Project 9 of 12 toward high-nurturance families and relationships
What Are Loyalty Conflicts Like For Kids? Learn How They Use and Suffer From Them  By Peter K. Gerlach, MSW Member NSRC Experts Council

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The Web address of this article is http://sfhelp.org/09/lc-kids.htm

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        This is one of over 150 articles focused on healing psychological wounds,  building high-nurturance family relationships, breaking the [wounds + unawareness] cycle, and preventing divorce. This introduction describes the Web site's purpose and the best ways to use its resources. Each article is part of a mosaic of ideas, so the more you read, the more sense they'll all make.

        These articles augment, vs. replace, other qualified professional help. The "/" in re/marriage and re/divorce notes that it may be a stepparent's first union. "Co-parents" means both bioparents, or any of the three or more related stepparents and bioparents co-managing a multi-home nuclear stepfamily. 

        Before continuing, reflect: why are you reading this - what do you need?

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      This is one of a series of Project 9 Web pages exploring two universally stressful stepfamily dynamics: loyalty or inclusion conflicts, and related [persecutor - victim - rescuer] relationship triangles.

  What are Loyalty Conflicts Like for Typical Stepfamily Kids?

        Parental separation, divorce, and biofamily reorganization often escalates at least pre-teen biokids' belief that they're unlovable and unworthy. As Mom or Dad leaves, kids’ normal needs for unconditional adult love, security, and nurturance often rise, depending on many factors. 

        No matter how sugarcoated or explained, being left by a parent initially decodes as "I don't love or value you enough to stay here." It also starkly demonstrates "Parents may leave at any time, and I can do nothing to stop that. I am powerless to prevent being abandoned."

        After parental separation, many insecure kids - specially pre-teens - become intensely (or uncon-sciously) focused on their custodial parent's availability, safety, and stability. Will they suddenly leave too?When their custodial parent dates and becomes romantically involved with a new adult, specially one with dependent children of their own, insecure kids' abandonment anxiety can skyrocket - specially if their other bioparent or other kin aren't close or credibly warm and attentive. 

        Normally, both minor and grown stepkids often …

• are caught in the middle of loyalty battles,

• semi-consciously cause them ("put me first!"), or …

• ally with another family member who's struggling in a loyalty conflict.

        All three situations can be specially confusing, scary, and stressful for dependent stepfamily kids, because most of them have ~30+ challenging adjustment needs to fill that intact-biofamily biokids don't. Without informed (stepfamily-aware) co-parental guidance, stepkids often have distorted ideas about who they're "supposed to" be loyal to, when, and why.

       To effectively help their kids cope, co-parents and other caregivers (e.g. teachers, doctors, and clergy) need to know clearly what these adjustment needs are, and what it feels like to be a minor stepchild. Here's a glimpse of some of the key inner projects most stepkids experience, regardless of age, gender, and situation. As you wonder "what's it like for them?", note that (a) these needs are usually concurrent  with each other and  normal developmental tasks, and that (b) adult caregivers are usually working on filling similar needs at the same time.


  Typical Stepchild Needs

        Because of personality, age, gender, and sibling-mix differences, and because there are over 100 structural types of stepfamily, any stepdaughter or stepson has a unique combination of adjustment needs like these:

Master (a) causing and (b) being in the middle of recurring loyalty conflicts with two or three sets of co-parents, sibs, and relatives. "Mastery" includes accepting feeling second when a bioparent chooses their stepparent "over" them, without feeling significantly shamed, hurt, and abandoned.

Calm recurring fears (or terror) of bioparent rejection and abandonment;

Replace core shame and many painful guilts (e.g. "I made my parents divorce - I'm awful") with some version of "I'm a respectable, OK boy/girl in a normal stepfamily.";

Mourn major old and new losses, often including less freedom, privacy, and family status. If their bioparent's re/marriage involves changing locations, kids' painful losses may include their former homes, friends, schools, neighborhoods, churches, and sometimes pets and access to valued kin;

Decide clearly " "Who is my family now?", often in the face of others' conflicting opinions about this;

Build solid trusts (faith) that (a) this stepfamily is safe enough, and won't break up like all my prior homes have; and (b) my sib/s and other (non-custodial bio) parent are safe and happy enough;

Clarify and stabilize up to 15 alien new stepfamily roles and many new relationships, starting with "stepson" or "stepdaughter" and "stepmom" and/or "stepdad"; and adjust personal identity to fit them. Adjust to the alien parenting styles of one or two stepparents, and new customs of their step-kin;

Adapt to an evolving series of new and often conflictual household and multi-home rules and rituals, like meals, holidays, going to church, vacations, household chores, ...;

Detach from any old and new bioparental and co-parental warfare ("that's their problem"); and...

Adjust to new privacy, boundary, and sexual conditions in their home/s;

       If their other bioparent remarries - specially to another bioparent - dependent and some grown daughters and sons may have to re-fill many of these adjustment needs. This is also true each time an "ours" baby is born or a key stepfamily member moves, marries, divorces, or dies.

        Versions of these adjustment needs can be triggered if a stepchild goes to live with their other bioparent (which happens sometime in about a third of U.S. stepfamilies), and each time one bioparent sues another to gain changes in child custody, support, or visitation.

       And along with these divorce, re/marriage, and growing-up tasks, most kids of psychologically- wounded caregivers must also cope with personal, school,  and social conflicts rising from their own wounds will significantly hinder kids' mastering growth tasks and filling adjustment needs. That increasingly erodes their self respect and confidence, and strengthens the toxic dominance of their protective false self.  

