Stepfamilies: What Works and What Doesn't
May 12, 2015
Hosted by Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
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Guest Information
Episode Description
What we call “blended families” are a lot more challenging than the name implies. Stepfamilies can be healthy, happy families and good places to raise children, but building a successful stepfamily is quite different from making a first-time family. The good news is that we can now know a lot about what works. The bad news is that much of what works is not intuitive. Blogs often include well-intentioned but bad advice. Based on a solid understanding of relevant research and over three decades of clinical experience, Dr. Patricia Papernow will describe what works and what doesn’t work for creating a thriving stepfamily. She will provide specific strategies for success and some useful guidelines for navigating the twists and turns of becoming a stepfamily.
Family Matters
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Our goal is to share good ideas about helping all kinds of families handle the challenges and problems that are common in today’s world. We seek to help people heal, grow, and thrive in a culture in which marriage, parenting, and other family relationships are under great stress.
We will feature experts on a variety of family matters. Topics may include building and maintaining healthy relationships, family mediation, divorcing with minimal damage, strengthening marriages, LGBT families, forming and maintaining stepfamilies, single parents, creating constructive separation agreements, addiction, preventing or ending abuse, and other Family Matters.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D is an author, speaker, professional family mediator, Director of Colin Family Mediation Group, and a Founding Member of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators (APFM).
Having survived a nightmarish divorce, Dr. Colin actively supports divorce reform efforts, teaching people how to take a lot of the pain, financial cost, acrimony, and trauma out of divorce. She also loves learning and teaching about building healthy relationships and solving family problems long before anyone has a reason to consider divorce. She has been a foster parent, a married parent, a divorced single parent, and a remarried stepparent.
Formerly a research psychologist studying attachment and other aspects of human development, Dr. Colin has been providing family mediation services since 1999. She specializes in helping couples and ex-couples develop co-parenting plans and financial agreements that support their children’s security, self-confidence, and healthy development as well as their own adult well-being.
Dr. Colin has published two books, “Human Attachment" and "The Guide to Low-Cost Divorce in Virginia: How to Do It Yourself.” She has also written a variety of articles published in journals and on the Internet.
