Hello, stepparents, and welcome. I am delighted to have you join me today because I had the special privilege of interviewing the fabulous Dr. Patricia Papernow, who is the world’s leading expert in stepparenting and blended family dynamics.
Today’s episode is Part 3 of my interview with her. I’m so excited to have you join me. Without further ado, here we go…
MARIA NATAPOV:
Hi, everybody. Thank you for joining us. We are here with the fantastic Dr. Patricia Papernow. Welcome. We’re so excited to have you!
Dr. Papernow is an internationally recognized expert on stepfamilies. She integrates a deep understanding of the research with four decades of clinical practice and a wide variety of clinical modalities including psycho-educational, systemic, and trauma-informed. The recipient of the Award for Distinguished Contribution to Family Psychology from the APA Couple and Family Division, Dr. Papernow is the author of one of the classic books in the field: Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships: What Works and What Doesn’t.
She is also the co-author (with Karen Bonnell) of The Stepfamily Handbook: From Dating, to Getting Serious, to Forming a Blended Family, as well as dozens of articles and book chapters. Dr. Papernow is a psychologist in private practice in Hudson, MA, and the director of the Institute for Stepfamily Education.
Clearly, without a doubt, you are an expert in this field. It’s such a pleasure to get to pick your brain and have you share your wisdom with us. If you could speak a little bit more to this—I believe you’ve mentioned there’s a difference between stepfamilies and blended families?
“Blended” Families vs. Stepfamilies
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
They are the same thing. There are people who say blended families are when both adults bring kids. A blended family in my world is if one adult brings kids from a previous relationship—that is a stepfamily or a blended family. They are the same thing.
MARIA NATAPOV:
That makes a lot of sense. Could you illuminate what the differences are in stepfamilies who continue to struggle versus the ones that have success? What is it that they do? What are the most important concrete pieces to focus on to bring about more success, or at least more ease? Because it can be such a struggle sometimes; there are just so many priorities and stakeholders to juggle.
Why Some Stepfamilies Struggle (And How to Succeed)
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
It’s a complicated family form. Struggling stepfamilies tend to be more blaming of each other or withdrawing. They tend to go in with a less realistic picture of what it’s going to be, and then they hold onto it tight. They are straining to blend and get upset when they aren’t blending.
For example, the parent is upset: “The stepparent does not treat my kid the same as she treats her own kid.” I love my kids. I have seven step-grandchildren, and I just had my first belly grandchild (my daughter had a baby). I love my step-grandkids, but my heart flies open to my own grandchild.
There are plenty of stepparents who feel as loving toward stepchildren as they do their own. But it’s pretty normal that stepchildren are just not as in love. There are lots of reasons: “It’s not my kid, and that kid may not be happy that I’m here, so they turn away. My partner has to turn away from me to take care of that kid. And that kid does things that I find irritating that are normal for that kid.”
My daughter loved to stand in front of the open refrigerator and figure out what to eat. That was quite irritating to my husband! But I was a single mom; I was fine with it. There are a lot of reasons that stepparents just don’t open up in the same way. And older kids don’t either (though really little ones often do).
So that’s the first thing: If you are straining to blend—if you feel like you’re failing as a stepparent because you don’t love your stepkid the way you love your own kid, or the parent feels you aren’t trying hard enough—that’s going to make things tougher.
MARIA NATAPOV:
What do you suggest they can do? Say the alarm is going off and they realize, “Yes, you’ve nailed it, this is exactly what’s going on.” Is there something they can do in that moment?
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
I think just having things normalized can be very helpful. I saw a couple last year that I hadn’t seen for 15 years. She was the stepmom, and she said, “You were so helpful. It was transformative.” I always want to know what I did that was so helpful! She said, “Insiders and outsiders. Just knowing that I am an outsider, and me feeling left out is normal. It is not a sign that something is wrong with me.”
