to think grandparents do not have to treat their step grandchildren exactly the same way as their blood grandchildren?

[betnet]

Firstly, I am not advocating for step children to be treated badly in anyway.

But I think it is fine if grandparents do not give gifts or gifts to the same value to the stepchildren as to their grandchildren. If there was a divorce the stepchildren would generally not be seen anymore anyway.

People generally would not expect grandparents to give their non related stepchildren an inheritance. Those who advocate for stepchildren to be treated exactly equally, do you think they should inherit from non related grandparents?

I am talking about stepchildren in this instance where ones DD or DS has married a partner who has children from an ex partner.

Same for family holidays. Often grandparents will pay for a family holiday and want their grandchildren to join them. They should not have to pay for the step grandchildren also.

Stepchildren can end up with four sets of grandparents.

No. Nor did I choose to marry a man with multiple children and then have more children with him.

How wonderful.

Well, it is a bit pathetic, imvho. Still, I guess they aren’t very friendly with your dd’s dh! And yes, if someone were contemplating marrying a person who already had children, I would expect them to discuss the existing children and whether it was fair to bring more children into the world. I have already made it clear earlier in the thread that I personally wouldn’t marry a person who already had four children by someone else and then have more children with them.

Well, my stepdaughter is the stepmother to two adult children and stepgrandmother to some.

I suppose that possibly makes me a step-gran and step-great-gran?

I've met the stepdaughter's adult stepchildren twice and have never met their children. I have no relationship with them at all.

Modern life is complicated.

My late husband had two adult children and one (now adult) grandchild. I organised presents and so on for DH's grandchild, but was never allowed to be a grandmother of any kind.

A relationship is more than one way.

I have to say I find all this instance that step grandchildren are exactly the same as grandchildren quite odd.

no one tells a new step mother that she is in effect her step children’s mother and she should be as involved in their lives as their mother is!

I believe in being kind to all children - grandparents should bring presents for all children in the house. Steps should be invited to all family gatherings. But they aren’t grandchildren and should understand they won’t necessarily get inheritance and won’t get school fees. Clearly every family is different - but I don’t know any grandparents who pay school fees to children who aren’t their biological or adoptive grandchildren.

i do know a few people whose second marriages have failed - the step kids are never seen again. They aren’t family anymore.

I am very close to my niece and nephew and pay them pocket money, pay for school tutors and pay for a big holiday for them every year. If my sister remarried a man who had children I would be warm and welcoming - I would enjoy getting to know them. I would include them in gift giving. But I wouldn’t set up direct debits into their accounts, wouldn’t take them on big holidays and wouldn’t pay towards their schooling. It would be odd for me to suddenly take on financial responsibility for children who I might never see again

And when they don’t give the children opportunities, their own father apparently doesn’t feel the need to plug any of the gaps with his own money. Meanwhile, the OP’s dd plugs the gaps she perceives that he leaves in his provision for his other children by using inheritances and grandparents.

My husband has raised my eldest as his own from a very young age and if he or his family treated my eldest different i would be fuming. My husband and his mums side would never do that, his dad's have in the past but now treat them equally. Kids don't choose their situation. I guess the fact my husband and I both have technical half siblings we know how it feels to be treated differently and would never do that. My brothers step daughter was treated exactly the same as my nieces even before I met her.

This isn’t a case of ‘their’ finances, it’s her finances. It’s not her responsibility to pay for her stepchildren. That belongs to their actual parents.

The children aren’t the same. They’re equal to their father, not their stepmother. Her priority is her own children.

Why is ‘her’ in quotation marks? Regardless of the whether it’s earned income or not, her finances are just that - hers.

OP has said her daughter was the only one paying for private schooling, so not an expense they consider joint.

It's a slightly different situation when there's only one bio-family in the picture. If your eldest had an involved Dad and paternal Grandparents etc then it would be different.

My Mum gets on ok with my SD, but she's been brought up very differently to how I bring up DD. DD lives with us 100% of the time, stays over at my Mum's at least once every other week and was held by her hours after her birth. Her relationship with SD is nothing like equal to the relationship she has with DD.

Totally agree. And I'm the step daughter

She could have said "I'd rather not create a family where any children are treated differently to others because of a number of factors" and not married him in the first place.

You hear it a lot where people are saying that if you're not prepared to treat them as yours, don't be a step parent. But at the very least, if you're not prepared to ensure their father looks at all his kids as the same, don't have your own with a man who already has them.

Because it could quite easily be your daughter's children who were being treated as "less" than, in a step family situation. And I imagine you'd be making a very different post if it was that way round. If your SIL was sending the others to private school and for horse riding lessons and so on, while your GC struggled at school.

