am I being unreasonable to think she's an absolute ****

[ooominn]

This happened yesterday but I'm still so angry about it.

I asked my ex about a week ago if he was alright with me going to work Sunday night as overtime (not usually his night with the kids but he said it was fine). We don't speak much unless about the kids (7&9) so hadn't really said anything else about it.

Came to drop them off on the way last night and he wasn't in. Tried ringing he wasn't answering then got some rushed reply saying he was at work and he'd forgotten and that I should have reminded him.

His wife's car was on the drive and the lights were on so tried knocking and ringing her, firstly she pretended to not hear the door or miraculously any of our calls and then when I finally got hold of her she said ex hadn't mentioned anything and refused to have them.

I had to go home in the end and cancel my shift at short notice fucking over my boss and colleagues.

I'm so annoyed though and want to message her asking what kind of step mother would refuse to let her stepkids in when they were on the door step. My ex is a POS too in this situation I know but seriously why wouldn't you just agree to let them in for the night considering it was her husband who fucked up??

WIBU to message her? AIBU to be mad? Or is it just nothing to do with her as she said last night.

My ex said afterwards she was tired lol.

Who the fuck does the SM think she is to refuse those kids entry to their own home just because their 'D'F isn't there? They might only live there part time but it's supposed to be their other home.

Sorry but in real life most children live with mum and visit Dad. I doubt many of them consider themselves to have 2 homes. Different with 50/50, obviously, but not with EOW or similar.

Why didn't your partner look after them then? Why expect your ex's wife to have them if your own partner won't?

YANBU, if she didnt want to deal with other people's kids, she shouldn't have married a man with children. Her home is also her step childrens home, and they can go there whenever they want. If she can't deal with them now, she should leave because I doubt she'll be able to deal with them having their own keys, and coming and going as they please, like most other step kids do when they get to their teenage years.

Nope, not anymore. Kids whose parents aren't together are encouraged to see both of their parents homes as their homes as well. Legally and morally the step mum is a twat.

How can you be legally a twat?

Couldn’t agree with this more.

such a sad situation all this “not my problem”. No thought for the children or any kindness etc.

In reality, children say they are going to their dad’s.

Legally, the stepmother is the one with her name is on the deeds/rental contract, and she’s not obliged by any law to accept responsibility for children because their mother dropped them off to ‘their’ home.

morally, it’s a matter of opinion. Evidently.

I agree. Disgusting way to treat her partner’s children. I would beworried about how she treats them at other times.

So once dad moves out he’s not responsible for giving those kids a home? Giving them a home will rely from now on on mom only?

FFS.

Unsure if this has been asked, but why couldn't dad come home from work to take kids? Why didn't he say, "Shit - I totally forgot. I'll come home straight away and call (SM) to advise. So sorry!"??? 🤷‍♀️
(I still think he owes OP for lost wages, byw)

This is so disengenuous. These kids are too young to be anywhere without someone being responsible for them. OP didn’t take them to the SM because the building is their home. She took them there because the SM was there and OP wanted her to babysit the kids while she went to work.

Morally and legally, it is right to stop someone from leaving young kids somewhere that no one is prepared to be responsible for them.

The use of ‘home’ here is largely meaningless. It’s just moralising nonsense.

Both parents have to house the children - during their contact time. Financial arrangements after separation will often prioritise their mother in this regard because her house will be where they are most of the time.

But ‘it’s their home’ is just an emotionally laden stick to try to beat people with. And can actually have crap consequences for the children. Two ‘homes’ turns out to be mum’s house and dad’s house - and the children themselves can’t ever say they’re ‘going home’ because the idea that ‘home’ is really the house they live in the majority of the time upset the adults who are emotionally triggered by the idea that their children no longer really live with them.

if ‘home’ is so vital to them feeling welcome and loved, then it’s a pretty difficult and diminished concept for many children post-divorce. It may be much healthier for them to feel one house is home (and to be able to say ‘I’m going home tomorrow’, even to the parent whose house they visit regularly) than to feel it’s only ever switching between their parents’ houses. Or to have to manage their parents’ feelings over the hugely moralised term ‘home’.

In either case, though, they are children and need adult supervision. So they have no automatic right to be in either house without someone looking after them. If their parent is not available, then they need to arrange a willing babysitter. That’s true of all ‘homes’ for children. The focus on ‘denying them entry to their home’ is disingenuous. It deliberately shifts the focus from their mother’s demand for childcare from someone else, and does so by pretending that person is morally inferior and emotionally abusive to the children by not just being childcare on demand.

