AIBU to think there is rarely anything good about being a step parent?

[PorkyPINE1]

From reading here and my own experience, I am yet to really be able to name any upside to having stepchildren. Aside from obviously being with the man I want to be with, I feel like there isn't anything I can name about being a step parent that isn't hard work / a compromise / a positive experience.

Not looking for sympathy by the way, I obviously chose this situation. Just pondering after a read on here this morning!

Absolutely sinister that someone like @oodlesofpotnoodles can feel this way about a young boy and give him hugs and act in a maternal way. I would think someone like that must be a psychopath.

@oodlesofpotnoodles how can you say something like that about him when you have to look at him and see him. And he has no clue you feel like this. Do you feel no guilt. Just put on an act. Absolutely sick.

Did you really need to say the same thing 3 times across 3 posts in a row?

Seriously? I will post as much as I like. This thread is sick and evil.

@AndIKnewYouMeantIt Have a go at the psychopaths boasting about using kids as human shields

One positive is not having to birth them yourself?

Step kids were a challenge for my relationship. Because I was expected to mother them without and decision making power. I parent very differently to how their mother does. In the end I stepped back because it was too stressful for me to see them being failed and have no power to help. Many many rows with their dad over how he was failing them.

I think now he got with me for the free childcare and the housekeeper. He was a good man on the face of it but ultimately he was lazy. I regret very much having a child with him as just how lazy and self absorbed he is didn't come out till the baby was well on the way.

My kids from previous relationship didn't exactly suffer but as they were mine it never occurred to me I did all the work with them. I guess his laziness made the split easy for them.

My kids have a step mum. She was absolutely amazing and I can't fault her. But now she has her own baby and she's less involved. My kids have noticed that for sure.

I now would never be a step parent to young children again. Teens and older only. Or possibly a widower

My experience has been the same.
The first couple of years were tough with a young teen but over the years we've become very close.
He's married now and in his late 30's and recently told me that he wished that I'd met his dad 10 years earlier. His mother died before he started school.
I grew up with a step mother who was physically and emotionally abusive so badly that I was taken into care at 9 years old.

Poor kids. Why shouldn’t they get anything from their father?

Do you think there is an argument that it's "easier" when the other biological parent / ex isn't around? Not to say losing his mum is easy of course and I'm sure it comes with it's own unique challenges but I imagined you can become a lot more parent - like with no other mother around?

My husbands ex would hate it if I did anything motherly with them and has outright said before that 'they are her children' if I've tried to be closer to them so 🤷‍♀️

They aren't her children that should say

Because one of them is a drug addict & the other has been in & out of prison 8 times in last 3 years

Parenting children can be thankless at times no matter how those children are related to you.

BUT children had no choice in any of the situations they are in. Stepchildren have likely experienced breavement or divorce. They aren't always going to be in the best place mentally and may act out or be difficult to be around. Would be step parents should take that into account before they marry someone with children.

And children are more perceptive than a lot of you give them credit for being. They know if you don't like them.

I know of a situation where it’s been truly wonderful for all involved, albeit with a bit of a rocky start. The DS became incredibly close to their stepmother, likely all the more so because they had v a difficult relationship with their mother. Now they’re adults and there’s a wonderful blended family, along with step grandchildren, that has been strong for 30 years. So it’s not all doom and gloom, but I imagine not the easiest to navigate in the early days.

I think cold fish is putting it politely. What the fuck is wrong with you? I’m amazed you’ve managed to find someone who wanted to have kids with you. My god. What a monster you are. This is one of the worst posts I’ve ever seen on MN, which is some going. Poor child.

There is something really creepy about all these “I’d step over my step child to rescue my child” or “I’d use my sc as a human shield” followed by a smug “its human nature!” And “there’ve been studies done.” Its so performative and fake and worse it is like being asked to watch someone performing their kink and getting off on forcing you to view it.

Children do die in fires. Children do die of neglect. Children do die of favoritism. These are not metaphors or free subjects for fantasy/cosplay by poseur tough bitchez on mumsnet. That is the reality of life and death.

Here is a little clue for all y’all fake tough supermom’s—you wouldn’t save anyone in a fire other than yourself. You would use everyone as a human shield just to save yourself. As a species we are as hard wired for altruism as for selfishness and where we fail and subside to the mere animal side of our nature we have morality and community and generosity to help us make a more ethical choice.
Di you brag that you and your genes are all that matter to you snd you would step over a toddler who you were not related to to get to a teenager who you were? Would you use a pregnant mother as a shield for your adult child in a terrorist attack?

Fuck off with your bad self! You have no idea of the choices people have made historically-are forced by fate to make. You don’t come across as brave truth tellers do much as self indulgent bores, lacking real empathy and humanity and mistaking preening narcissism for …well I’m not sure but you do seem to think its brave realism.

The self righteous have joined in now I see

DH has the most amazing step-Dad (our DSs don’t even know he is that rather than DH’s Dad…not deliberately but because it’s irrelevant). He took on DH aged 4 and has two younger sons. I think it may be different as DH’s Dad simply doesn’t exist as far as DH and his DM are concerned. When it works it really works…and then no outsiders even realise that’s the relationship.

At our booking in appointment with DS1 I had to stop DH offering his Step-Dad’s medical history (as irrelevant from a genetics point of view). Simply hadn’t occurred to DH that DFIL isn’t his Dad!

Step kids were a challenge for my relationship. Because I was expected to mother them without and decision making power.

This seems to be the theme from what I’ve noticed which puts me off the most about it. I’m supposed to treat them as my own but not when it comes to making decisions within the home or discipline where they know that I can’t do anything if they misbehave or are disrespectful.

Add in an unreasonable bio parent or parents, it is not worth the stress imo unless both parents and stepparents are on the same page about boundaries and expectations and parent in similar ways.

Which in no way could possibly be related to the breakdown of their family unit and the introduction of step parents and uncertainty and the prevailing views in their blended family. That would just be a coincidence, or more likely someone else's fault or most likely the responsibility of some failing agencies.

To everyone saying how terrible we are/were as step parents isn't the point if this thread that the majority of us did it without the SC knowing we feel as we do?
I went to parents evenings, took them on holiday, bought endless clothes, shoes, toys, video games and took them to hobbies. Exactly as I do for my own children.
I have a good relationship with my now adult SC so I can't have been that terrible! I just didn't feel about them the way I do about my own children. I think that is normal.

I don’t care why it is, one of them assaulted his step father so badly he was hospitalised, if anyone thinks I am having that in my home around my child who is still living at home then you’re crazy. They are adults & responsible for their own actions & behaviour. I saw them all the time when they were children & they were fine but they’ve both chosen destructive paths as adults & I am not responsible for that, they’ve had chance after chance with us but there has to be a point where enough is enough & we reached that point

Yes, it was really hard for my 'step'mother. She had to work so hard to poison our father against us to the point when he decided we were so awful and evil that he would never see us again.
I expect she could have saved herself all that aggro by not going after a man who was already married, but I expect now she has him all to herself she finds the benefits outweigh the negatives.
HTH

And you didn’t allude to that at all. You just made it sound like they wouldn’t get anything because they aren’t yours.

Of course you shouldn't. I never said you should and never would. I posted that might be a factor in why they are like they are and not that it is for you to resolve their issues as adults. And nobody would leave thousands to an addict to enable more chaos.
But there are consequences for step children of adult decisions to meet their needs. These are often overlooked and sometimes these can be very negative and extreme, unfortunately.