Blended families have challenges on several fronts: they resulted from a "failure" in an earlier marriage, there are almost always continued ties of some sort, and there are few useful models of how a blended family ought to be constructed. (Sorry, the Brady Bunch just won't cut it.)

Here we will address some of the effects of divorce and remarriage—blending of families. Rather than focusing on several of the obvious negative outcomes of divorce we will look at how we can respond to many of them.