       If all co-parents and key stepfamily kin aren't (a) clearly aware of these many concurrent developmental tasks and adjustment needs and (b) motivated and able to help with them, the wounds usually deepen and grow over time. This causes major loyalty battles and relationship triangles in and between their homes. Typical minor and adult stepkids’ psychological plates are full!

        Shame-based children who are terrified of being rejected and abandoned (from experience) can ceaselessly demand their bioparents' primary support and attention. Others are numb, pleasant, and accommodating, believing they don't deserve and shouldn't expect nurturing anyway. Such kids often meet new stepparents' offers of warm friendship with protective indifference, distrust, and even hostility, baffling everybody. Others can vibrate with neediness and clinging dependence.

Any of these reactions normally create powerful loyalty conflicts in and between the kids' stepfamily's homes. Stepkids naturally want to test the rules and authorities in a new home and family to see "Is this family safe, or will you break up (and devastate me), too?"

        Loyalty conflicts are great for such testing and for learning "Who's really in charge in our family?" and "How much power do I have here?" Children who are still hurt and angry (i.e. grieving) over their parent's divorce and remarriage can cause these divisive struggles to punish their adults, (specially a bossy, invading new stepparent, or snotty stepsib), over and over.

       Stepteens usually pose unique co-parenting challenges. Normally, older adolescents are starting to break away from parental authority, hang out with their friends, and erratically flex their wobbly independence. Just as their teens start to (healthily) pull away, typical newly re/married couples want everyone to "become a family" and bond together.

        Thus stepteens often feel caught in complex loyalty wars between their peers, their own biological programming, their sibs, and three or more confused co-parents. When this is so, they rarely have the awareness and vocabulary to describe this, so they can retreat, seethe, "get depressed" (overwhelmed) and/or flee.

       Older kids' use of a car, the phone, appliances, and experimenting with sex and perhaps drugs can trigger powerful values conflicts between co-parents and others. Teens can instinctively use stepfamily loyalty conflicts, and co-parental confusion and guilt, as powerful ways to assert their own influence and independence.

       In trying to learn their alien new family roles, stepparents without biokids often over or under- discipline their stepkids - specially teens. Sexual feelings can add to the complex dynamics between co-parents and maturing teens, and between adolescent step-sibs. Kids of any age unexpectedly trigger unfinished childhood struggles in each stepfamily co-parent.

        Co-parents who deny their stepfamily identity and these normal loyalty clashes may greatly stress their kids by requiring them to "love" their stepsibs and step relatives "just like" genetic kin. This is like insisting that your plumber should want to fill out your income tax forms.

       When good chemistry happens by chance, specially with young kids, stepparent-stepchild love really can bloom. More often, confusion, ambivalence, pretending, anxiety, guilts, shame, and self-doubt blooms. One stepfamily reality is: instant love between members is an enticing myth. "Love" may or may not happen with time. Mutual respect and trust can happen, and is a far more practical stepfamily goal.


  The Bottom Line

       Minor and adult children in new and low-nurturance stepfamilies often have significant anxieties, self-doubts, and needs for steady assurance from their bioparents that they're lovable, special, wanted, safe, and "OK." Because of these intense needs and their normal instinct to test (clarify) stepfamily boundaries and power, one group of stepkids relentlessly causes loyalty conflicts until they finally feel safe and good "enough." This not a conscious choice, and won't respond to "logic," pleas, whining, or discipline. 

       Stepchild testing often happens in a multi-home arena where there are several other minor resident or visiting kids - all of whom are diligently competing for security and specialness. A new "ours" baby in any of their homes will requires a high percent of co-parents' (and supportive older sibs') time and energy for years. This can seriously threaten and upset a significantly-insecure minor stepson or daughter, who may cause loyalty conflicts and relationship triangles to re/test for security.

       If one or more co-parents shame and discount any of their children for "being so selfish and uncooperative" (i.e. testing for safety), the youngsters' insecurity and demands to "choose me first" usually escalate. Alternatively, their overwhelmed personality subselves may cause "apathy," "depression," and/or self-harmful behaviors.

If co-parents continue to ignore or punish needy kids for "acting out" (testing), youngsters may become seriously depressed, angry and destructive, and/or emotionally detached - and reach out to appealing strangers for acceptance and security. Often they find this in other wounded and insecure kids and/or needy adults. This raises their caregivers' anxiety, if they're paying attention.

       Other frightened and insecure minor stepkids turn super-nice. They unconsciously fear that if they ask for co-parental attention and priority, they'll be harshly rejected and abandoned again. They become over-focused on their co-parents' happiness, and often lose themselves in the process. If not recognized and rebalanced by family caregivers, this "I-must-please-others" reflex forms one root of toxic adult codependence  (relationship addiction).

        Besides causing them repeatedly ("me first!"), typical minor and grown stepkids are often caught in the middle of multi-home stepfamily priority competitions. As these uncomfortable lose-lose experiences accumulate over time, stepkids can become angry, guilty, and self-doubting if their adults don't guide them empathically.

       Again, stepfamily loyalty disputes feel significantly different than those in average biofamilies, partly because they involve "your daughter or son (or parent)" vs. ours. Kids and co-parents in their several related stepfamily homes are confronted with an amazing array of psychological tasks which intact-biofamily members don't face. Collectively, these tasks add to co-parents' daily challenge of managing their re/marriage, several homes, multiple roles, and lives "well enough."

Updated  December 28, 2008