If a step parent is a SAHP...

[PurfectlyCatish]

AIBU to ask your opinion?

Another thread inspired this but I'm interested in opinions as it may possibly be my situation at some point.

If a step parent was a SAHP, would you also expect them to be so for their step children when they were due to be at that parents home? I.e. school runs, holiday care etc...

YABU - the SAHP should do the care for all the children when they stay, step or not.

YANBU - the SAHP only has responsibility for their own DC and the parents of DSC should make their own arrangements for things like school and holidays.

@LolaSmiles his kids, his responsibility - always. They made the decision to have a child, so both OP and the father are responsible for their baby. However she is never responsible for his children - only he is. She was not told by the father that he could only cope with having a baby if she became a parent to all of his kids - so she did not enter into an agreement and then renege on it.

I help DH when I can. He helps me when he can. So if I was at home and he was at work and he had a child who needed picked up from somewhere or looked after or taken somewhere then I would do it because he couldn't do it himself and I could help him. If I didn't have that type of relationship with someone I wouldn't have DCs with them, I wouldn't marry them and I wouldn't be a SAHP whilst in a relationship with them. In fact I wouldn't bother being in a relationship with someone who didn't want to help me out when they could and I didn't want to help out when I could.

@Ratatattatpat that’s normal though isn’t it - and it is doing each other favours for each other’s kids. Giving all them a lift, making dinner for all. That is acceptance of children from a previous relationship.

However long term taking over of the parenting is a completely different scenario and quite a serious one - only to be taken on if ALL parties are happy - including ALL the children. Generally this isn’t the case because as we all know, ignoring that children have different parents and trying to pretend you are all on big happy one from the off is pitfall number 1 in blended families.

What you can't have is a step-parent doing all the parental jobs without the authority of a parent. That's the worst possible situation: only having authority to make decisions for some of the kids in your care. If the bioparents want a step parent to routinely look after their children in their absence, then the SP has to be treated as more than just a baby sitter.

@FlyingSoHigh it needs so many things to be in place to take over parenting -

• the most important is that the children are happy with this - most really aren’t and would find it a rejection and abandonment of one parent.
• only if all the children are going to be happy and thrive - is the question of giving the step parent authority - as you can give this all you want but if the step children reject it - it’s not going to work. And I’d say the default for most children over the age of 4 is to reject it. A ‘bit’ of parenting is going to be normal but long term parenting is a much bigger thing.

I won't ever be in this situation as...my DH wouldnt ask me to because he likes spending time with his daughter. He only has her half the week so he wouldn't palm off his half of parenting on me.

Same here. When my DP has his kids he wants to be around for them, he would never have them just to palm them off on me. To me, that's the actions of a man who wants 50/50 for CM reasons above anything else.

Not to mention my SCs wouldn't want to be with me for all of that time rather than their own mother or father anyway. As someone else has pointed out above, it's not just about what suits the adults, especially when children are that bit older, which these are.

Depends on the ages of the children and how long they have been a step parent to them. If I had married someone with children but I could now be a stay at home parent to mine I'd probably happily care for them while they were here and partner at work. However if I decided to go away and visit family with my children I'd expect the parents of my step children to make plans for their care and not change my own plans. If the step child lived in our household as their primary home then I would include them.

I'd imagine it would be easier to include small children growing up with this arrangement than older children/teens.

Surely that's between the step parent and their husband/wife. Obviously if the step parent is available to help it would seem weird to put the step child in say after school care or holiday club but it would probably come down to the individual family's logistics and wouldn't be something I would have an opinion on.

Rejoiningperson
I think this is the agree to disagree situation.

I think when any adult chooses to have a relationship with another adult who is a parent, they are accepting that the household includes the existing children. I don't care what the sexes are. If someone doesn't want to blend a family, don't go having children with someone who already has them.

People would rightly take a dim view of a step dad living with partner, their joint child and his step children saying he doesn't see why he should have to take them to football, or he doesn't see why he should do lunch for them all, or that he doesn't see why he should have his day with his child interrupted because of older stepchildren. He chose to enter into a relationship with a mother. He chose to have a baby with a woman who had children already. He doesn't get to run a 2 tier system in the household based on the fact his step children aren't his.

