Am I a bad mother for liking my step-daughter more

[Clariey]

Okay first of all, I want to clarify, I love my daughters more than I love anyone on this planet, that’s not what this is about.

Background, I have 2 daughters, they are 19 and 21. Lovely girls, both still live at home and I think like most families we have our issues but I love them deeply. As they have gotten older I’ve struggled at times with “liking” them, it’s tricky to explain, as they have all the traits one would want their child to have, they are kind and intelligent, they are funny and in every way I’m proud of them.
However there are traits they both have that sometimes irritate me, a lack of self-awareness, a desperate need to follow every trend and sometimes I feel they lack any originality and seem to be incapable of thinking truly for themselves. We can’t discuss politics as they just regurgitate opinions heard on social media, they pick holidays based on wherever some influencer has said is cool. It often feels like I could be talking to any late teen/early 20s girl. This frustrates me as I’ve always believed in the power of forming your own thoughts and opinions, I feel like this often what makes someone really interesting.

My step-daughter is 22, she moved in with us in September as she moved to the uk for her masters. I never really knew her before this, my husband and her mother were never a couple, she was raised by her mother in one country most of the year then spent summers with her dad in another. When she first moved in with us, I found her hard to read, intensely private and to be honest I didn’t really get her or like her. I loved her as an extension of my husband but didn’t really know her as an individual. Over the months I’ve gotten to know her and I have realised I really like her as a person. She doesn’t seem fussed by trends, not in a contrarian way where if something is trendy she must hate it, more in a I like what I like regardless of the popularity sense. She is incredibly intelligent, she reads books by authors I’ve never heard of, is capable of having meaningful conversations about most topics, from politics to feminism and history. She’s happy to have her view point challenged and her supporting arguments are never “such and such on TikTok said such and such”. Don’t get me wrong I don’t think she is perfect, I think she can be extremely cynical and seems to be permanently dissatisfied with the world.

Lately I’ve felt like I’d rather talk to my stepdaughter than my own children, not because I don’t love my children or enjoy their presence but I sometimes find their life boring. They surround themselves by people who are just like them, all caught up in a whirlwind of trends. Conversations quickly turn to arguments as they get defensive if I ever question a thought process (my theory here is they don’t have a thought process but rather they are regurgitating an opinion, they can’t defend it or talk about it in any real depth as it’s not their own).

On the flip, I feel like my step-daughter challenges me intellectually which I really enjoy. She teaches me things I never knew, has recommended some books to me which have left me feeling haunted and changed as a person. Equally she is receptive to criticism, she is open to discussing anything in depth and being challenged on her views and even conceding that her own opinions aren’t always correct. I know partially it is because she isn’t my daughter, we don’t have the same bond or relationship and probably look at each other more as equals than my own daughters and I do (I think they view me as past my best and a relic of the past while I often view them as naive and immature). Then there is the fact that my step-daughter grew up in a very different world to my own, learning about her childhood, her home city and her culture is all fascinating to me.

Last night I was chatting to my step-daughter and my own daughter wanted to change the topic to a date she had been on recently. I realised I felt a sense of dread at hearing about it as it’s always the same story with a different character. However when my step-daughter goes to share a story from a date she’s been on I am keen to listen, this is because she often has more profound views on the dates, her standards for men are higher and she’s attracted to more interesting people. I felt awful afterwards as in my mind my own children should be my priority, I should be grateful that they want to let me into their life and me being bored by it makes me feel like a bad mother, they are my own flesh and blood, how can I be anything but excited to hear what they have to share?

Now I can’t sleep, I feel like I’ve let my children down in some way, both by comparing them to my step-daughter when they are wonderful people in their own right but also by failing to instil some of these qualities in them.

Has anyone else ever felt like this? Am I awful and unreasonable for feeling this way?

The UK curriculum is the least progressive compared to other European countries, Canada, or the USA. It’s indeed terrible—merely focused on assessments—and you’re right, our children are products of this educational system and culture influenced by shallow values at present, which is sad. The only way to broaden their perspective is to have more exposure to new people, countries, and exchange programs—hopefully, ERASMUS will return, along with many more opportunities.

