Yours Mine and Ours - Hardcover

Scribner. Feb. 1989. c.480p. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-684-18700-0. $19.95. psych Bernstein, a psychologist who writes for Parents Magazine , links her own experience as a stepparent and biological mother with research and with interviews she conducted among 55 remarried households in which a mutual child was born. Among the topics she discusses are the decision to have a "new" child, varying attachments, parenting the second time around, age differences between half-siblings, help or hindrance from grandparents, and the difficulties small children encounter understanding complex relationships. The text is well documented but repetitious and littered with needless metaphors; quotes soften the somewhat long-winded style. Recommended to most libraries with moderate to large parenting collections.
- Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Bernstein ( The Flight of the Stork ) here provides a needed book on mixed-family households. The author is a family therapist in Berkeley, Calif., also a stepmother of two and mother of "ours," the child born to her and her husband. In a well-organized and admirably clear text, she combines material on her own home life with interviews with parents, steps and half-siblings. Humanizing bald statistics, Bernstein creates awareness of how divorce affects today's children and those responsible for their care. Sustaining harmony in households made up of offspring of previous and current marriages can be a trial, notes Bernstein, whose empathetic counsel should prove helpful. Her graceful revelations of "fragile and interchangeable families" will have wide appeal.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.