Why to SMs get such a hard time on MN?

[UsernameFail]

I am a wicked SM and follow the step parenting page.

I find the page very interesting and have learnt loads from my mistakes (although often too late but helped with giving me clarity).

I don't post much for fear of taking a beating from people who are evidently clueless about the complexities that arise in being a step mom or trying to integrate families.

I still wonder why MNetters are so awful to Step Moms?

takes a deep breath and presses post

@stealthninjamum

I agree that we need a space to let off steam but as I have said a couple of times it is how the step mum words it that can cause negativity and I have seen examples where it is presented as a problem of the child rather the dad.

My partner has friends he can reach out to - I accept when my daughter is tapping her foot or singing a song for an hour it can be annoying - but we have a conversation and discuss it. If he posted on Mumsnet and said she was childish or naughty then I would imagine we’re not compatible. As I mentioned the reason I usually lurk here is that there is good advice for when I do move in with him. There are boundaries in each family and I like to see how others set them.

Quite often, though, the child is naughty. Tapping for an hour might not be, but some things are and it is very unhelpful to always view it as undue negativity. Children can have behaviour that IS negative, and does have a negative impact on those around them.

@stealthninjamum unfortunately sometimes it is the child's behaviour that is the problem. Children are naughty sometimes. I definitely was!

@UsernameFail there are many reasons people get piled into

A) timing - plenty of kids etc troll some boards
B) it’s the Internet and people will type and say things they wouldn’t have the balls to say to someone’s face
C) the language in a post. People take great offence to terms like ‘birth mum’. Or if the language is viewed as unnecessarily harsh towards a child
D) women are generally more territorial over their children than men. So they are likely to have a greater emotional reaction/ projection to another woman playing ‘mum’ of any kind.
E) step parenting is so largely misunderstood and under represented in therapy / society. So basically a large portion of the world is playing catch up to this relatively new phenomenon.

You should post, there are enough tenured posters on these board that take the unhelpful posters to task.

I don't know really. I guess partly that nobody can ever believe you're not the OW.

I'm a single parent so my core beliefs may be different from the average MN-er but I don't think it's catastrophically bad to be ''left'' with the DC if your H leaves you, ykwim? So, I'm not predisposed to have sympathy only for ''The Wife'' or only for ''The First Wife'' rather.

I think it all depends. I don't think I'd be bothered about step children if I had them. I mean, I'd be polite and friendly but if it wasn't reciprocated I wouldn't feel I owed it to them to fix the situation. I'd know that their mum cared for them, their father loved them, their step mum was trying.

But then it's easy to be breezy when it's not your own situation. If my X met somebody knew I think I'd feel superior because I know what he's like and she's yet to figure it out. I did think that when he got together with the woman who dumped him after a few years. Luckily for her, she didn't have a child with him, so she was smarter than I am!

All of the situations I read on MN sound like a total nightmare with no solution.

Sometimes the solution is to feel less guilty about not being able to sort it all out.

I don't think stepmums necessarily get a hard time.

I think for a lot of people, it's really upsetting to read certain posts (not all) where there is such dislike, contempt, even disgust towards stepchildren.

As an adult I am very aware that children have no choice at all about their living situations, and the thought of being treated or regarded in that way by an adult in your own home is extremely upsetting.

I personally hate the way that any criticism of step parents is always framed as "bitterness" or "projection" or "jealousy". It's none of those in my case, and I'm sure for many others too. I just feel bloody awful for the children who have to share their lives with people who don't love them and don't always have their best interests at heart. It's really sad.

@OnlyAFleshWound

I don't think stepmums necessarily get a hard time.

I think for a lot of people, it's really upsetting to read certain posts (not all) where there is such dislike, contempt, even disgust towards stepchildren.

As an adult I am very aware that children have no choice at all about their living situations, and the thought of being treated or regarded in that way by an adult in your own home is extremely upsetting.

I personally hate the way that any criticism of step parents is always framed as "bitterness" or "projection" or "jealousy". It's none of those in my case, and I'm sure for many others too. I just feel bloody awful for the children who have to share their lives with people who don't love them and don't always have their best interests at heart. It's really sad.

@OnlyAFleshWound The situation in which the children have no choice is created because the parents split up and go on to have new relationships. It is not up to the step parent to compensate for this. Parents are the ones who have the responsibility to create a happy home environment for their children.

