Just want bio mum to step up

[mumsthewordi]

Long story short, SS decided he wanted to live with dad and me when he was 9,l and he is 13 now, it was meant to be temporary - but he’s never been encouraged to go home and BM hasn’t ever asked him! I was high risk pregnancy and focused on DD and they have a lovely relationship, but I’ve never got use to being a SM too, I feel quite blindsided too as the grandparents and OH just constantly tell me why he should be with us , and yes he’s happy but my feeling is no one’s ever encouraged a positive reconciliation- they say well “she doesn’t want him.” However, I don’t think it’s that simple and she also went through a lot during Covid when he made this decision. I have made sure they have contact but it’s not regular.

its hard but perhaps I feel this way as I don’t have a strong maternal bond towards him and for that I feel guilty because he has a mother.

I know you’re getting piled on but it is a hard situation and not one that you were expecting.

Yes your SS needs to be made to feel welcome and at home, that’s doesn’t mean privately you can’t find it hard.

Absolutely the mum should be spoken to, even if not for the child to live with her again, but so they can work on their relationship.

but he’s never been encouraged to go home

he is home and it’s awful that you make out he isn’t.

you chose to enter a relationship with someone who had a child. Thankfully his father is being a father and you can’t criticise that.

He has a shitty mother (please don't use bio mum ir birth mum unkess you are talking about an adopted child) so is correctly living with his dad. Frankly his dad doesn't sound like much of a prize either. There's no one falls in love so swiftly as a single dad, I think your nice secure home looked like a very attractive landing pad to him, but it would be best to give your useless boyfriend the heave-ho and let him work out how to parent his son without palming him off on a girlfriend.

What's the difference? They come as a package deal and you should have anticipated that from the beginning.

OP well done for everything you have done to support the boy along with his father. It’s not easy.
I think you’ve triggered a lot of people who hate to see women taken advantage of but your choices and those children are here now so there is little you can do. Mum is used to having no responsibility- maybe a little ‘payback’ if she wasn’t supported for the first nine years?

Resentment does kill relationships though. I hope DP is massively grateful for your contributions. You have saved him and his son. You have the power and the upper hand but now you have a shared child you have to be philosophical about the situation. I hope you protect yourself financially and don’t do any more of the wife work than you think is fair.

The problem is that her boyfriend is now her daughter's father as well.

You might feel a lot better if OH did his share. Of course you don’t love your SC in the same way as DD. But you care for him and DD has a loving sibling.

Your partner and his son both live with you, in your home. So where did your partner live before meeting you? I assume his son, lived with his Mum. In all honesty if you don't want to be a step-parent, as in full-time care, then your partner and his son should move out. I'm not saying split up, but clearly having your partner and his son living in your home on a permanent basis, isn't what you signed up for. Did your partner discuss his son moving in with you prior to it happening? Or did suddenly one day, there he was, belongings and all.

So pleased the last few posters have added some balance here. OP met a man with a child, who also had a mother in his life. Suddenly there is no mum on the scene and no attempts to get her / allow her to be more present in her son’s life. Yet OP is being slated for “choosing” this. She didn’t choose full time 100% care of a child, that has happened to her and she seems to be taking on the full burden of proving a house, salary and doing all the housework / cooking. She sounds like the hero here to me.

OP - it does sound like you rushed into things and now you’re caught. But I’d ageee with PPs that your problem is your DP in the first instance. He needs to do more to pull his weight on all fronts and he needs to ease the burden of looking after his child - it is not easy having a stepchild with you all the time. I’d be resentful to be given someone else’s kid to look after when both parents are (in theory) available to step up more. Why shouldn’t they share care of their child? How come you’re doing it all and putting a roof over their heads? What’s going on with the mum that she’s happy to never see or support her kid?

I’d also be concerned that if you left your DP he and his parents have form for alienating a child from their mother…

thank you
I think I’m spending too much time here in putting myself in her shoes and thinking why? Just because I couldn’t wash hands of my child like she has -
I guess that sounds a little hypocritical given I’m the sm, it’s not that I don’t want him here. Just the full time aspect is hard when I think she just needed his support. He’s also not a bad man, he just is quite bitter towards her and her actions

thanks for the wise words.

I think this is a perfectly reasonable approach. What isn’t reasonable is trying to get the step child to move out, they should be with whichever parent is most appropriate.

It's probably better for OP that she isn't married to her partner. If they split up, she will get to keep the house, as she owned it before they got together, plus all her other assets.

I'm assuming that OP, like most step-parents, didn't envisage having her partner's son living with them full time. However, the only way she can change this is to split up from her partner.

I agree with this. You're working very hard to support and care for this child, despite him having a mum with issues and a low employment status dad, who could not manage to raise him without support from his own mum and dad.

