The Islands Inside the Family: How Different Fathers and Mothers Quietly Divide Our Children

The Islands Inside the Family

How different fathers and mothers quietly divide our children for life

We talk a lot about “modern families, blended homes, single parents, freedom, emancipation. What we seldom talk about is the quiet geography being drawn inside many of these homes:

Islands.

Not in the Caribbean Sea. Inside the living room. Around the dinner table. In the hearts of our children.

Whenever a family consists of children with different fathers and/or different mothers – especially under a single parent – it is almost impossible for these islands not to form.

In this blog, I am not going to pretend we can avoid the islands. In the times we live in, they are often inevitable.

The real question is:

When the islands are already there, how do we handle them as adults – and what are we really doing to the children?

 

1. What Is an “Island” in the Family?

In this context, an island can be:

• each child who has a different outside parent, or
• each group of children who share the same outside parent.

Example:

• Child A – Father 1
• Child B + C – Father 2
• Child D – Father 3

On paper, or in the minds of the naive parents, it is “one family. In reality, we have three different bloodlines and three different worlds meeting under one roof.

Each line comes with:

• different genetic tendencies and health risks,
• different outside relatives and values,
• different levels of money, time, and presence,
• different traumas, stories, and spiritual baggage.

These are not details. They are fault lines. Over time, they harden into emotional islands.

 

2. Different Treatment Is Inevitable – The Island Is Not “If”, But “How.”

Each child or child‑group with a different parent:

• receives different treatment – intentionally or unintentionally,
• brings their own unique trauma and history into the house,
• is connected to an outside parent with their own level of maturity, chaos, outside relatives, relationships, or stability.

Even the most honest in‑house parent cannot completely suppress this. It leaks out in:

• tone of voice,
• patience level,
• how quickly you defend one child versus another,
• which child you expect to “understand” and which one you always rescue.

Let’s be clear:

In multi‑parent families, emotional islands are inevitable. The injustice is optional.

The issue is not “whether an island forms. The issue is:

• Do you pretend it does not exist?
• Or do you handle it consciously with strict fairness and boundaries?

 

3. Children See the Islands More Clearly Than We Do

As adults, we can try consciously to keep the effects small:

• “I love all my children the same.”
• “I don’t treat them differently.”

But for the children, the islands are:

• clear, tangible, and distinguishable,
• felt in everyday moments,
• so real that they sometimes speak about them – not to do harm, but to express something they feel and do not understand.

You will hear it in small comments:

“Why does his father always come and mine doesn’t?”
“When her father is here, you’re different, Mommy.”
“You don’t shout at him like you shout at me.”

Children are not making political statements. They are describing their climate.

💡 FACT: Research in developmental psychology shows that perceived parental favoritism (even when parents deny it) is linked to higher anxiety, aggression, and low self‑esteem in children. It is the child’s perception of unequal treatment, not the parent’s intention, that shapes long‑term outcomes.

 

4. How Parents (And Their New Partners) Feed the Islands

The in‑house parent will swear:

“I don’t have favorites. I treat them all the same.”

But life is not a social media statement. It is made of patterns.

Consider first what happens inside the house:

• The outside parent who is more present and supportive reduces your stress – you feel more generous toward their child.
• The child who comes with less attached chaos feels “easier” to love and invest in.
• You may fear conflict with one outside parent, so you unconsciously bend more toward their child.

Slowly:

• One child gets more patience and emotional room.
• Another gets more pressure and criticism.
• One gets, “We’ll find a way.”
• Another hears, “Don’t ask, we don’t have.”

Now add the piece almost nobody talks about:

Most of the time, the outside parent also has a partner.

That partner brings:

• their own feelings about “the ex”,
• their own insecurity or jealousy toward children from the previous relationship,
• their own ideas about discipline, money, and contact,
• sometimes, their own children from somewhere else.

Very often there are also:

• outside brothers and sisters – the children of that parent with someone else, in another house, under other rules.

So a single child in your living room is now comparing:

• life with you and your partner,
• life at the other parent’s house,
• how their outside partner treats them,
• how outside brothers and sisters are treated there.

They see:

• who gets the nicer room,
• who gets more time, gifts, or trips?
• whether the new partner accepts them or only tolerates them,
• whether outside siblings are openly preferred.