He would be reasonable say "actually DP, you need to sort the older ones out because I've made plans with our youngest today", but not to make it really clear that his step children are their mother's responsibility and he is only willing to help on his terms. If he gave up work to be with his baby, he doesn't get to say that he expects his wife to fund him to stay at home with his baby, but then continue to run an opt out on anything linked to his step children if he doesn't feel like it.

I do see where you are coming from @LolaSmiles and I guess the reason I am being a bit passionate in my response is that I have completely lived this scenario. I also spent a few years on the step parenting boards here on Mumsnet and overwhelming there is a huge expectation, always always of the step mum, to both be the person who carries the can for ‘blending’ and also who never interferes, never tries to even slightly parent, and bears this all with kindness and stays in the background.

Blended families where the (usually man) chucks his children in for the new step mum to look after are almost always a complete train wreck, even if, especially if the step mum agrees to this and tries to make it work. The families that seem to survive are the ones where the step mum is allowed to be realistic and say ‘this won’t work’ or ‘this will work’.

If you have a child with someone who already has children - then absolutely you have to respect that. You have to:

• give your step children the time and space to be with their father as they had before - you don’t shorten the time they have with him
• respect that the finances set up previous to your child will be separate will still hold
• respect that the children have a mother and a father, and if you try and become one the kids will (rightly) resent you and kick back. You don’t bad mouth either parent.
• respect that means that some of the time you will parent on your own with your child whilst the father spends some time with his kids.

The above is successful blending. And to be honest ‘blending’ has now become really out of vogue because it doesn’t work, most people won’t use it now and most ‘experts’ or specialist counsellors in this area would not advocate blending in the way that you suggest at all.

@Rejoiningperson I completely agree with the majority of what you have said above.

I think there are lots of things a step-parent inherently accepts when starting a relationship with someone with children, much of which you've said. They need to accept that the children will spend time in their home, that money will leave their household to support the older children, that they need to try and build a good relationship with these kids, and many other things in between.

But I completely agree with you that becoming a semi-third parent is not part of what can or should be expected, and is actually not what anyone wants except the parent who is relieving themselves of a few jobs.

I personally don't think that you can be asked to take responsibility for managing part of a child's life when you then don't have the authority to do it how you would actually want to if they were your own children. It is almost always the case that parents want the SP to help but only on their conditions. Like in OP's scenario, I would not want to be dragged into doing school runs for children who I believe should be getting the bus but don't because they are coddled by their parents. It's fine for their parents to make that choice but then they at least have to do the work themselves and not try and put it on their partner.

But I completely agree with you that becoming a semi-third parent is not part of what can or should be expected, and is actually not what anyone wants except the parent who is relieving themselves of a few jobs

Hear hear!!!

This should be pinned to the top of the step parenting board permanently.

Rejoiningperson
I do see where you are coming from.
I categorically think that it is wrong to expect the step mum to be picking up the slack from a man who can't be bothered with the day to day parenting of his own children. I also think step parents, especially step mums, sometimes get thrown into an unwinnable situations where they're expected to treat DSC like their own for the purposes of trips out, money and treats, but are meant to never tell their DSC to have manners because that is discipline and she should keep her nose out. Those sorts of expectations are wrong.

It's more straightforward in some respects if 2 adults have their own children and have no more together as the lines are clearer. It's adding new relationship babies that seem to add conflict.

My frustration comes from seeing situations where people get into relationships with someone who has a child, and then they have a baby and suddenly expect to want the household to run around them and the new baby without much consideration for existing children (eg. I want to he a SAHP so will remove my income from the household pot, I expect you to financially support me to stay home with our baby, but actually your children aren't my concern and I don't expect my time as a SAHP to have to factor your children in unless I volunteer to help). It muddies the waters too much for me and seems very much wanting cake and eating it too. If people don't want to account for step children as part of the family unit, find a childfree person to settle down with.

@LolaSmiles I so agree with you there. I’ve been a step mum but I’ve also been a step child. My father had a second family and basically replaced us, we were older teenagers at the time but we’ve not been treated like his children from that day on. Never been asked on a family holiday, never been included for Christmas, treated as if we are aunts or uncles. I completely blame my father, even though the step mum was quite excluding, it was my father’s responsibility to not let this happen, and we have a very strained relationship now.