I also think that sometimes a step mother expressing annoyance at a child's behaviour is views as dislike, contempt and disgust when it is none of those things. Surely you get annoyed with your own children (if you have them) without feeling these things. Imagine if you had the same annoyance but had played no part in raising them, didn't have the maternal bond and were not in a position to discipline them. Can you not see how that would be very difficult?

@candlelightsatdawn I think that’s true too: I think it scares people that their partner could leave and introduce a new woman into their childrens lives and I get that so it makes people very harsh on that “next partner” who is posting on mumsnet.
@stealthninjamum I can see your point about framing it as the child is the problem but people do that all the time on parenting board and aren’t jumped on; people are looking for advice. None of my friends have teenagers and the internet is not overly helpful to me therefore these boards provide helpful advice. Also the brutal truth is that children are very often annoying and when they’re your own children that is easier to deal with than when they’re not. I love my DSD but it’s not the same as how I love my own children and equally she (hopefully) loves me but it’s not the same how she loves her mum

I think it's because blended families are, almost without exception, a total clusterfuck. Everyone is angry and resentful and the children are the ones being shortchanged, while often being blamed for the whole mess at the same time.

I've been on MN since 2003 and I've seen the same pattern time and time again. However fine the intentions are when a couple get together, when there are existing children the situation always devolves into the same nightmare of petty resentments and bitterness. Terms like "golden uterus", "bm" and "poor deprived child, haha", squabbling over wills and "why should I keep a bedroom for someone who is only here four days a month" and "SC get double the Christmas presents", blah blah. It's foul. Anyone even vaguely approaching normal would feel sorry for the kids who didn't ask to be dragged into all that toxic nonsense.

My take on the question being asked is that step families involve a man having to split his loyalties, and that makes people very uncomfortable.

When dad goes off to form a new family with another woman, his loyalty is split; he owes his children a huge amount of consideration, as their father, but he also needs to honour his wife and any children he has with her.

As a child in this situation, you don't want to alienate either of your natural parents (simple biological instinct) so the stepmother is the safe party to blame.

I imagine a lot of people on this board are stepchildren, who have grown up blaming their stepmother for whatever failures their divorced parents visited on them.

And let's face it, we are an easy target. If we complain (however reasonable the complaint) - get over it, you knew he had kids when you married him. You love your own children more?! How dare you. You love your stepchildren like your own - overstepping. Do anything for your own kid - you are excluding the stepchildren, even if they are miles away.

The stepchildren themselves have a tendency to credit their dad with all the good that emanates from his second home; and to blame the stepmother for anything their dad does (or doesn't do) that they don't like. For example - for decades I would instigate involving my stepchildren in trips abroad "Dad always takes us on holiday in the summer". When I stopped after they were grown - "She won't let him take us any more".

(My heart went out to that young mother who got slaughtered on MN recently for having sat down on a rainy afternoon and done thank-you cards in crayons from her toddler. She got it in the neck from her DH, and then from MN - How Dare She exclude her teenage stepchildren!)

[quote Kbyodjs]@candlelightsatdawn I think that’s true too: I think it scares people that their partner could leave and introduce a new woman into their childrens lives and I get that so it makes people very harsh on that “next partner” who is posting on mumsnet.
@stealthninjamum I can see your point about framing it as the child is the problem but people do that all the time on parenting board and aren’t jumped on; people are looking for advice. None of my friends have teenagers and the internet is not overly helpful to me therefore these boards provide helpful advice. Also the brutal truth is that children are very often annoying and when they’re your own children that is easier to deal with than when they’re not. I love my DSD but it’s not the same as how I love my own children and equally she (hopefully) loves me but it’s not the same how she loves her mum[/quote]
I agree, it's fear-based.

A lot of women can only deal with that fear by demonising another woman.

But saying that, I do agree that most blended families sound like incredibly hard work.

My DC1 is 18 and my DC2 is 15 and I'm so glad that I never tried to bring a step dad in to their lives. It's less complicated. Our house is small enough as it is.

A lot of adults do seem to ''need'' a relationship though and I suppose the loneliness of not being in one could for those adults affect their parenting. I don't know.

@sadpapercourtesan

I think it's because blended families are, almost without exception, a total clusterfuck. Everyone is angry and resentful and the children are the ones being shortchanged, while often being blamed for the whole mess at the same time.

I've been on MN since 2003 and I've seen the same pattern time and time again. However fine the intentions are when a couple get together, when there are existing children the situation always devolves into the same nightmare of petty resentments and bitterness. Terms like "golden uterus", "bm" and "poor deprived child, haha", squabbling over wills and "why should I keep a bedroom for someone who is only here four days a month" and "SC get double the Christmas presents", blah blah. It's foul. Anyone even vaguely approaching normal would feel sorry for the kids who didn't ask to be dragged into all that toxic nonsense.

