in my opinion women are generally not cut out to be step parents. And I say women rather than people because as a general rule women give birth to their own children so it stands to reason that a woman is going to bond differently towards a child she has given birth to than with one she hasn’t, whereas men don’t give birth to any of their children,added to which because a woman has a different relationship with her own children she is less likely to tolerate a man in her life who doesn’t accept her children, whereas men tend to put the woman first and the children second, especially if the children only come for access weekends rather than living their full-time as the woman’s children often do.
You only have to look at the number of fathers who walk away from their biological children vs the number of mothers who do the same to see that although it of course goes without saying that biological fathers do love and bond with their children, that bond is clearly more easily broken than that of a mother.
The thing is that many don’t realise how difficult step parenting is until they’ve been there, and by then it’s too late. But I know that when I split from my ex my initial thought was that I would only want to be in a relationship with someone who had children because only someone who was a parent would understand what it’s like to be a parent. However I ended up in a relationship with someone who doesn’t have children and I am now glad that that is the case, because having seen first-hand what happens when a child is brought into a relationship with other children plus step parents plus biological children further down the line it is more often than not a recipe for disaster, because no-one really considers the thoughts and feelings of the children in all of it when you have some part-time children, some full-time children, and are still expecting them all to be accepting of each other, the new situation and the step parents.
And more often than not it is the children who bear the brunt of the frustrations. And more often than not the ex gets the blame for everything even if the new partner hasn’t witnessed it first hand.
And the advice towards stepmothers and stepdads differs so widely.
Stepmother posts that she hasn’t been accepted by the DSC and she is told to distance herself, have nothing to do with them and let him parent his own children. Woman posts that her children won’t accept her partner and she is told to put her children first and bin the partner.
And the comments on that other thread are shockingly vile, down to one who has told the OP that he is only “playing daddy to someone else’s children” and is being unreasonable.
I do wonder what the children of today will think when they are adults and can speak more freely about the numbers of blended families etc and the impact that has had on them and on society.
someone linked to some research recently which suggested that blended families are in fact bad for children and I do wonder whether some of this will be born out in years to come.