Which of the following are three ways children can contribute to the dissolution of remarriages?

• A. Personal adjustment, discipline problems, and disruptive behavior
• B. Disruptive behavior, intergenerational communication, and personal adjustment
• C. Discipline problems, repressed sexuality, and substitution
• D. Psychic remarriage, sibling rivalry, and interpersonal inadequacies

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is how a child’s responses to a blended family can strain a remarriage. When kids struggle to adjust to a new family structure, their behavior and the way the family handles discipline can directly affect the couple’s relationship and the marriage’s stability.

Personal adjustment captures how well a child emotionally adapts to stepparents, new siblings, and new routines. If that adjustment is difficult, tension and strain spill into the couple’s relationship, making harmony harder to maintain.

Discipline problems matter because blended families often juggle different parenting styles and rules from two households. Inconsistent boundaries or conflicts over discipline can erode trust and cooperation between partners, contributing to marital strain.

Disruptive behavior is the acting-out or persistent misbehavior that disrupts daily life and highlights unresolved tensions in the family system. When such behavior is frequent, it becomes a shared stressor for the couple, increasing the likelihood the remarriage faces serious challenges.

Other options mix in factors that aren’t as directly about the child’s contribution to the remarriage’s dissolution, such as broader communication patterns or terms that aren’t typically used to describe child-driven risks in this context.