I also had a step Dad, who did the opposite, practically wanted to adopt me as his own! But it was too much and too overbearing, he didn’t get to know me and wanted to be able to parent straight away without any attempt to give it time or build trust. However as adults we had a good relationship but as a teenager I completely rejected him, I had to really he was too domineering.

My own experience of step mum was way too optimistic. I wanted to not make the mistakes of my step parents/parents, so did everything possible to ‘do it right’. I had a child from a previous relationship also, and my child couldn’t wait to have step siblings. My step kids seemed to like me and it all seemed to be going well, until after I became a SAHM and was, without being asked, suddenly parent. This was because their mum was suddenly ‘busy’ and literally sent all the kids round all the time. It was massively confusing for my step kids, who felt rejected by their mum and dad. They took it out on me, and rejected me too. I tried to make it work, but it didn’t and tensions were really high. I felt unable to even voice my worries as I just got told I was stopping the kids from ‘being in their home’ by both parents. When I realised that my own child was suffering because it was a horrible atmosphere, I said I’m moving out or we get a stable schedule for the step kids to be with their own parents, because that is what they want. Phew... never doing that again.

@LolaSmiles

Is absolutely on the money. If you want to be a SAHM, but only to children who are biologically yours, then you don’t enter into a relationship with a man who already has existing children.

I’m not surprised that step mothers get a bad rap, reading some of the attitudes on this thread; particularly from funinthesun19 who sounds absolutely vile in the way she behaves towards her step children.

When I was younger, I was in a relationship with a guy who already had a little boy. I never met him, but when things looked like they might get serious, I made the decision to walk away. Ultimately, I didn’t want to have any responsibility to/for the child at that point in my life, so I ended the relationship with his father.

We hear time and again that mothers and their children ‘come as a package’. Many on here seem to want to conveniently forget that this applies to fathers too. If you can’t/won’t fully accept your partners existing children and want a 2-tier household, then do the decent thing and walk away instead of fucking the kids up, all of whom are absolutely blameless in the situation.

So many adults seem to prioritise their own wants and feelings above the helpless children in these scenarios. You can try to add as many ifs and buts as you want, but this is what it boils down to in the end.

YANBU - this is my situation and I personally don't (used too) partners children when he isn't here.

I

@FloconDeNeige I think you’re being a little out of order singling out a particular poster.
There are plenty on this thread who have voiced similar to how fun feels.

Are you/ have you ever been a step parent? Or in a LTR with someone who has children?
I have and I’ll say this much, until you’ve been in those shoes, you have no idea what the dynamics are like. Or how pressurised these situations are.

I have a degree of empathy with the poster but as you may have seen (if you’ve RTFT), I was the primary earner in my last relationship, he would have happily had an ‘our’ baby. And when I clearly stated that if I went that route, he would need to be the hands on / school run/ holidays/ inset days parent, he was quite happy at taking that role. In return for my supporting him financially. However part of that role also would have included him helping with my children when it was needed. There was no way I would be supporting another adult and another child and then being told my kids are for me to sort out.

Now I never ended up going that route as I knew that scenario wouldn’t work for any of the existing children. But I had the convo up front and I am of the opinion in this situation, as the WOHM side of the couple, I would find it galling to then be told, ‘pay more for your own kids.’

That’s my opinion, but I don’t expect to be singled out for voicing it on this board. I’ve looked back through the thread and I don’t see anything that fun has posted that warrants you singling them out. So don’t pick on particular posters, it’s not cricket.

You are one family unit. Your partner is working to support his whole family unit regardless of the individual family members within . I would think it fair that you play a part supporting the whole family unit too. If your partner cannot provide before and after school care personally and you cannot either despite not working then he will have to finance that . Surly that means less support for you and the child/ children you have together.
I’m wondering if you are pregnant and wondering how to juggle wrap around care with a new baby ? You have to make the same arrangements that you would naturally make regardless of children being step or not . That’s just family life. Family rules are not the same as work life rules.

Me again. I’ve read all your posts now.
Absolutely agree with you that if you contribute your time to parent the DSC you get a say in how you contribute. If DH wants to spend the extra effort on breakfast and school runs that’s fine, if you want to organise it differently when you are in charge, that’s fine.