Back home, you add:

• different last names on documents and at school,
• different ethnic realities and skin tones in the same home,
• different relatives visiting (one side “respectable”, the other side a mess).

Without very strict inner boundaries as a parent, you will automatically:

• reward the “easy” island – the child whose outside world creates less trouble for you,
• punish or neglect the “complicated” island – the child whose outside world constantly drags conflict and confusion into your life.

The children read this long before you ever admit it to yourself. And when you add new partners and outside brothers and sisters into the mix, the islands don’t just appear – they multiply.

5. Emancipation, “I Can Do What I Want”… and the Cost for Children

We live in a time of powerful slogans:

• “I have to be happy.”
• “I can do what I want with my life.”
• “I am free to leave if I’m not fulfilled.”

Many adults:

• leave relationships quickly,
• have children with multiple partners,
• build new households over old ones,
• repeat the cycle when that also becomes uncomfortable.

Yes, there are cases where leaving is necessary – violence, abuse, real danger. That is not what I am attacking.

I am challenging the casual, low‑responsibility culture of:

• no discipline in choosing partners,
• no accountability in sex and parenting,
• no serious thought about what multiple fathers/mothers do to a child’s identity and belonging.

The freedom of parents often becomes the prison of children.

 

6. Naive Therapy: When “Just Leave” Becomes a Professional Religion

There is another uncomfortable layer: naive and irresponsible therapists and psychologists.

Many modern professionals:

• are quick to advocate divorce or separation as the “healthy” option,
• frame leaving primarily as self‑care and empowerment,
• rarely teach the hard skills of navigating and repairing a long‑term relationship or marriage.

At the same time, statistics from several Western countries show that:

• around 70% of divorces are initiated by women,
• women are also generally more open to counseling than men.

Put together, and extrapolating this pattern into the wider culture of relationship break‑ups, a clear picture emerges:

• the gender most encouraged to seek help is also the gender most frequently pressing the legal exit button,
• professionals often support the emotional narrative of leaving, without fully facing the structural damage done to children and family systems.

My interpretation is direct:

In many societies, it is women – supported by a certain kind of therapy – who are fueling the breakup trend, while children are left to live on the islands this creates.

Again, this does not deny male failure or abuse. Men often abandon responsibility long before any legal divorce. But if we only ever tell one side, “Leave, you deserve better,” and never seriously teach both sides how to stay, repair, and mature, the islands inside families will only multiply.

💡 FACT: Large studies in the US and Europe have consistently found that around two‑thirds to 70% of divorces are initiated by women. At the same time, women are more likely than men to seek psychological counseling. Whatever the interpretation, this combination has a powerful impact on family stability and the number of post‑divorce, multi‑parent households that children must navigate.

 

7. What Conscious Parenting Looks Like When Islands Already Exist

If you have reached this far and you are reading this as a single parent, step‑parent, or someone with children from different partners, this is not a call to drown in guilt.

It is a call to wake up and take radical responsibility for how you handle the reality you already created.

Conscious parenting in this context means:

• Name the islands in your own mind. Stop pretending that all children feel the same treatment.
• Place strict internal boundaries on favoritism:
  • same rules for everyone,
  • same level of respect,
  • no open competition over which outside parent is “better”.
• Talk age‑appropriately with each child about their reality:
  • “Yes, you have different fathers.”
  • “Yes, they show up differently.”
  • “But in this house, your dignity and value are not negotiable.”
• Refuse to use children as weapons against any outside parent – even the irresponsible one.

You cannot change that there are multiple fathers or mothers. You can change the justice and clarity with which you treat every child standing in front of you.

 

8. The Map Our Children Will Carry

Every child leaves the house carrying an invisible map:

• Where they felt equal or lesser,
• Where they were an island and where they were a family,
• What love looked like when last names, skin tones, and outside parents were different.

We cannot rewind history or cleanly erase the islands. But we can decide what story our children tell later:

• “My parents followed their feelings, and I paid the price,” or
• “Even with all the complexity, someone in that house fought for my dignity.”

Emancipation, freedom, and “I do what I want” will be judged not by how many adults feel temporarily happier, but by the quality of adults we release into the world from these broken or blended homes.

Our children are not extensions of our personal freedom. They are future nations, sitting tonight at our kitchen tables, quietly mapping the islands we create and the bridges we either build – or refuse to.