Not one of those posters seems in any way interested in how the children’s parents’ actions are the driving force for any negotiable feelings they may have. Dad forgot about them and mum created the doorstep struggle to force his wife to take them. The fact that their mother was the one who put them on the doorstep (and was with them) is enormously significant to the whole situation. Was she not also ‘denying them entry to their home’ (her own home) by taking them to their dad’s house and making a big scene because she wanted to leave them there. That she made the scene on that doorstep doesn’t change the fact that she didn’t want them to be in her house (for the utterly sensible reason that there’d be no one to look after them as she was going to work).

@SudocremOnEverything that was a long post postulating the meaning of home just to end up disingenuously blaming mum (OP). OP didn't make a scene on the doorstep. If you RTFT, you'd have known that.

OP did nothing wrong. Her ex is a bit shit, forgetting he was supposed to be home to care for his DCs like that. And then not driving home immediately to do so! Ex-s wife was a bit weird and unhelpful to "hide" in the house pretending she wasn't home, to not take the DCs - but as others say, she may have had her reasons.

Given this experience, I wouldn't blame OP for being less flexible or helpful to the ex next time he wants to change contact so he can work/ go out.

Nothing OP did was wrong in the slightest.

I fundamentally disagree.

a great deal the OP did was wrong. Her ex let her down. He’s behaved terribly. That’s undeniable.

But after that point, she harassed another woman who she wanted to babysit. Repeatedly ringing and knocking til she had to be told no. With her children involved.

Then she came on MN to be hideous about her ex’s wife.

To be fair, OP was knocking on the door because the Ex had offered up SM’s time without her agreement (which OP wasn’t to know when she went round).

OP’s rant about the SM is totally unreasonable, but the person who is at fault in the incident itself is the Ex, who seems to be getting far too little blame.

She doesn’t actually say the useless ex offered his wife’s time. Just that he said he forgot and blamed her for not reminding him. That was a dick move. The man was totally in the wrong.

In her account, she noticed his wife was in so she decided to keep calling her and phoning until she answered the door and had to tell her that she knew nothing about it and wasn’t babysitting. At that point the OP took the children home.

Then evidently the OP called her useless ex again and complained about his wife. Or possibly texted him. She wasn’t happy with his explanation that his wife was tired.

Then she took to MN. That post is mostly about how awful the wife is and how she wants to message her to have a go.

If she’d simply posted about what an utter shit her ex was, it would have been entirely fair. But she invited all the vitriol against stepmothers instead. And, in doing so, the useless father that caused the problem got a bit lost. As men’s actions do often do.

In so many of these type of threads, right at the root of everything is a man not pulling his weight.

But that doesn’t make the way the OP treated his wife OK. Or all the vitriol towards her on this thread.

I think you need to read the thread. Nothing indicates ex offered up SM’s time. He told OP he’s at work and she should have reminded him. At that point OP should have gone straight back home, not harass SM with ringing, knocking and calls to the extent she was forced to talk to OP.

Ex has been getting far too little blame on this thread because the vocal minority want to demonise the SM instead.

I can't believe this thread is still going and hasn't been pulled. Some people have been utterly nasty.

That’s because step mum trolling is acceptable on Mumsnet! Disgusting.

Maybe in your world but we do 50/50. Court started at that point and we stayed there. But also we help each other out and put kids first always. Now, four years in both couples are good mates. Share football, tennis etc pick ups and watching practice. At my daughter's training they thought she had two dads and they were a couple because they alternate it. 🤣Because they both want to to support her ...

@youlightupmyday - I did say in my post that 50/50 was different

MNHQ are obviously fine with the level of vitriol towards stepmothers. And the general misogyny. They’ve definitely looked at the thread. So they must have decided this is entirely in the spirit of MN.

That is the most depressing thing about the thread. Not that some women don’t see themselves as their husband’s childcare, troubleshooting, and other assorted wife work department - and by extension his ex’s. As usual, when a man messes up, it’s the woman who didn’t smooth it over and fix it who is most to blame. Even by another woman who surely knows fine well how unreliable he is.

The more everyone - including the exW who has been let down - insist ok shifting the blame to the closest woman in a man’s life, the less incentive is there for men to step up and pull their weight. You see this all over MN, women who take the view that their partners should do the actual work of looking after their children (rather than making an outward display of what an involved father he is but subcontracting it to his partner or wife) are vilified for having boundaries. It’s so easy to decide woman is awful and play the ‘poor kids’ card when, actually, the problem is a father letting them down - it’s just that the woman isn’t brushing it under the carpet.

There have been so many comments about the step mother leaving the step children on the doorstep - but the children were on the doorstep with their mother, which is a very different thing to unaccompanied children being on the doorstep. And I still don't understand why the OP pursued the step mother for childcare?

Thanks for your posts @SudocremOnEverything, you have eloquently expressed my exact thoughts. The misogyny on this thread and the determination to blame the SM, with barely a mention of the authors of the cock up (OP and her ex) is very telling and pretty grim. There’s a lot of projection and SM hatred going on as posters show their contempt.