Families: A Big Step

Grandparents with no blood ties face unique challenges and rewards in creating a family role

Jean Farmer can remember lonely holidays when she was raising her five children as a single mom. "Every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, it was just us," she says. "We were so hungry for a family." Since then, the void they felt has filled to the brim. In three years the Dallas clan has expanded to include husband Rick and two-year-old Kristina. Along with a stepfather, the Farmer marriage brought Jean's five older children yet another new relative--a stepgrandmother, Rick's widowed mother Charlene. And when Charlene in turn wed Joseph Glahn last year, Rick suddenly had to get used to a stepfather of...

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