Marriage and Family Journal

1. If your parents have not divorced: Write about someone you know fairly well whose parents divorced. If you knew this person at the time of his/her parents’ divorce, did he or she talk to you about the divorce at all? If so, what affect did it seem to have on them? Were there behavioral or emotional changes that you noticed? How closely does this person seem to fit the results of research that is described in the text? Give examples if possible.

2. Using your own experiences if applicable or those of someone you know quite well, answer one of the following sets of questions. (The questions will refer to “you” but can refer to the person you are writing about even if that is not you.)

Questions about remarriage: How long after the divorce did you begin to think about getting married again? When you remarried, were there things about your previous marriage and/or spouse that you were specifically trying to avoid in the new marriage? Were there things about you – attitudes, actions, mistakes – that you were specifically trying to change or correct? Were there any myths about remarriage that you discovered were untrue?

Questions about stepfamilies: If you were the parent in a stepfamily, did you have unrealistic ideas and/or common myths/misperceptions about what your stepfamily would be like? If so, what were some of them?

If you were a child in a stepfamily, what was it like, especially at first? Assuming that there were some positives and some negatives, what were some of them?

Whether you were a parent or a child in a stepfamily, did your initial fears or hopes for your new family change over time? Explain.