Thanks for the extremely one sided take on what you see on MN time and again.

@stealthninjamum I think it's honestly about humility and knowing your child and knowing them without ego.

My DSD is non Nero typical, mum was especially against us getting her help or even a diagnosis , even when we had to give away the family dog due to DSD actions. It took a long hard fight and a lot of trust to get her to get her to see one thing really simple. Addressing Negative or antisocial behaviour isn't saying the child is naughty or a bad kid, it's about recognising what your kid needs over what your perceptions of your child "is" and to help them be their best selves without the ego of saying but my child is perfect.

Thing is that you miss a trick by silencing a good step parent through ego. As step parents we can sometimes see a child's actions without the glaze of biologically produced hormones or the "this reflects on me" and that is actually quite something. If you shut down that talk, believe me a lot of children would be disadvantaged because they get trapped in power struggles of their parents and dynamics which they didn't chose due to the first marriage breaking down and are damaged by those actions.

As a mum it's so hard to hear your child has misbehaved or acted in a antisocial way, I totally am with the you, but if you take the stigma away from that and can ask the question ok so what happened, what went wrong today, what can we do to fix it, thats the key. Not the label naughty (it's a red herring) which just a label with little meaning without context.

If you want a fruitful SP relationship to work you have to go into it as a mum without ego. Hard when this is your most loved thing in the world but it's for the better of the child. I would be worried if my partner was alarmed at me reaching out to my support system. That in any other guise would be coercive and abusive. Sometimes people need to talk outside of their home sphere because the people in it are just to close. They can't see the word from the trees.

Yes a good portion of posts are DH issues masked as children issues, but when people always centre the step family dynamics around the SC I mean it's not surprising that's how it comes out.

Shaming someone for having negative feelings doesn't make the feelings get any less, if anything it makes it more.

I think just because it's mainly a website for mums, and many will either have zero experience of step-parenting or will be on the ex's side of the coin.

Tbh I do think it's a very complex situation and dynamic to try and understand when you've not had any experience. I'm sure when I was younger I'd have been all "you should love all the children as your own, no differences" etc etc, but since being an SM myself I know very well that it isn't that simple.

I also think lots don't appreciate how much the actual parent causes issues in stepfamilies, by constant overcompensating and babying and spoiling and pandering. People think parents act like "normal" parents in a stepfamily and that the SP is just being harsh, but the reality is a lot of parents parent far from normally following a split, and that can be very difficult for someone who does have a more 'normal' mindset to cope with.

But saying that, I do agree that most blended families sound like incredibly hard work.

Defo agree with this, they are really hard work. So much more to consider than in a bio family.

In a bio family, the parents can work together and disagree on things without one thinking the other hates the children.

Also there isn't equal power because the parent always has ultimate say over what happens regarding the children - big or small things - so the balance between partners can be off right from the start.

It really is a very tough thing to manage and someone is usually losing out somewhere, although in my experience it's the SP more often than the kids.

@sadpapercourtesan surely you’re not forming a view of step parent families based on what you’ve seen on mumsnet? If I formed my views on men and relationships based on the relationships board then I’d think all relationships were awful. You must know families in real life where it works; I know plenty (my own included). There are blips but so is there in any family life

I don’t know the answer to your question but can share my own experience of a parent meeting a new partner as an adult.

For reasons I’m not party to, she’s always been extremely jealous and threatened of the fact he has kids, and has done many cruel, strange, petty things over the years, and essentially doesn’t let him spend time with us alone (unfortunately the same is true for his friends too).

It may be a hard position to be in for many, but there are also many others who just don’t care, don’t respect the existing relationships in a family and just want their life and relationship entirely centred around them. For people like that, children from previous relationships are an inconvenience (and possibly a source of resentment and jealousy).

I guess that it’s a common enough occurrence that people have their own experiences to draw on and that it’s a well-established cultural trope.

Obviously many, many people are not like that at all and do not deserve to have those assumptions made about them. So definitely sympathise with any SP who is thoughtful and well-meaning and feels the challenges they face are not appreciated!

I personally hate the way that any criticism of step parents is always framed as "bitterness" or "projection" or "jealousy". It's none of those in my case, and I'm sure for many others too. I just feel bloody awful for the children who have to share their lives with people who don't love them and don't always have their best interests at heart. It's really sad.

