A United Front
Parents who fear alienating their children due to a divorce or remarriage are often inclined to spoil them, making the children even more difficult to manage and less likely to cooperate with an unsuspecting stepparent, as Simon discovered. Her husband, Andrew, would often give in to his daughter’s whims, and she frequently threw tantrums if Simon attempted to discipline her. Soon after her Monday morning nightmare, Simon suggested that she and her husband consult Leslie Mayer, president of Mayer Leadership Group in Wayne, Pa., who counsels stepfamilies. They met with Mayer several times and discussed Simon’s frustration with what she saw as her husband’s pampering of his daughter and the girl’s impertinence. Eventually, the couple realized that Andrew, the only authority figure the child respected, would have to take the lead in discipline to stave off friction.

Simon admits she has become more adept at setting rules since having her own children, now 5 and 7 years old. She establishes consistent rules for everyone to follow. If her own offspring must remain at the table until everyone has finished eating, then so must her stepdaughter. If each family member is expected to share something about his or her day during dinner, her stepdaughter must also participate—or at least listen politely.

“As a stepparent, you don’t have real authority,” Simon points out. “Imagine if every time you needed to discipline your children, you had to get an OK from your husband. There are times when it’s very unnatural.”

Therapists who counsel parents on these issues generally recommend that they do their best to present a united front, to avoid the risk that the children will play the biological parent off the stepparent. Though this advice seems obvious, parents say it is often the most helpful prescription.

Counselors also caution stepparents to move slowly when it comes to discipline. Lee Hausner, a psychologist with IFF Advisors, an Irvine, Calif., firm that advises wealthy families, tells of a mother of two sons who married a strong-willed entrepreneur who insisted on taking charge of the children and introducing stricter discipline almost immediately. The boys rebelled, and refused to obey. Even worse, they complained to their biological father, who then encouraged their disobedience. “He’d tell them, ‘If he dares hit you, tell me right away; we’ll sue,’” Hausner recalls. In the end, the marriage fell apart. “You must be in a relationship long enough for [the stepchildren] to trust you,” Hausner argues. It can take at least a year, perhaps two, to gain that trust. This is especially important for those of us who do not spend every day with our stepchildren, perhaps because we travel frequently, or they attend a boarding school.

Some find that building a cohesive, trusting second family can take much longer—as many as five years—because children must learn to trust a relative stranger after watching their parents’ relationship implode. Unfortunately, many new stepparents harbor unrealistic expectations about how quickly they can create a bond. “Just because you’ve married a child’s parent, it doesn’t mean you’ve automatically formed a relationship with that child,” says Robert Galatzer-Levy, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Chicago.

The younger spouse’s relationship with older stepchildren is often fraught with conflict, as he or she struggles with balancing the role of authority figure against that of friend.

In many cases, as Simon discovered, a seemingly strong relationship a with a child can deteriorate after the wedding. This is partly because the remarriage destroys any hope a child may harbor that his or her parents will reunite, Hausner explains. “Even if the person has had a relationship with the child for a long time, when that myth is dispelled, it’s painful.”

Equitable Allocations
Deciding how to distribute money among children during our first marriage can be difficult. When we add the complications inherent in a second marriage, the issue can become quite volatile. As with most problems involving family relationships, the solution here, therapists and second-family members say, is to clear the air and discuss the issues openly. Hausner recommends that early in our relationship, we have a money conversation, in which we discuss our different economic histories and preferences. This is especially important if one spouse is wealthier than the other. “The biggest challenge high-net-worth couples face in a second marriage is when there is a significant disparity in the economic levels of the two families,” she maintains. “What if one set of children inherits a trust fund at age 21, and the others will have to work to put themselves through college?”

We must take our spouses and stepchildren’s needs into account, which often means we must compromise on issues of lifestyle. Hausner tells of a mother of three young children who married a much wealthier man who was living off his trust fund. While she was accustomed to spending liberal amounts of time with her children, her new husband liked to take frequent sailing trips to Bermuda. He expected his new wife to come along—without the children. She initially agreed, causing her offspring to feel a double loss. Not only had their parents’ marriage dissolved, but their mother was now away much of the time. The couple finally visited a marriage therapist, who helped them reach a compromise: They would continue the trips, but make them less frequently.

Disparities in affluence between spouses, or differences in their child-rearing philosophies, often vex our attempts to plan and manage the distribution of wealth, attention and responsibilities among our children and stepchildren.

