It's a niche -- true -- but a large niche, considering how many people out there are remarried or are thinking of finding another mate, Bisacre said. She commissioned a study that determined that 103 million people in the U.S. match that description. About half of all marriages in the U.S. will end in divorce, said Andrew J. Cherlin, a sociology professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Second marriages are less likely to succeed than first ones, he said. A government study showed that among women ages 18 to 44, 39 percent of remarriages dissolve in 10 years.
In other words: A remarriage magazine is not such a bad idea.
"Considering how common stepfamilies are, the media images are limited," said Norman Epstein, director of the marriage and family therapy program at the University of Maryland, College Park. "There isn't much out there to give people some sensitivity to the dynamics that go on."
Elizabeth Einstein, a New York-based marriage and family therapist who has written four books on the topic of stepfamilies, hasn't seen the magazine, but gushed when she heard about it.
"I think it's a great idea," she said. "My heavens, people need this information desperately."
After Helene Penn Dorf met Bisacre at a reception, she said she read a copy of the magazine from cover to cover. "I think it answered a lot of questions that people think about and don't know where to go for the answers," said Dorf, 72, who was widowed for 10 years before remarrying in February. With grown children, Dorf said she feels in a different category than some second-time newlyweds, but was still intrigued by articles about finances and kids and wedding wear.
Many of the ideas for the magazine come straight out of Bisacre's family files. When she met Michael Bisacre at work in early 2002, she was divorced with two children and he was widowed with three. At the time, he was a lieutenant colonel in the Army; she worked for the Department of Defense. They married and merged their households of dogs and children, now ages 22, 20, 16, 15 and 11.
Then came the hard part.
Vacation planning, the Bisacres quickly realized, could be touchy when her kids were used to beach trips and his to ski trips. Bisacre agonized over how to deal with the Christmas keepsakes that had belonged to her husband's first wife. Household chores and food and college costs all became fodder for "tense discussions."
