Why do SMs seem to struggle much more than SDs?

[Laneyy]

I've seen this quite a lot on MN and in real life. SMs struggling with non RP SCs visiting/staying they might come stay EOW or a couple of nights a week. SDs don't seem to complain as much and the SC are resident so there the vast bulk of the time. They do school pick ups, drop offs. What's the cause of it? Is it biological jealousy? Unable to bond , different pressures ?

Well as OP is working on anecdotes…
In my house, I do almost everything for my children, and my second husband does nothing. I don’t want him to parent them. He’s a benign presence, but like an uncle. He’s not here to parent.

Now take their other house… and they tell me that it’s stepmother who does everything for them. I can well believe it, having been married to her husband myself!

Now in our case there’s no

Posted too soon!

No issues or resentment.
But as we’re trading in anecdotes, I’d say we’re the extreme end of only the women managing the children. But, among my friends, it’s a similar direction - women do a disproportionate amount of parenting both as mothers and stepmothers.

I'm a step parent, we have vast differences in parenting styles. It's caused quite a clash at times. He's just laid-back with his girls, a loose routine. I like a strict routine.
Hence the clash, he does take on some of what I say, he just ignored the rest.

I would wonder if they tend to represent a different demographic group.

I was girlfriend to a divorced man with two adult stepdaughters in their 20s. The mum had had an affair with his best friend, to the point where she was booking holidays abroad with this man and passing them off as week long work conferences. They split up after he found texts from the other man on her phone which she'd accidentally left at home whilst working a night shift (or was it a night shift? Who knows!).

The whole family, including daughters, disowned her for a while but that all changed when I started dating him four years later. His first girlfriend after divorce. Almost immediately, the two daughters struck up a fierce loyalty bond to their mum, all was forgiven and the younger daughter who was living with dad, started being extremely rude and aggressive towards me. Lots of passive aggressive backhanders and social media posts making snide comments about me indirectly.

Also, the mum was still sending texts to him signed off with kisses and still calling him by his marital nickname. I saw this as a red line.
I managed two years but their jealous behaviour towards me escalated until, for his 50th birthday, the younger daughter secretly invited her mother to the party I'd arranged.

I walked out and put a full stop to it all.

Younger daughter then encouraged him to go on Tinder and find a replacement. Three months later, blonde thing appears.

In this case, it wasn't jealousy on my part. It was all theirs. I called out what I saw as unreasonable behaviour and my partner did zero to manage it.

I still can't quite get over the mum's behaviour after she was that deceitful.

I think most SDs go into it with open eyes. Because kids are usually resident with the mum, right from the start of dating the relationship is impacted by the children. Whereas the SMs I know were generally able to have a “normal” early part of the relationship, and the impact from kids comes later on when they’re already attached to their partner and less likely to end things.

Being resident step-parent also has advantages - the actual parent is less likely to take a Disney approach, for instance.

Then there’s the sex differences in expectations. As a rule of thumb, mums and step mums are expected to do more unpaid childcare / housework etc than dads and step dads.

None of these are true for all couples / families, of course. I’ve known some amazing step mums and some shockingly bad step dads.

I think it's biological. it's certainly most certainly not of course, there's some other explanation. But in my 40 years and all I've seen I do believe mothers have a different type of bond with children, a different type of nurturing ability and inclination.

No, I have nothing robust to debate with, but it's what I think. I feel it, see it, hear about it, read about it, and believe in evolutionary biology. Think hunger gatherer and the fact they are in our womb and need us to feed them (biologically of course, not socially) until up to age 7.

Men can easily see their kids every weekend, I don't know a woman who would be okay with that, in fact it would devastate her to her core.

We're different. Men and women are different. I said it, I mean it, I stand by it.

*hunter gatherer