Just what is the American family today?

According to the U.S. Census:
• Less than 25% of families are traditional nuclear families.
• 50% are some form of stepfamily one, or  both,  biological parents has a new partner
•  2 out of 3 break up
Some tips to make it work.

1. Set specific routines for the AM and PM. Prepare for the next day the night before by laying out clothes, homework, and book bags.
2. Rules, forms and norms must be decided by the both of you and written as the House Rules.
3. Decide on your roles as Male and Female Head of House.
4. Go over your House Rules as a couple. Present them for this year together in a family meeting.
5. Create structure with expected manners, chores, responsibilities and positive and negative consequences.
6. Be Predicable.  If you say it! Do it! Make a rule and enforce that rule.
7. As a couple remind and support each other in keeping order and forms and norms.
8. Remember being organized with clear, agreed upon discipline, guidance, love and encouragement is the most important job of the heads of the family.
9. Take your place as leader in your stepfamily. The children win at life when you have the courage do what you need to do to make a happy family. Enjoy the benefits and seeing the kids thrive in the new order.
10. Guard your sense of humor.

The Stepfamily Foundation is a not for profit founded in 1976. It provides a membership, research, telephone counseling and Certification Seminars for Professionals and Coaches.

At the Stepfamily Foundation we have two solutions both of which take place at the ritual family dinner:

#1 solution is "The Good News/Bad News" or the "Highs and Lows" protocol.

Here, starting with the male head of household/female head of household/oldest child etc. each person talks about their good news/bad news or highs and lows of the day.

#2 solution is everybody in this family before dinner Google's the Op Ed section of a paper e.g., the New York Times, The Los Angeles, Times Rolling Stone what ever.

One reads and chooses an opinion piece of interest to the whole family. It might be informative and/or controversial. Have an opinion, and be prepared to argue your opinion.

Do not just ask kids, how was their day and focus attention on their concerns. Talk about what you (parents) learned today.

Teach. Honor/share wisdom and differences.

We take a page out of the playbook of the great families of Europe and the United States such as the Kennedys. You will note let's say just reading the biography of Ted Kennedy that at every meal, the kids starting at age seven or eight, had to come to the table with a discussion of some political event and be prepared to argue it. That's why Kennedys are such great speakers.

My parents were divorced when I went to Germany to be with my father and my two half brothers before every meal there was a race for any paper you could find: The Paris Herald Tribune, The Frankfurter Algemeiner or any paper we could get our hands on. We had to talk about something that was written in that paper or an Op Ed. We had to discuss it, defend it, or argue against it.

Animals feed. People dine.

The family meal is the altar of the family. It is the setting for the teaching of values, ethics, and a vision of self and the world. These meals eaten together need to occur at least three to four times a week (including perhaps a weekend brunch). Because they mostly occur at home, they don’t have to be expensive. Bad manners, television watching, and phone answering are all banned.


Only Mungo Eats at a Predictable Time

Maggie Hansen is an administrator in a busy metropolitan hospital. She’s up early every morning and when she gets home, around 5:00 p.m., she’s so hungry that she prepares dinner as soon as she walks through the door. Her husband Mark, a buyer in a major department store, is not home until at least 7:00 p.m., so she leaves some food for him in the oven while she eats alone. By the time Mark gets home, Maggie is relaxing in front of the TV, so he has dinner in the kitchen by himself, with his sales reports for company.

Their two kids, Gail, seventeen, and Thomas, fourteen, are both heavily involved in sports and often don’t show up for dinner at all. When they do, Gail likes to eat in her room while talking on the phone. Thomas doesn’t like what his mom watches on TV, so he puts on his headphones and blasts rap music while he eats.

The only member of the Hansen family who has an assigned time and place to eat is their dog Mungo, who always eats on the back porch after Jeopardy.

The scenario is all too familiar. All over the country, family members are eating at fast-food restaurants or at home alone using the TV, headphones, or newspapers as a substitute for family communication and emotional interaction. The Hansens are missing the chance to make their dinner table a family forum where they can discuss their day’s problems and triumphs, give each other support and advice, plan a family vacation, or propose something new:

• “Would you pretend I wasn’t your daughter if I got a nose ring?”

• “I really tried this semester but I still got a C in math. Do you think I can get a tutor?”

• “Your mom just got a great job offer in Virginia. How do you feel about moving?”


The dinner table becomes a place where everyone is free to voice opinions about family issues and where family decisions can be made. Moreover, the dinner hour doesn’t have to be solely devoted to personal concerns. You and your kids can talk about what you’ve read in the paper or seen on television. Literature, new movies, politics—all these things can and should be talked about at your family altar—the dinner table.

It’s not simply a matter of sharing opinions about the world, though that certainly is important. Conversations like this—and the context out of which they arise—are the crucible for a family’s identity and philosophy. What you believe—about the president, taxes, the environment, art, music, literature—will shape what and how your children think forever. And if they don’t have a chance to talk with you—free from the competing noise of the television set and the interruptions of the telephone—you are putting your most vital parental legacy at risk: the sharing of your own values and worldview. These are intangibles that only you can communicate to them and the family meal is the ideal setting.

Dinner: Reclaiming the Family Focal Point

The Seating Arrangement

Establish a seating arrangement and stick to it. Having a regular, established seating order at the table is predictable and reassuring for children. If everyone has his or her place, it banishes the emotional chaos that occurs when family members sit in different places every night.

One big mistake that many families make—especially when there is a second marriage—is that the couple sits next to each other in what we call “the honeymoon position.” This arrangement, with the couple alongside each other and the kids sitting opposite, looks like a face-off. It immediately sets up a polarization of “us” and “them.” Instead, the male and female heads of the household should sit at either end of the table. Usually it is the female at the food, closest to the kitchen, and the male at the head. This holds true even if you eat in the kitchen.

Remember those experiments you did in sophomore science with the metal shavings and the magnet’s north and south poles? The shavings immediately formed a force field around the two poles. So it is at the table. The male and female heads of household create a strong force field of unity that includes the children. The table is not dominated by children, but, as it needs to be, by adult leaders and teachers—two parents or parent and partner.

When it is just the family at dinner, children should sit according to age and gender. The oldest girl sits to the right of the male head of household, and the oldest boy on the female head’s right—unless there are babies or little ones who need help, in which case they sit on their biological parent’s right.

Should this be a dating situation, the female remains at the foot of the table and puts her male guest to her right. Or if it is his table, he sits at the head and puts her to his right—both sit as guest of honor. This does not hold true when they are a couple.

There must be a consistent place where children sit when they come to the table—even when they come on visitation. Places must remain the same. We find this order enormously important at meals, no matter what.