I REALLY hope so! My kids are still quite little so I’m just crossing everything things are shifting - but my heart really does break for the kids having to negotiate puberty and young adulthood in this bin fire.

I always thought I'd be prepared to really stretch financially if needed to give mine the chance to go away for uni so that's they can experience living somewhere else, meeting different people and having their perspectives expanded. I'm not trying to be judgemental of people that haven't done this, some will still be able to meet a good variety of people and gain this experience elsewhere, some will go abroad or move for work but many won't.

My worry is that it might not be enough if the university or other "coming of age" cultures are starting to reflect these societal trends themselves.

"UK curriculum is the least progressive focused on knowledge gaining only and not a broader perspective. "

Can you elaborate on this? It's a long time since I was at school, but the focus on 'knowledge gaining only' e.g. learning by rote, memorising things, had long gone even by then.

Yeah, I totally see why you are dismayed by your daughter.

YANBU, OP.

Ahh the mum - daughter relationship dynamic! It’s a tricky one! I bet if your step daughters mum met your girls she would
think they were fascinating too. It’s perfectly fine to always love, but sometimes not like your children or their views etc. it sounds like you and your stepdaughter are forming more of a friendship which is lovely. It’s perfectly ok to want to be around friends rather than your kids isn’t it? So it’s probably just that!

Don't it bother you. You don't dislike your daughter's, they just aren't intellectually interesting. That doesn't matter. You love all three and that is good.

It’s ostensibly gone but replaced with formulaic templates for how to answer
“evaluate” or “analyse” style questions - which is almost more insidious. I mean at least when you are rote learning you realise aren’t thinking for yourself. These are syllabus-and-marking-rubric-constrained “what do you think” questions.

Subjects like maths are less affected. But even when they first start, most children are pushed through a phonics-based reading programme which is just too prescriptive and constrained for children who can jump to full words very naturally.

Ok and how is it different in other parts of Europe?

They tend to be less afraid of potentially more subjective mark schemes and independent thought.
I think we’ve become - not unreasonably at one level - obsessed with measuring and ranking and levelling.

Eta I think there is also more focus on achievement vis a vis learning per se.

How do you mean independent thought? It's not what I get from the countries I'm somewhat familiar with. I'd say they're more into learning by rote than the UK, at least at secondary, maybe less so at university.

Also, in many other European countries the norm is to go to the nearest university either living at home or going home every single weekend so most young people's experience would be closer to OP's daughter than her step-daughter's.

My comment was agreeing with her that her daughters actually are following anti semitic trend if they whisper “baby killers” when they walk by a synagogue. This is very extreme and I would pull them out of university or stop paying for it, personally

i wpuld be more than dismayed I would be questioning why I let schools indoctrinate my children instead of teaching them to think critically

That aside, your step daughter doesn’t sound any better off than them. At the end of the day your daughters seem happy and like they have potential to find a good mate and have a nice life. A young girl who is already cynical and dissatisfied is on a downhill trajectory

Making education a marketplace has placed the emphasis on constant testing. The universities changed first, having to pay their own way means as many international students as possible, competing with each other mean focusing on quantification- it's a large part of the GDP now, but universities will go down as students can no longer bring their whole family.

Your daughters are not meant to be a source of entertainment and to cerebrally challenge you. Both of them are very young.
It’s ok to like talking to your step daughter and find her mentally stimulating but there’s no need to compare your daughters to them. Like you said you have very different backgrounds and raised differently. She’s probably had to grow up much more quickly as raised by a single mum who passed away when she was 16 years old. We all have different cards dealt in life.
I moved half way across the world at 18 years old and had to grow up super fast. Sometimes it’s your life situations that shape you as a person. Your daughters have the safety of being at home and being supported by their parents and not being forced out the door to get a qualification, job as quickly as possible which isn’t the case for your stepdaughter who probably feels more pressure to get a head start.

I think it's because she's "new" and your know your DDs so well that they're predictable and you probably take them for granted to a degree whereas someone new who didn't grow up with you is likely to be more interesting. If I'm out with my family we talk about the same old things but with new people we talk about different things...

Apple doesn't fall far from the tree maybe???