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Rating: 
Summary: dedicated, helpful - and ignores 4 major hazards
Review: I have specialized in providing professional education and therapy to divorced, courting, and re/wedded couples since 1981. I am (a) 66, (b) a stepgrandson, stepson, and ex-stepfather and stepbrother, (c) an invited Board member of the Stepfamily Association of America, (d) a contributing editor to 'Your Stepfamily Online,' and (e) the author of six personal-growth and family-relations books.
I recommend this diligent book to readers who want a survey-based introduction to U.S. stepfamily life, and useful questionnaires to raise reader self-awareness. I do not recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the core reasons most US stepfamilies are significantly stressful and why millions redivorce or endure daily agony.
Like most stepfamily authors, the Artlips and Dr. Saltzman omit explanation and advice on these universal stepfamily stressors:
1) why and how to assess and reduce co-parents' psychological wounds from childhood (vs. divorce). Most divorced and stepfamily adults appear to be significantly wounded - and don't (want to) know it;
2) the origin and impacts of blocked grief in adults and kids, and how to spot and reduce it. All stepfamilies follow (and cause) a series of profound losses (broken bonds);
3) co-parent unawareness of, and/or indiference to, five key topics: (a) normal personality formation, composition, and function; (b) keys to high-nurturance families and relationships, (c) effective communication skills, (d) healthy 3-level grief, and (e) stepfamily realities, norms, implications, and hazards. And...
4) the implications of little effective re/marital and co-parenting help (i.e. courtship coaching, classes, informed counseling, co-parent support groups) available in most communities and the media.
In my clinical experience since 1981, these factors combine to promote needy, love-dazed courting co-parents to commit to the wrong people (mate, stepkids, and "other parent/s"), for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time. Then the factors inhibit co-parents from identifying and resolving these core personal, role, and relationship problems:
http://sfhelp.org/10/problems.htm
For more perspective on this review, see
http://sfhelp.org/11/choose_bks.htm
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