Other People's Children

It’s hard enough when your parents split up ... but what happens when other people’s children enter the picture? When a man and a woman get married, things can get complicated — and even more so when a man and a woman who are divorced get remarried. And when there are children from previous marriages, ‘complicated’ can become the understatement of the century. Other People’s Children concerns that expanding social unit: the stepfamily. It explores the myths, the truths, the ridiculousness, the tenderness and the difficulties of trying to simultaneously deal with present relationships, past relationships and, above all, other people’s children. Here Trollope delves fearlessly into the emotional dynamics of family life - or rather, life that ever-expanding unit, the stepfamily. There are the mothers - like Nadine, spurned, embittered, and trying desperately to hold on to her children any way she can; Elizabeth, the would-be stepmother, who only glimpses the shoals that lie ahead; Josie, the stepmother, who sees them all too clearly every day of her married life. There are the men, like Matthew, who must live with another man's son and without hisown children; and Tom, torn between his own desires and what he believes he owes his daughter