The Beauty of Remarriage: Healthy, Happy Families

15 Aug 2016

By:  Anonymous Contributor, Loving Mom

So often, we are flooded with negative messages about the problems that blended families encounter. To be sure, creating a successful family unit that involves parents outside that family unit is often very difficult.

Remarriage is also, however, an opportunity, filled with the potential to give children of divorce the one thing that, respectfully speaking, their two biological parents for myriad reasons could not or chose not to: a healthy family unit. Statistics reveal that children of divorce have a much higher rate to experience divorce themselves, largely due to the fact that upon divorce, what is missing from a child’s life is a model of how two adults function in a loving, healthy marriage, and how two healthy adults in a loving relationship function together as parents.

We believe that upon marriage to someone with a child, a person becomes a parent, and assumes parenting responsibilities that must be taken seriously.

When struggling with issues common to many blended families, perhaps posing these questions may be helpful: what legacy do I want to pass on to my children regarding love, family, marriage, and parenting?

Is marginalizing a non-biological parent robbing my child of an opportunity to be loved and nurtured by yet another person? Research suggests that children feel most secure when they know they are loved and emotionally and physically safe with more people, not fewer.

Some couples who enter into remarriage struggle with where a child’s other parent(s) sit in the hierarchy of the new family unit they have created. Cordial and respectful relationships amongst all parents is preferable, but sometimes that is not possible.  Is placing a priority on keeping the peace with the other parent(s) involved in this situation tainting the commitment to the family unit created upon remarriage?  Is that sending a message to the children that one should invest more energy in how to make the best of a bad situation, when upon remarriage one has the opportunity to offer the children so much more? Healthy second marriages function best when the married couple and the health and stability of their family unit come first. The marriage and new family unit are paramount.

Remarriage is a second chance to be better; with the benefit of lessons learned about what works well and what doesn’t. It is an exciting opportunity to impart the gift of having parents in a stable, happy marriage, modeling how to love and resect and be loved and respected.

So today, focus on the positive. Focus on the potential that remarriage holds. Families are the foundation of our society, and children learn how to live and treat others by watching their parents, whether biological and blended. When presented and executed well, a happy, healthy remarriage has the potential to change the course of a child’s life.

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