Your Mine Ours is about a blended family. The term slips off the tongue so easily. To blend sounds like something that is seamlessly achieved, but as anyone who has experience of a blended family knows, this is never the case.

With divorce, separation and single parent families on the rise, I wanted to explore the real, raw realities of making two families one.

As adults we wouldn’t dream of moving in with complete strangers and sharing everything with them – bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, holidays, finances, love, rules, curfews…the list is endless. And yet, we expect our children to do it if we decided to blend our family with another.

Over 70% of couples that come together with children from previous relationships, fail. It’s not hard to see why.

Everyone parents differently. Have you ever gone away with friends and their kids? We all have different ideas and rules around meals, discipline, screen time, bedtime, freedom, behaviour… the list is endless.

Now imagine your child being told what to do by a man or women who is not their parent. How are they going to react? How is your partner’s child or children going to react to you telling them what time to go to bed at or what to eat and when.

Throwing two families together is always going to be chaotic, difficult, challenging and at times impossibly trying.

The question I am so interested in is – Do parents get to fall in love when that love means forcing their children into a new family? Why do your children have to upend their lives because you have fallen in love? What happens if they hate your new partner? What happens if you can’t stand your new partners kids?

Can love really conquer all?