Even when a husband and wife are consciously trying to be fair, differences in wealth can mar an otherwise congenial family atmosphere. Hausner recounts another story of a newly married couple, each with two teenage children, who decided to help all four youngsters pay for their own cars. The parents proposed to match the exact amount of money each child could contribute on his or her own. But their plan went awry because the husband came from a much wealthier family than his wife, and his children had received significant amounts of money from their grandparents. They were able to buy much more expensive cars than their stepsiblings, who quickly grew to resent their new stepfather for what they perceived as favoritism. Where routine expenses are concerned, such as transportation, “all children should be treated equally,” Galatzer-Levy recommends. This also applies to opportunities such as private schools or summer camps: If parents pay for one set of children, he says, they should offer the same opportunity to the other group.

Another financial factor that can burden our new family is the child support and alimony payments many of us pay to our first spouses. “In my practice, a lot of resentment centers around the monthly check,” Poulter says. “That’s one of the top three problems patients deal with.” In some cases, he explains, this can cause a second spouse to feel so bitter about “excessive” payments that he or she takes it out on the stepchildren. Poulter recalls the case of a high-profile entertainment executive who paid $20,000 a month to his ex-wife. His second wife of five years, however, so bristled at the amount that she found it difficult to be civil to his two sons from the first marriage. She would, for example, refuse to take them shopping, and insist that their mother pay for the items they needed. She also objected to footing the bill for her young stepson’s summer camp. (Her husband ended up paying.) “You have to stop your own resentments from getting in the way of your relationships,” Poulter urges. He advises second spouses to air these grievances early in the relationship, both in private conversations with their significant others and during family meetings. Because this is such a sensitive topic, families might benefit from professional counseling to iron out any conflicts.

Age-Old Quandaries
A second marriage to a much younger spouse can carry still additional challenges. The younger spouse’s relationship with older stepchildren is often fraught with conflict, as he or she struggles with balancing the role of authority figure against that of friend. Unfortunately, neither role is without its perils. Younger spouses find it difficult to wield parental authority if they are not much older than their stepchildren. Treating stepchildren like peers only exacerbates this problem.

Mayer recalls a young second wife who chose to behave more like a sister to her teenage stepdaughter than as a mother. The woman allowed her stepdaughter to wear her clothes, borrow her jewelry and use her makeup. It made them fast friends until the girl began borrowing clothes without asking, ruining favorite dresses and leaving jewelry and makeup scattered around her stepmother’s room. Finally, the new wife became angry and, sounding much like an older sibling, told the girl she could no longer borrow her things. The husband refused to get involved, leaving his daughter to develop a sense of betrayal that grew into outright mistrust of her stepmother.

Youthful Authority
To avoid these situations, younger stepparents often find they must shoulder some of the burden of authority. We should unite with our older spouse to establish clear, consistent rules stemming from both parents. Young stepparents, especially stepmothers, also benefit from displaying a positive attitude toward the first spouse. “It will cost you nothing to be nice to the ex-wife, and everything if you’re not,” Poulter points out. “When the stepmother bends over backward to make supportive comments about the biological mother, for example, it can go a long way toward creating a trusting, unthreatening relationship with the children.”

If a husband and his younger wife produce their own children, a new set of tensions can materialize, particularly if the father appears to pay more attention to his second set of children, or lavish them with more luxuries than his first offspring. Hausner tells of an entrepreneur who earned his wealth in real estate development when his first two children were teenagers. After he had children with his second wife, he was able to pamper them with many more luxuries, such as taking them on his private jet and sending them to the best schools. This caused the older children to resent not only their stepmother, but their stepsiblings as well.

The family addressed the problem by holding a meeting. When the older children voiced their resentments, the parents agreed to make concessions, such as giving them a role in the family business, helping them when it was time for them to buy their own houses and promising them larger shares of their parents’ estate. That discussion helped heal what was a widening rift in the household. “The biggest problem in stepfamilies is when children feel they aren’t heard,” Hausner explains.

New stepparents may also find their most aggravating dilemmas are due to problems over which they have little control. Ongoing conflicts between our new spouse and his or her ex-spouse can leave us at the mercy of both the angry exes and the stepchildren. “If there’s bitterness between the exes, you will always have challenges in the communications process,” Poulter warns. His advice is to stay away from the conflicts. However, if we have established a strong bond with a stepchild, we may find that it pulls us into this fray. As a result, the child may suffer conflicting loyalties or feel he is betraying a parent. “You’ll often hear stepparents say, ‘I was trying so hard, then I got whacked in the face.’ They didn’t understand the dilemma the child was placed in,” Hausner explains.

Dealing with complications such as these are necessary if we want to build a healthy second family. We may find it is a lifelong process. Even after nine years, Simon finds she must still work diligently on her relationship with her stepdaughter. “There’s no road map for parenting, and especially not for stepparenting,” she says. “I’ve learned there just are no hard and fast rules.” If we are to make our second marriages work, giving up is not an option.

Photo Illustration by Paul Collin. Section Photography by Claudia Kunin.

Additional Information
The Grandparent Variable

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