Strollerderby

This doesn't even mention the confusing double-lives of kids who are carted back and forth between homes to satisfy the notion of shared parenting. The homelives are stressful for all, with competitive, adversarial, possessive, even manipulative battles between the parents, only leading to more convoluted arrangements or drastic situational changes. And then you have other adults (step-parents and/or SOs) in the families on each side, whose roles never seem to have been defined well at any point throughout human history.

It's unfortunate that Giuliani's highly publicized discord with his son have caused many negative opinions about stepfamilies to surface.

His son's remarks were hardly surprising.

Children love their parents - plain and simple. And in the son's eyes - his mother was treated poorly by his father. It' no surprise that he has a strained relationship with his father and stepmother. What's unusual is that it's being aired in public.

For most of us, these blended family tensions and negotiations occur under the radar - not out in public. But the tensions in the Giuliani family are not unusual. One-third of Americans will live in stepfamilies at some point during their lives.

Many have used the Giuliani situation to bash stepfamilies and shared parenting (how convenient). While stepfamilies face some special challenges - they can raise healthy, well-adjusted people who contribute to society. Raising your kids in a nuclear family does not guarantee their health and well-being either.

Children living in shared parenting arrangements get the benefits of having many people involved in their lives. They can also learn how to resolve conflicts and look at a situation from different perspectives in a healthy and functioning stepfamily situation. One can only hope that the Giulianis eventually get there.