IME (and that of many posters on MN it seems), the DSC are anything other than ‘secondary’. Objectively, the resident children are often secondary during contact, which revolves around the DSC.
In our house this weekend we had my DS (11), the DSC (6 and 3) and our DS (12 weeks). As always, the primary consideration and deciding factor in everyone’s weekend was the DSC. The activities and meals were shaped around their interests and really difficult eating behaviour. The actual experience of the weekend was totally coloured by how the DSC behaved, and their father’s ongoing despair about both the behaviour and how it affects everyone else.
I have to work hard to make sure that my DS doesn’t get lost amidst the overwhelming focus on the DSC (after all, it’s his EOW too, even if he sleeps here 11/14 nights a week, rather than 5/14). Regardless of the fact that the DSC are here less often or are younger or whatever, he deserves not to have to spend his weekend in play parks with no equipment suitable for an older child or walking along behind the DSC as they go on their scooters. DH gets annoyed if we (my DS, our DS and me) don’t want to go along on outings (even if his choice of outing is scooters in the park), or if I plan something for DS that the DSC aren’t invited to. But making the whole family centre around the DSC is not fair, and he’s being selfish in prioritising his DC. And also in deciding that he’s too stressed from work so he can’t provide any sense of boundaries or discipline (which means every contact is totally overwhelmed by their behaviour).
Fairness in this family means that their behaviour has to be addressed. They need boundaries for themselves but, actually, it’s not fair to the other children if the DSC are allowed to run around screaming, or to hit them, or to steal their stuff, or to talk (or sing) through the tv programme they’re trying to watch, or to take so long to eat half a sandwich that there’s no time left to go somewhere they’d wanted to go, and so on. DS needs me to stand up for him, and I am not having the DSC treat the baby the way they treat each other. That’s not fair on him.
But equal treatment is hard because that requires their father to be consistent about boundaries and consequences (even if they mean he doesn’t get to do what he wants to do). It’s not fair that my DS loses screen time for things like leaving his light on (it’s an ongoing minor annoyance, and he’s been told more than once so he should stop doing it), while DSD can hit her brother, purposefully makes lunch miserable for everyone (disgusting eating, kicking the person next to her, taking 45 minutes to eat half a sandwich - with her favourite filling, making irritating high pitched humming noises, interrupting everyone when they speak with irrelevant stuff) and then rudely demands that she wants to go to the park (yesterdays sequence of events) and is taken to the park because her father is fed up being in the house and can’t be bothered with discipline on his time off work. As you can imagine, it’s hard for DS to feel like that’s in any way fair. Especially when going to the park with small children is not that appealing to an 11 year old anyway.
DH has admitted to me that, if he were single, he’d be a complete Disney dad (partly out of guilt but mostly out of laziness). He’d basically decide to ‘beat’ his ex by buying them everything and anything and taking them to things/on holidays all the time (he’s got more money so he’d ‘win’ 🙄) and he’d not bother in the least about their behaviour because it would only be him and he’d just ignore it (until he got really angry and shouty). There’d be no boundaries, love would be something to be bought and, when he got fed up with the rudeness and fighting and such like, there’d be lots of angry shouting. It would not be good for them (and I would imagine contact would dwindle as he got ever more fed up with the behaviour and embarrassed by them in public).
Thing is, it’s very hard to like (never mind love) a child who is allowed to consistently act like a brat and who makes every other weekend, one night every week and half the school holidays really hard work for everyone. It’s not really the 6 year old’s fault that she’s this way (although there is some element of personality involved in some of it), but it’s still hard to get past it when you find Friday afternoon approaching and you steel yourself for another weekend of behaviour you have absolutely no control over.
Meanwhile on MN you are lambasted for not adoring your DSC and centering your entire existence around them. Apparently it’s not enough to have welcomed the children into your home (without so much as a hello from them - they arrive and immediately demand to know what’s for dinner every single time), prepared and cooked meals for them (knowing that their dinner table behaviour will be atrocious and you’ll be losing the will you live), and organised an activity they’ll really enjoy. No. You must be an awful person and we should feel sorry for the DSC because you have detached and stepped back from any kind of parental role. And because, quite honestly, of course you wouldn’t miss all this if you split up with your husband. Who would possibly miss that?