobody ever died of divorce.”

-Author, Jennifer Weiner ( Source: Oprah Daily)

Disadvantages To Being In A Blended Family

I wish I could end this post with just the advantages of blended family life, but that’s just not reality lol. As it is with every family, you have to take the good with the bad..

I’ve listed below what I’ve found to be the top disadvantages of blended family life. Of course, this isn’t a complete list, but I have found that when these issues are not addressed, they can permeate every area of blended family life. So here we go!

Discipline Can Be Very Challenging

If you think disciplining your own kid is tough, try disciplining your non-biological child that you are raising 😭

Issues with discipline may be one of the top problems that you’ll encounter when in a blended family. Change can be hard, particularly for children who are still trying to figure out themselves and the world. Even if your new partner is doing everything “right” they still represent the loss of the family unit that the child had before.

At times, children can rebel against the non-biological parent due to feelings of resentment, jealousy, grief, and confusion. This BetterHelp article accurately explains how, “Often, a child’s reaction is not deliberately bad behaviour, but a sign that the child is not coping with the changes.” It is normal and appropriate for children to experience increased stress during a major life transition.

Integrating a blended family involves making several major life changes all at once. Generally the adults, not the children, made the decision to form a new family. Children will need support from their caregivers to help process the feelings that this major change may bring up for them.

You should always put your children’s needs FIRST. Be patient and lead with love. Validate your children’s feelings, and encourage them to respectfully share their thoughts about the situation. It’s not an easy transition but with consistency, PATIENCE (lots and lots of patience), grace, and healthy communication, blended families can come out on the other end better and stronger.

Resentment Can Plague Your Partnership

Resentment can build between a couple in a blended/stepfamily because of stressors from disciplining the children, tension with exes, and/or conflicts from transitioning to a blended family. Additionally, disagreements about how to raise the children can breed negative thoughts and feelings.

My husband and I were single parents prior to forming our blended family. Both of us had to support our children with transitioning to a new family. We also had to deal with each other’s exes, which wasn’t fun.

Children can build resentment towards the new adult in their life, who now has a parenting role that they aren’t accustomed to. Furthermore, children may feel resentment because the attention of their parents now has to be split between more people.

Issues With Exes

It’s important for all parents involved to keep a united front, but unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Sometimes, bringing a new partner into the parenting mix can ignite issues with exes that weren’t there before, or exacerbate problems that were already present.

Obviously it’s ideal for all of the adults to get along, but it doesn’t always happen. Your kids now have to share holidays, birthdays and important family events between two homes, which can be really complicated.

To be honest, this was extremally difficult for my kids AND for me.

I had to accept that I would not see my kids on certain birthdays and holidays. My kids had to accept that also. We all had to accept that there would be different traditions to get accustomed to, while we were also trying to figure out how to develop new traditions.

My ex-husband and I disagreed on so many things, which is pretty common after a divorce. Co-parenting is complicated….ugh.

Thankfully, we’ve smoothed out a lot of the tension that existed before. It was definitely a process. There are still bumps on this co-parenting road, but fortunately my ex and I no longer experience the huge mountains of conflict that there used to be.

Children Having To Navigate Different Home Environments

If your ex has also formed their own new blended family, then your children have two new worlds to navigate. This is NOT easy. My 2 children from my first marriage dealt with this exact situation and it was a major adjustment. It was so much to ask of them. They had to transition from one set of family rules and rituals to another, and they were expected to do so repeatedly without any issues. It wasn’t fair.

I started to observe symptoms of depression, anxiety, poor sleep and anger from both of them. They revealed to me that they felt like there lives had come down to making the new family members in both households feel comfortable. They did not feel heard or seen. My kids were having a hard time and they needed all of the adults to understand this.

Something that significantly helped my children with the transition, was to give them regular time with just Mommy. This was special for them because they were able to relax and not worry so much about accommodating everyone else. Because they had this special time, they felt more comfortable navigating these new family dynamics.

This is what worked for my family. You will need to figure out what strategies will work for your blended family. My main advice is to be flexible and open. Thankfully, a major advantage to blended family life is that there are more opportunities to be innovative in your parenting approach!

My Final Thoughts

These are just some of the blended family advantages and disadvantages that I have experienced. As it is with traditional families, blended families will experience ups and downs throughout their journey. And also, like a traditional family there needs to be love, grace, respect and patience in order to effectively navigate the rollercoaster of emotions that comes with ALL families. Set your focus on being there for one another and on your overall family goals.

And remember that eventually the kids will be out of the house, and you and your partner want to have a strong foundation to keep the love going after the kids are no longer home. Please take care of each other through it all❤️

Take care!

~Val

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand o f a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Psalm 127: 3-5