The problem with statements like this is it is projection. From one post you cannot creep into a OPs head and see one way or the other how she feels about her SC. You are projecting because you do not have visibility

I'm sure as a mother if you look into my head you would see some negative times I have had with DD who I love deeply and some fairly interesting wording on how I viewed those situations.

That doesn't mean I don't have the best interests for my child.

You forget a lot of step mums feel very sorry for their SC because of what their parents put them through. And actually there's a lot of us that think my god what are you doing because we aren't entrenched in loyalty ties or one upmanship because those existed way before we did and often lead to the collapse of the first marriage.
So yes feel sorry for the kids but place the blame in the correct spot, the parents for activity choosing the situation and not addressing their shit.

I think it's because blended families are, almost without exception, a total clusterfuck. Everyone is angry and resentful and the children are the ones being shortchanged, while often being blamed for the whole mess at the same time.

That said they are the largest and fastest growing family grouping soon to over take nuclear family. MN is not a representative sample of the whole spectrum but even if it was step families are no more a cluster duck that normal families because look at MN how much drama do you see re nuclear families on here ? A absolute shed tone. I came from a blended family and you know it was exactly like my peers a family. I haven't been left with psychological scars from it but was it always roses no. Much like any other family.

Terms like "golden uterus", "bm" and "poor deprived child, haha", squabbling over wills and "why should I keep a bedroom for someone who is only here four days a month" and "SC get double the Christmas presents", blah blah. It's foul.

If people throw rocks and come comment on something they have no lived experience your gonna get people take the mick out of you. If I have someone who has no medical knowledge on how to do a medical procedure, came and told a surgeon what they should do you, what they should do and challenged the surgeon they would be ridiculed. On here people with no experience come along and say some really unkind things and expect to be allowed to do it with no consequences
The exception to that one is BM which is often used by mistake, but all of us know it's not the correct terminology and is a Americanism . But the rest of the names mentioned well sometimes the shoe fits 🤷🏼‍♀️
I'm also a DM and a first wife and I haven't ever been called those names on here and I don't mind them because I know deep down I'm not like that.

You could say I was a 10ft male with massive buck teeth and I would think your ridiculous and take no notice, if you said I obviously have made poor choices on the male front (then that would hurt because the truth does hurt). If anyone is truly triggered by these terms maybe look into why.

Anyone even vaguely approaching normal would feel sorry for the kids who didn't ask to be dragged into all that toxic nonsense.

Again most SP do feel sorry for their SC because they are being damaged by their parents and the parents seem to over look this and blame one but themselves for the mess they created. If you want to avoid your DC having a step family, maybe either dont procreate with a plonker, or stay together for the kids, one thing you can't do is control feom the sidelines. You walk away from your family, this means contact time is no longer something you control. Period. And Don't shoot the SP for you know existing... even if it's easier.

@TheRigatonini that sounds awful. However if you post your personal experience of your "step mother" it is accepted. Often on her step mother's post their personal experiences of unreasonable mothers and they get jumped on by posters trying to justify some absolutely appalling behaviour purely based on the fact that person behaving badly is a mum and victim is a step mum.

Because some people think that both children's needs AND wants should come before anything else.

Needs - yes.

Wants - that depends on the situation at the time.

Life does not and should not solely revolve around the children. Especially not the stepchildren. That is not reality. What happens when they grow up and find they are not the centre of everyone's world. Talk about a short, sharp shock.

The sooner everyone learns what a compromise is - parents, stepparents, children, stepchildren the better.

From my perspective - and I have been reading this board a fair while now - it's the entitlement that the dsc are the most important people and the only ones to suffer as a result of the parental breakup and who should therefore be pandered to. (Won't you think about the children...)

A fair few (dare I say sensible posters) on this board tend to point out the unfairness of this and the impact it has on the family as a whole and then get a ton of abuse in return. I think this is why there is so much vitriol towards stepparent.

@TheRigatonini the mum and step mum in me, wants to give you a hug 💐

I also want to say this as gently as I can because I'm not trying to be a twat. No one can make anyone do something they aren't comfortable doing on some level.

Your SM maybe the devil (I don't know) but your dad made a choice and continued to make that choice and damage you and your siblings. Men often get a free pass with bad behaviour, standards are higher for mums than dads and unless she held a gun to his head. He had options. Not great options I'm sure but options.

