Is this a trend?
Is it just me or does it seem that when you enter a blended family that teen SS/SD alway have issues with the stepparent? I just keep reading and reading and it seems that so many teens do not have any care about anything but themself and when a step parent enters the picture it becomes an obvious actin gout of that sentiment. I know there are exceptions to that assumption but it's making me think it is not the child hates the step parent but rather a difficult time in their lives. And continued problems with the SD/SS are dependant on the BM and DH behavior towards this stage in their lives. Some BM and DH capitalize on this stage and poison the skids minds against the step parent. Othe skids are legitimately mentally ill. I see so many of adults becoming entitled without working for a thing in their life and passing this onto their kids. It's almost as if this is a reflection of the "me, me, me" attitude that is over taking society. Is it just me or is this a new trend that is only going to get worse as time goes by unless something major changes?
Remember - this site has
Remember - this site has people who have bad step situations, not all stepfamilies are like this.
Yes, I'm asking if the
Yes, I'm asking if the increase in bad step situations is a reflection of the changes in society? I do not mean to say that all step situations are problematic
I knew my SD from when she
I knew my SD from when she was 6 and she is now a tween. Over the years she has liked me less and less and become more entitled acting with her father. She basically only communicates with him to get something out of him and is overall quite dismisive and rude to him. She used to like me quite a lot and we got along as she got older she started to ignore me more. I don't thinks he hates me but he wishes I didn't exist (the feeling is mutual). I liked her better when she was little and gave me a chance.
Not all families but yes, I believe a societal trend
I agree that some blended families work well. For me, the main theme that seems to drive all this is the insane child centric movement. The press, news, commercials, movies, Bio parents all treat the little darlings like they are angels from Heaven and are infallible. Just remember Lucifer was an angel.
Many Bio parents refuse to make a solid marriage the center of the relationship thus allowing the children to have stability. Instead, they often throw their DH or DW under the bus, do not support and do everything short of wiping for the lil darlings. Then, they defend and attempt to make you feel stupid or irrelevant.
If more couples communicated with each other, set firm boundaries and then communicated to the children that there are house rules, we are going to be a blended family and if you act out there will be consequences things would be better.
As for society, we have tocollectively pull it out of this nose dive and re-affirm to these little snot nosed snowflake know it alls that they have all of an ant's wisdom and no real experience in life. If I see that little Gretta one more time being hoisted as some savior by the press I may just unplug the TV and sell it.
Pair bonds are the foundation
Pair bonds are the foundation of both families and society. We have abandoned durable pair bonds for self gratification and then wonder why kids are screwed up and the foundations of personal accountability and reasonable behavior are no longer common.
How can kids be raised with character and an understanding of the connection between performance and outcome when they see the adults in their lives making excuses for failure that obviously resides firmly on the shoulders of the parents? These parents then turn their highly developed avoidance of responsibility and personal performance on making excuses for the parallel shitty performance and failures of their children.
Since the recovery to a society wide commitment to durable pair bonding is highly unlikely, IMHO the only way to reverse the current trend of avoiding personal responsibility for failure is to establish very firm framework of behavioral and performance standards and holding kids and adults to these standards.
But, that takes parents of character to make happen and parents with these qualities are becoming increasingly rare. Kids with quality parents will have an increasing advantage over the children of excuse and entitlement focused parents. As the children raised by quality parents progress in successful lives the products of excuse based parenting will fail by comparison. This will drive yet more entitlement programs to provide for the blizzard spawn of snow flake parents. All paid for by the increasingly rare spawn of quality parents.
The characteristics of shitty parenting seem to be far more prevalent in blended family situations. For some reason.
My guess is because these kids are the product of BioParents who tend to be lacking in many areas of accountability that their chances of snow flake status is much higher than kids who are a product of durable pair bonded parents.
Not that nurture and enforced standards cannot overcome the issues. These things certainly can work.
Just my thoughts of course.
Etc, etc, etc..........
Pair bonds...hmmm
I pesonally have never heard of pair bonds. I am glad you outlined them so well. I think that is a wonderful way to look at it. I know myself and my children can weather anything together (I am divorced). We have a stong bond and I see the difference in them compared to many people I work with. I recently almost died in the hospital and have been recovering for 5 months and am still working to recover. My 2 teen children jumped in head first to care for me during this time. I see teens at their ages not doing their own landry, not working, and not lifting a finger to help the family and it's said. I remeber growing up and being told that if I have no one else in this world I will always have my parents and siblings. It is rare to see that anymore.
Accountability is easy to see being taken away from sociaety. In my line of work I see too many adults goto jail/ prison and still do not take responsibility for their actions. It's always someone elses fault or they had no chance from the begining because of such and such. How do we stop this from continuing and changine the whole fabric of our future?
Sorry, got in a theoretical/philosphical mood lately trying to figure out why these things are happening.
Until those who fail to do
Until those who fail to do the work of success are allowed to fail and live the full consequences of their choices I do not think that anything will change.
Let those who do not perform fail and allow those who succeed realize the full benefits of their performance. Do not take from the successful to underwrite the failed.
Until that happens, we will see no significant redirection towards large scale success. Those who never feel the pain of their failures and who keep getting bailed out will not dedicate themselves to improvement.
IMHO of course.
Maybe they should listen to
Maybe they should listen to you in DC. So tired of welfare recipients that just use the system rather than really use it. If you need it use it, but if you don't go get a job and stop expecting everyone else to take care of you.