Friday, November 9, 2012

Starting the Revolution

My fiancé glared at me, and if looks could kill I would have been flat on the floor.

“I told you to hold her down.” He wanted me to grab his shrieking, kicking daughter and pin her to the carpet so he could force a dose of medicine into her mouth.

My heart raced. Between her screaming and his yelling, I was overwhelmed by the both of them. I put a hand on her arm and then whipped it back. “But the stepparenting books say I’m not supposed to do that kind of thing!” It felt like the thousandth time I’d said it.

He rolled his eyes. “The books,” he said gritting his teeth, “are bullshit.”

I tentatively took hold of her, and only by working as a team were we finally able to get the medicine through her pursed lips. Later that day, after several cups of tea and lengthy reflection, I decided to abandon most conventional stepparenting advice.

I came into my stepdaughter’s life just after her second birthday. I spent the next two and a half years reading everything I could about what I was supposed to do and not do as a stepmother. By the time she’d reached four and half, I was emotionally drained, exhausted, and at my wits’ end. I felt betrayed by all of the step-parenting “experts” I’d consulted. Most of their advice was either impractical, didn’t apply to us (my stepdaughter being very young), or just plain didn’t work.

More than that, much of the advice I read seemed to emphasize, either blatantly or subtly, the need for stepmothers to accept an unreasonable amount of disrespect, inflexibility, and poor behavior by their stepchildren and partner because these things “just come with the territory.” One book I read seemed to suggest that it’s a stepmother’s duty to accept this kind of treatment because she is the one disrupting her stepchildren’s lives.

According that author, once a woman becomes a stepmother she should accommodate her life to her stepchildren’s because “the children have been raised with a family pattern, and it’s not fair to them if they suddenly have to change [their lives] . . . it would be complicated for the stepchildren and this would present them with an opportunity to resent you—the reason for the change.”* Later in this same book the author remphasizes that, "The other members of your family have a previous history and their routines need to be modified to include another person. Sometimes you may feel awkward because you are the reason for all the adjustment and change.”**

When, in reality, the real reason that children’s lives change is because their parents get divorced--stepmothers just come later. But I digress.

Desperate for more information, I started lurking on Internet posting boards like iVillage.com and Step Talk.com. I was surprised—at first—to see that so many other people were experiencing the same problems that I was. I kept seeing people write “the books say . . . but.”

But.

With so many hundred of thousands of people entering into stepfamilies every year, I thought, why isn’t there better advice available to stepmothers? Why are there so many unhappy, frustrated stepmothers?

I decided to start researching stepparenting and stepfamily advice more seriously. I've set up this blog to discuss my research, talk about my experiences, and share strategies that hopefully other women like myself can use in their everyday lives. My goal is to focus not necessarily on how to be a "good stepmother" but how to be a happier, more contented, or at least less frustrated one by rethinking and reshaping the role.




* From 7 Steps to Bonding with Your Stepchild by Suzen J. Ziegahan, page 54.
** " page 96.

4 comments:

  1. I am a bio-parent, and I disagree that the step-parent should shut up and do what they're told by the bio-parents.
    My ex and I have a volatile relationship that we keep as calm as we can for communicating about our son (5 1/2). He has been seeing his current partner since about a month after I left him (not an issue in itself).
    She and I have tried to "get along" for the sake of better communication. To begin with, her partner (my ex) was useless... he wouldn't tell her things because it was "none of her business", which meant that basic communication was happening better through her and I. As he began to communicate better with her, she and I bickered and fought a LOT.
    She crossed lines - she would ask me for relationship advice, and how-to deal with certain parts of my ex. I flat-out told her "I couldn't deal, that's why I left." I would stupidly tell her what did and didn't work for ME, and got sucked into the personal life of her... she would then bitch to her friends about how I wouldn't stop "sticking my nose into her relationship"..

    These days we talk as little as possible. I'm relying a LOT on my ex, who sucks at communicating, but it's the better option.
    I wish we could all get along for the simple sake of ease of communication, but at this point I don't see it happening.

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    1. I think that step-parents need to share their opinions. They can't be expected to "smack" a child if it goes against what they believe. They shouldn't have to put up with kids' bad attitudes toward them. YES, the step-kids are struggling to find boundaries, but if there ARE no boundaries then the attitudes will never improve.

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  2. That was just the beginning! When we introduced our daughters things were normal. Parenting

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  3. Thank you for your blog. I love the fact that you can see- most of the "advice" you can find when you are googling is absolutely useless, sometimes even contra productive to build a child friendly family with step children without loosing your mind or your self dignity or your self-awareness (cognitive dissonance as you are mentioning later) or all of those.
    Approximately 2 years in building our blended family and feeling that I am just about to loose my mind, I complained to my partner and to my therapist that its impossible to live by those guidelines that "the good co-parenting rulebooks" are setting for blended families. Both my partner and my therapist pointed out the obvious truth: "Check who is writing those guidelines? Divorced bio-mums! Do you really expecting that their advice is written to help YOU or to help them to stay in control of their after divorce co-parenting??"
    After that eye-opening discovery I deleted all the web pages I was following and started to follow my gut instead.
    We have now a happy blended family 4years and counting. We don't follow any of those books and you know what? Our children are happy, we are happy and our extended families are recovering from stress at last.
    Trust yourself, have empathy and make your loved ones priority and everything just works out.

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