Blending families together in a new marriage can be tricky, period. Each parent must adjust to the other's children, and vice versa. New brothers and sisters present all sorts of new opportunities for wonderful experiences – and also for new rivalries, turf battles, and misunderstandings. Anticipating, and working through, these potential difficulties not only helps avoid the direct friction caused by the situation; it also helps reduce or eliminate consequential stress that indirectly affects relationships in the new family (such as, when one parent chafes at friction between that parent's children and the new parent – a consequence of the normal tension between feelings of parental protection, on the one hand, and commitment to the new love relationship, on the other).