Chapter Five – His Caregivers and Her Caregivers — Children and Stepchildren
All of the possible caregiving problems are exponentially compounded when there are children from his family and her family. Blended families are an entirely new and much more difficult situation when it comes to caregiving.
There’s a big chance that both families are not well acquainted, particularly if Mom and Stepdad married after the children left home for school, for marriage, or in order to start their own families. It’s not that they don’t get along; it’s just that they don’t know each other. If parents split apart because of infidelity or other difficult reasons, the children may harbor ill will toward the stepparent. And even if the blended families were blended before the children left home, most children are not entirely thrilled with their stepparents. They are just“different” from what they should be. They’re not the “right” Mom and Dad. They don’t do things the way “my mom” or “my dad” would.
Of course, this isn’t always the case. Some families blend perfectly, and some children never behave like children no matter how young they are or how old their parents are. In fact, some children keep a lifelong attachment to a former stepparent even after the marriage has dissolved.
One darling woman brought her stepfather into our facility. She obviously thought a lot of him. She regularly brought in his incontinence products and his medications and stopped to say hello to residents and staff. She made sure he had clean clothes and that we were taking good care of him. I was amazed that she was such a dutiful daughter, since she was his stepdaughter and not a blood relative. “Actually,” she told me, “I’m not even his stepdaughter. He and my mom divorced when I was in my twenties. But I always liked him and I’m all he’s got.”
Usually, though, it’s not that easy. One couple who were distant relatives of mine recently moved into our facility. All the problems that a blended family can have are represented in the Jack and Mary Green family (not the actual names). I had known both families for many years and knew that the two families disliked and distrusted each other even at the time I suggested our facility to both families (what was I thinking?). Mary’s family felt that Jack’s children were far too emotionally removed from him. Jack’s children felt that they had every reason to be emotionally removed. After all, he had been a very, very small part of their lives after he divorced their mother. They had seldom seen him more than once a year, and never at his instigation.
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