@sassbott

I singled that poster out for this comment she made;

*And as for club runs, it’s an absolute pain in the arse dragging all of my own children on the bus to swimming lessons, juggling a toddler who doesn’t want to do as they’re told. Every Saturday morning we do this, and it’s quite exhausting.
But I do it because I’m their mum and they enjoy it. And as a mum it’s rewarding to see them progress and do so well. So I know it isn’t time wasted, no matter how difficult it can be at times.
I have also hung about after school for an hour with my bored children while one of them does football club/maths club/karate club after school.

I absolutely wouldn’t do all of that with clubs like that for a stepchild. And when I was a stepparent I never did.*

It’s such an unpleasant attitude to have towards children. If that is how you feel about step kids - that watching them progress is simply a waste of your time - then you should not be entering into a relationship with their father, and certainly not reproducing with him.

But otherwise sassbott, I agree with you.

I certainly wouldn’t expect to financially support an able-bodied adult and also be told by them that they’re not going to be inconvenienced by my existing children! It’s well into CF territory.

@funinthesun19
I also think there was absolutely nothing in these posts that was in anyway offensive.

I feel very strongly that SP can be utterly thankless.

Why should a SP want to take on a role that involves a ridiculous degree of fussying like making breakfast for children well able or lifts for a school in easy walking distance on a dry day.

Having to follow the instructions of the parent on what you do without allowed any opinion?

No thank you.

Sounds like au pair work to me.
I would be very slow to sign up for it.

Imagine having to get dressed to drop a teen to school because you were told they had to have a lift and the school close enough to walk?

Nope.

The OP's life sounds like it would be employer/employee.

Start as she means to go.

The actually parent can choose to do the lifts.

My husband would drop my children into the reception area of a school🙄. I dropped 5 minutes walk away as it suited ME better for traffic.
HIS choice.
MY choice.

@FloconDeNeige tbh I don’t see anything wrong in that post. I used to go to school plays/ nativities / assemblies when mine had them. Boring as hell. Some parents looked like they thrived in them. Me? Not so much.

Would I have sat through them for my partners children? Not a chance. Barely tolerated my own, why would I tolerate nativities for children that are not mine? Did that make me a bad partner? I don’t think so. The children had two parents and they attended.

Each of us have our limits. It doesn’t make us vile. (and if the above makes some people think I’m vile, I really won’t lose much sleep over it).

Ultimately a lot depends on how couples can communicate about these situations. How much the two adults are a team. And how much someone feels ‘pressurised’ into doing something vs. It being a choice.

The reality is that very few people will feel the way about their SC that they feel about their own. And the barely tolerable things they tolerate for their own children will become intolerable when doing it for someone else’s children/ under duress.

I don’t think that makes someone vile. It does however (potentially) cause significant friction points between the two adults. And it’s for them to work out. No one family is the same.

I often wonder why parents of step children are never expected to sort their own children out like everyone else. These SC have two parents, surely they can sort club runs and the rest between themselves.

There also seems to be a lot of talking about wanting your cake and eat it too as if OP has demanded to be a SAHP. I imagine, as in most cases, it's been discussed and agreed with her husband not just demanded of him. It's not a favour, he is also benefitting by having someone there to look after his youngest child.

All this talk of financing able bodied adults to sit on their arse as if she's not doing something already to contribute to the family. I'm sure the husband would find it a lot harder if he had to also sort looking after his pre school young child.

I'll remember how little posters here think of SAHMs though next time I see s thread on the relationships board when posters are harping on about how he only has his career now because of you etc... Apparently that's not true now.

I agree that most people probably won’t have the same depth of feeling for step-children as their own children; at least not in the early stages anyway.

But the problem with that is, if it results in children being differently treated and prioritised, then it really isn’t acceptable. The children have no choice in the situation; they cannot decide that they are being unfairly treated and walk away. They are trapped and it is therefore incumbent upon the adults around them to do the best they can, even if it means some hardship and self-sacrifice on their own part. And if they don’t like this or aren’t willing, they can choose to leave and simply not get involved with someone who already has existing children in the first place.