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Lino, Stine and Nele are siblings – but they all have different fathers. Are they still a "family"? Are they merely people who happen to be living together, but may soon be going their separate ways? And what about Marie and her full brother, who have to draw a family tree in order to understand the complicated family relationships with their biological parents, several step-parents and five half-siblings? But they say of themselves: "Actually we all love one another."

Families like those of Lino and Marie are quite common. In Germany, these so-called "patchwork families" make up 15% of all families, and the number is growing.

The Christian churches are still geared to the traditional image of the family, in which father, mother, and their joint children live together. But the protestant church also wants to open itself up to those who enter into new relationships following a divorce. The Rev. Viola Türk, a parish minister in the Spandau district of Berlin – Lino goes to her confirmation classes – is clear that she is more interested in these people than in traditional ideas about what families are like. It is a mistake, she says, to make the ideal the norm and to regard everyone else as failures.

In this episode, Otto Wynen takes us to the heart of Lino’s patchwork family. We meet the unusually large family in which Marie is growing up. She has many parents and even more brothers and sisters. But she is happy to be living with so many people, because she always has someone to talk to.

In Focus documentaries and reports cover business and science, culture and education, historical and present day events as well as sports and leisure. This wide variety of topics is investigated in depth and presented in an informative format, making for captivating television, courtesy of Germany's Deutsche Welle news network.