That can be very, very helpful. The other thing is, as a stepparent, you’re going to need more comfort from your partner, because you’re being pushed away all the time by the kids.
MARIA NATAPOV:
Right. It’s tending to your own needs, which is so absolutely true. This is true for all of us, but particularly in these situations, because the home is usually our safe space. It requires a lot more effort and watching your every move, especially in those early stages.
Building Connection Through One-on-One Time
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
And taking breaks! Sometimes that’s harder for biological parents. Parents say, “But we’re a family. I don’t need to go away when my kids are here.” Well, yeah, but when your kids are here, the stepparent is an outsider.
One of the things successful stepfamilies do is they spend time together to do fun things and make rituals. But my colleague Ron Deal says, “You do not make a birthday tradition with one birthday. You need five or six before it’s a tradition.” Stepfamily traditions are brand new.
However, stepfamilies also need one-to-one time. Every time the whole family is together, there’s competition. If the couple is close, the kids feel left out. If a parent is close to the kid, the stepparent feels left out. So, the couple needs time without kids, and the parent and child need time without the stepparent.
Additionally, stepparents and stepchildren need time alone together to do fun, low-key, shoulder-to-shoulder things. When the biological parent is in the room, that parent-child relationship is so much stronger that it will always trump the stepparent-stepchild relationship.
MARIA NATAPOV:
You’re so right. It just gives them an opportunity to learn more, build those bonds, and have their own unique interests or hobbies.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
If you’re lucky as a stepparent, you’ve got something that one or both of your stepkids are interested in that the other adults don’t do. If a stepparent loves to play soccer and neither biological parent is very athletic. Or if a stepparent loves to cook, the kid can cook with the stepparent. (Now, if Mom is also a good cook in the other household, that may be tricky, and you want to find something else to do).
It’s called affinity building. Some kids will be more open than others. When stepparents are struggling, parents will say, “You’re not trying hard enough.” But the truth is, adolescent girls—especially 11, 12, 13, and 14-year-old girls—have a really, really hard time when a parent re-couples. So as a stepparent, I say: look around. Pick the easiest kid for simple one-to-one things!
If you’ve got a tough kid, see if there is something they are interested in that you could learn. “She just plays on a computer, and I don’t know anything about computers.” See if she’ll teach you something! Kids love to teach grown-ups things. Just say, “I’m an idiot. I don’t know how to do this. Can you show me?”
MARIA NATAPOV:
That’s so true. Just getting curious and wanting to know anything they would be willing to share. That’s such a wonderful way in.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
And if you can’t get in, it’s painful. You need to go get a hug from your partner. It’s not because you aren’t trying hard enough. Your stepkid might just be in a loyalty bind with their mother. You can keep trying, but you need to come to your partner behind closed doors and get love and hugs, because it’s hard.
Navigating Stepfamily Traditions: “Learning by Goofing”
MARIA NATAPOV:
What I’m almost hearing through our conversation is that a true “blend” in the blended family might not happen. It’s so challenging. It’s best to view it as something that would be nice, but not even make it the goalpost.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Yeah. If you’re straining to blend… a better metaphor is this: Blending is like taking frozen blueberries and strawberries and making a smoothie. Becoming a stepfamily is much more like taking a group of Japanese people and a group of Italians and telling them to live closely together!
The Italians are outgoing and a bit loud, and their energy might feel offensive to the Japanese group. The Japanese group is more controlled and tends to avoid conflict, and the Italians might think that looks cold. What does that mean about how things are going to unfold over time?
I talk about “learning by goofing.” Stepmother puts colored lights on the Christmas tree, and the stepdaughter bursts into tears and runs upstairs. Stepmother could say, “Stepdaughter ruined Christmas.” Or she could say, “Gee, that’s disappointing. What happened?” It turns out the kid is used to white lights. That’s one more change, and change is hard for kids. So once you understand that, what do you do? Maybe half the tree has colored lights and half has white! You learn by goofing.
