Call me old-fashioned, but I thought marriage had to be involved in being a “step FAMILY.” We certainly are defining “family” downward when a father shacking up with a girlfriend becomes a “blended family.”
Many children growing up in these hideous arrangements will not be well-adjusted.
I don’t find the lack of a government-issued marriage license disturbing, but the lack of swift and comprehensive response to the boy’s advance warning that he wanted to kill his stepmother suggests some really colossal problems in this household — the sort that certainly wouldn’t have been remedied by a marriage license. Not to mention the 7 year old girl who just went ahead and got on the school bus right after a shotgun blast went off inside her home, and apparently didn’t say anything to the driver about a problem. There were obviously major, major, major problems in this household, and the little boy isn’t responsible for them.
When it comes to the real dynamics of "families" like this, the 11-year-old was evidently more perceptive than the so-called expert from Massachusetts.