You should examine closely why he represents a burden. Are you working too hard in your job or doing too much around the house? Is your partner working less hard and not searching for promotion, now you are the breadwinner? Do you find that his grandparents and his dad make all the parenting decisions regarding the stepson and you just facilitate this with your money and housework and childcare? Indeed, just how instrumental were these grandparents in prising him away from his mum and setting him up where he is more accessible to them.

Unless his mum is horrible to him and detrimental to his mental health, he should be having some contact with her. No matter how good you and his own dad are, he needs his mum too. No contact at all seems bizarre. Yep, the whole situation needs re-evaluating.

...and don't marry this man. He is a financial drain.

Thank you

he sees her but not a regular contact also we don’t have legal custody, just been this way now - so I’m not sure how courts would view it.

What is your SS like with you? Does he want a relationship with his mother?

It is very hard, fortunately, as time has gone by my SS realises what a really bad, unreliable mother his is and we now have a great relationship, it was rocky at first but I think it was because neither of us had been in this situation before and it was a learning curve for both of us.

I tried with the mother, (his dad had given up trying with her, it took me a while to understand why) all i get is abuse (yes, still now), I am nothing to her children, I am not his mother, he hates me, i don't do anything for her kids, blah blah blah, he has stayed at his mums house once in 12 years (he is now a young adult, he tells me i do more for him than his mother ever did, he loves me like a mum and I get mothers day cards/gifts)

I think if his relationship with his mother is really bad I wouldn't be forcing his to go and stay with her, or if she is that bad I wouldn't be trying to encourage it.

This is your future for the foreseeable, so you are going to have to find a way for it to work. You took on a man with a child, the mother isn't going to step up or she would have i'm afraid.

Lots of people seem to be posting their usual rant about step-parenting and not reading the OP’s posts

she has said she wants to support the child and his mother to rebuild their relationship and thinks her partner and his parent should actively do that rather than bad mouthing the mother

contrast this thread with the one about a dad wanted to relocate his kids to Cornwall and being told the relationship with the mother was more important than the whole family’s happiness.

OP - you’re not wrong to think that your partner should support rebuilding those bridges and at least should stop being negative about his ex to his son.

Then kick them both out.

Honestly, you sound quite shitty. I’m trying to imagine this in the reverse. Everyone would be telling a woman who has a child from a previous relationship as well as a shared child with the new partner to LTB if he was resentful to her older child.

Your resentment towards your partner is palpable (and fair enough!). He's moved in to your house, leaves you to do all the work and brought a full time child with him to boot. Why are you allowing him to cocklodge from you in this way?

Reflecting on your post and the responses, @mumsthewordi , I wonder how many of us are step-children and have been 'triggered' (I do so hate that word, but can't think of suitable alternative at the mo') by your post, hence the defensiveness for the boy.

But you did choose this situation entirely. You chose to start a relationship with a man who had a child. You chose to let this man and his child moved in. You chose to allow this man to be a cocklodger. You then chose to have a baby with this man knowing fine well the situation with him, his son and his cocklodger tendencies.
If you are no longer happy with your choices then make new ones, but understand that you can't kick your ss out without kicking his dad out too, they're a package deal, but remember that he will likely end up with another woman just like you who will treat your dd in the same way as you're treating this poor boy, who by the sounds of it has been alienated from his mum in the same way you will be from your dd when she's older.

What are your partner's parents like with your child? They obviously didn't like your step-son's mum and tried to discourage their grandson from having regular contact with his mum. Do you envisage them trying to do something similar with your child if you split up from their son?

It's not really clear whether your step-son's mum is the victim of her ex-husband and his parents who turned her son against her, or whether she actually didn't want her son to live with her and they just reacted to this.

I’ve not read all the comments but it seems that the @mumsthewordi is getting more judgment for not having a close loving bond and embracing a life of total self-negation than SS’s actual mother is!

No advice @mumsthewordi but I’m a widow with young child too and I’d be 🤯 to find myself encircled by steps, exes and in-laws. You can’t fake what you don’t feel, and I hope your DP is not exploiting you for sexual, domestic, accommodation and childcare services.

Never been encouraged to 'go home'?

He is home. His father doesn't need to encourage him to go anywhere. This is always part of the deal when you move in with someone who already has children. It may not happen that they end up with you full time and permanenetly, but you should proceed as if it will. If you are not prepared for that possibility then don't move in with him and don't have kids with him.

His son was there first, his needs and happiness are no less important than yours or your child's.

You don't need to feel maternal towards him, you just need to accept the above and be a grown up about it. You aren't entitled to a fairytale situation of 'just your little family' of your partner and your own child, not even in the early weeks of having given birth, because your child isn't a first child and isn't an only child. Your partner and his son always came as package deal and you knew that from the beginning.

Or her boyfriend and son live with HER