MARIA NATAPOV:
It almost seems like a great place to start is to come with a clean slate and say to the child, “Hey, what would be a really cool brand-new tradition to incorporate?” That way, there’s no loyalty bind.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Kids don’t always know what a tradition is. In my first stepfamily, we had our first Christmas. We were so happy! Halfway through, my stepdaughter bursts into tears and runs upstairs sobbing, “Jammas, jammas, jammas!” It turns out, we were dressed. She was upset because, in her mind, Christmas mornings happen in pajamas. She couldn’t even articulate that beforehand; she just got upset when she saw us fully dressed.
It’s not easy to find language for this stuff. But you can try something new and then debrief. You can say:
- What did you like best?
- What did you like least?
- What was the most fun?
- What was the hardest?
- What should we do more of?
Let’s hear from everybody. We’re not going to argue and try to agree; we’re just going to hear from everybody. That helps.
The Refrigerator Analogy: Embracing Incremental Change
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
You have to expect a spike of arousal, and then things do change over time. I always like to talk about the refrigerator in my house. My husband’s last name is Goldberg; mine is Papernow.
When we first got together, my daughter could go through the entire kitchen and point to foods: Papernow, Papernow, Goldberg, Goldberg. All the sugar cereals were Goldberg. The whole wheat cereals were Papernow. In the refrigerator, the whole milk and red meat were Goldberg. The entire fruit and vegetable compartment, the skim milk, and the fish were Papernow.
By Year 4, my husband and I joined Weight Watchers. Red meat has a lot of points. So he started to eat chicken and drink skim milk.
We’re now at Year 25. If you look in our refrigerator, it has soy milk, which we both drink. There is only real mayonnaise (he still will not touch low-fat mayonnaise!). The vegetable drawer is entirely Papernow; he still doesn’t touch it. However, he eats a lot of fruit now, so the fruit is both of us.
MARIA NATAPOV:
I love that visual so much, Dr. Papernow! It shows incremental change. We don’t have to force it. Some things we’ll never budge on or agree on, and that’s okay. Other things can flow.
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
It comes slowly. If you go back to the Japanese and Italian analogy, we’re not going to become a family by making everybody eat pasta with chopsticks! We find a few things we can do together. We figure out how to make a “We” out of “Us and Them.”
MARIA NATAPOV:
I love that so much. Really powerful stuff. Where can our audience keep up with everything you have going on?
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
My two books, Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships and the newer one, The Stepfamily Handbook, are evidence-based. The Stepfamily Handbook starts much earlier and goes step-by-step for the public. Surviving and Thriving is entirely focused on stepfamilies and was written for both clinicians and people in stepfamilies.
My website is StepFamilyRelationships.com. There are radio interviews and videos on it. If you don’t like to read, you can listen to them in your car. Surviving and Thriving is also an audiobook now on Audible!
MARIA NATAPOV:
Fantastic. It was such a pleasure speaking to you. We so appreciate all of your wisdom!
DR. PATRICIA PAPERNOW:
Thank you for getting this information out. That means a lot to me for it to be in the hands of people who can use it to make our lives better. Take care!
MARIA NATAPOV:
Thank you so much for joining me for this incredible interview. It was a true privilege and an honor to speak to Dr. Papernow. She’s so full of wisdom and insights, and I know that I’m coming away with so much from this conversation. I hope you guys are, too! I will see you next week. Until next time, be well.
(Want more? Listen to Part 1 and Part 2 of this interview for more of Dr. Papernow’s tips and insights!)
Relevant Links for this Show:
- Patricia Papernow
- Patricia Papernow LI
- Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships: What Works and What Doesn’t
- The Stepfamily Handbook: From Dating, to Getting Serious, to Forming a “Blended Family”
Related Episodes:
- Interview with Dr. Patricia Papernow: Part 1
- Interview with Dr. Patricia Papernow: Part 2
- Stepparenting Feels Like a Culture Clash
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