Thank you.

This is what people don't seem to understand. The SC already have two parents, grandparents and extended family members.

Interesting how so many are blaming my DD also. Seems to be the case of some women blaming women.

But at the very least, if you're not prepared to ensure their father looks at all his kids as the same, don't have your own with a man who already has them.

It is an adult's role to ensure another adult looks at all his kids as the same? Seriously? It is his responsibility, not the step mothers.

I agree the bond is different with biological GC as opposed to step GC.

There is a theme on this thread that all children should be treated exactly the same and not see any difference. But that is simply not possible because these children have different families: their different families should be celebrated not ignored.

OP’s daughter isn’t their mother - and I hope the families aren’t pretending their mother doesn’t exist and they have the exact same parents as the younger two children.

On mumsnet for some reason people are appalled if step mothers over step and act in any way like a mother, but step grandparents are expected to open the cheque book and treat step-children as if they have been legally adopted into the family.

I have step cousins. They have never made any effort to get to know our side of the family - I can’t remember their names! My aunt brought them to a Christmas family gathering about 30 years ago and we haven’t seen them since. They certainly aren’t in any family wills and I am sure wouldn’t expect to be. They had their own grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.

So if he was treating your GC differently to the SGC, it's still just his responsibility? Nothing to do with your daughter? Because he is treating them differently, it just so happens that it's preferentially so no one in your family sees the issue with it.

It's your daughter's responsibility to ensure she chooses to start a family with a man who can give their children what they need. If he moves on and has yet more children with wife no 3, it will be your GCs who are now the step children. Let's hope he doesn't just put them in the same bucket as his first four kids, hey?

Would you say the same about adopted grandchildren?

In all the talk of ‘fairness’, does that mean that the OP’s GC should have the same standard of living as the SCs half-siblings who have two parents who don’t work? Thinking being that the SC should only have the same opportunities as their half-siblings because they are in that family, and the OP’s GC should only have the same opportunities as their half-siblings so that means everyone’s standard of living has to be the lowest common denominator?

Don’t get me wrong, as a parent I would struggle with such a huge difference in the opportunities I was giving my children. Would I have the same struggle with step children if I had them? Probably not. I’m not going to significantly compromise what I can do for my children (or grandchildren) for anyone. This situation is (as they mostly are on here) entirely the doing of the father. He’s the one who has chosen to have more children and is only belatedly realising he’s fucking up. He’s not going to have been entirely unaware of the OP’s financial situation and should have had the conversation before having more children about expectations of how they would be raised.

Having said all that, my dad has written his will giving 45% of his assets to my sibling and I (who both have children) and 10% to his step-grandson even though he is no longer with the biological grandmother. His reasoning being is that for the first 10 years of SGS life, he was grandpa. I think he’s made the right call there, because that connection was important. As with all relationships, there’s rarely a one size fits all answer.

I know! It is so strange. People keep throwing out words like cruel and unkind.

People have said the biological children should be taken out of private school and those resources given to the SC! Someone else said the elderly Uncle should be told not to give any gifts because he was only buying for his two biological relations and not the four SC!!

I will also share this from another perspective. There was a story shared whereby a single mother was raising a daughter. Worked hard and put the child in private school.

Dad paid minimum child support and saw the girl twice a month. Dad remarried. New wife thought it was unfair that his daughter had a private education but her children didn’t. So she and the husband tried to pull the girl out of her school and enroll her in the same comprehensive as her children. - so all children would be equal. Mum refused and took it to court. Girl stayed at her school.

just about everyone was on the mum’s side. Dad and step mum acted appallingly. Punishing the girl for their jealousy - and no one could see why this girls life would have to be equal to children she didn’t even know six months ago.

does everyone on this thread agree with the dad and step mum?

OP’s GC should only have the same opportunities as their half-siblings so that means everyone’s standard of living has to be the lowest common denominator?

Well said @mummypigoink this is what so many people have proposed.

In that scenario, one parent doesn't have six children, of which he is privately educating two while not the others.

The dads in both these situations are acting badly towards at least some of their biological children.

He is treating his children the same. He isn’t providing private schooling or horse riding for any of his children - OP and her daughter are funding those things.

I think it depends my step dad was dad and his parents treated me as a grandchild the same as my brother and sister. She had my school pictures on the wall and took me on holiday etc. when my parents divorced when I was an adult, some family (people who I was raised to see as aunt and uncle etc) have left me out now and it hurts like hell because they had been my family all my life (biological dad never been in my life, never even seen me once, and my mums family was shitty) . My oldest was 10 when she got a step parent and I never expected her to be treated the same, she did get treated nicely though and she never saw them as her grandparents anyway.