Some men fail to reach that bar, your SM maybe a issue, but the bigger elephant in the room is your dad. He's had a choice, he's always had a choice and if you can try to see it passed the haze of villain and good guy and see it for shades of grey it probably is.

[quote candlelightsatdawn]@stealthninjamum I think it's honestly about humility and knowing your child and knowing them without ego.

My DSD is non Nero typical, mum was especially against us getting her help or even a diagnosis , even when we had to give away the family dog due to DSD actions. It took a long hard fight and a lot of trust to get her to get her to see one thing really simple. Addressing Negative or antisocial behaviour isn't saying the child is naughty or a bad kid, it's about recognising what your kid needs over what your perceptions of your child "is" and to help them be their best selves without the ego of saying but my child is perfect.

Thing is that you miss a trick by silencing a good step parent through ego. As step parents we can sometimes see a child's actions without the glaze of biologically produced hormones or the "this reflects on me" and that is actually quite something. If you shut down that talk, believe me a lot of children would be disadvantaged because they get trapped in power struggles of their parents and dynamics which they didn't chose due to the first marriage breaking down and are damaged by those actions.

As a mum it's so hard to hear your child has misbehaved or acted in a antisocial way, I totally am with the you, but if you take the stigma away from that and can ask the question ok so what happened, what went wrong today, what can we do to fix it, thats the key. Not the label naughty (it's a red herring) which just a label with little meaning without context.

If you want a fruitful SP relationship to work you have to go into it as a mum without ego. Hard when this is your most loved thing in the world but it's for the better of the child. I would be worried if my partner was alarmed at me reaching out to my support system. That in any other guise would be coercive and abusive. Sometimes people need to talk outside of their home sphere because the people in it are just to close. They can't see the word from the trees.

Yes a good portion of posts are DH issues masked as children issues, but when people always centre the step family dynamics around the SC I mean it's not surprising that's how it comes out.

Shaming someone for having negative feelings doesn't make the feelings get any less, if anything it makes it more.

[/quote]
This is such a good post. DP actually picked up on something way before he met the kids because I used to chat to him with headphones on while I did stuff around the house and the kids were always there (lockdown). He pointed out that I was treating them unfairly and coming down too hard on the eldest. Nobody in the close family had said anything, indeed it may even have been a family tendency. It took me a few moments to swallow my immediate defensiveness and consider what he'd said and a few days of mulling it over to notice that he was absolutely correct. I am so grateful he had the insight, courage (and tact!) to raise it with me gently. It's changed my relationship with my eldest for the better and has improved DS' self esteem too.

That was when I first started thinking about introducing DP to the kids.

I think defensiveness is a large part of the reason the step parenting boards are so contentious. It was addressed enough accepting those comments from the man I loved. If my exh's girlfriend was making similar ones I think I'd lash out without considering her points and I suspect that is what often happens on here - posters recognise parts of their own situation and get defensive then lash out, which is part of the reason along with others mentioned by PP.

I think some people take a very black and white view that if you get with a man with children, then your life revolves around them. That straight up causes a lot of problems. If you think like that then you’re absolutely bound to hate threads on here because it shows how unrealistic you are.
There are a lot of mums on here who aren’t with their children’s fathers any more, and I believe a lot of them think like that.

They aren’t getting a hard time though, very, very often there’ll be some woman posting about her boyfriends kid who she has been drafted in to parent, because he can’t be bothered. People quite rightly point out that it’s not her issue to sort, and maybe have a think before breeding with a man who already is proven to be a deadbeat, and usually she’s already impregnated by him, or ‘loves’ the loser. And so, more screwed up kids continue the depressing cycle.

Where are all the men, handwringing and writing long posts online, questioning their parenting skills, development and behaviour of their new lovers kids? Hmmm…

@stealthninjamum I mean this is the nicest possible way but I think your circumstances are different to what most SMs experience. Your child has autism and even I would be upset if someone then found them annoying or unable to cope with.

A lot of us have experienced a child or children (or even exwife) who are deliberately causing problems in a family - either because parents are so worried they will lose said child to the other parent they do anything to keep them eg no boundaries or tolerating unacceptable behaviour which would not be tolerated in the nucleus family.

In my experience it's been both father and mother to blame and me being caught up in the middle. I can't remember which poster spoke of the SC not being able to alienate the parent so blames the SM for the problems. I have made mistakes which I am happy to hold my hands up too - but then I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had never been a parent and yet I was expected to be handson and create a family unit but having no authority in anything. Things have changed but it's been a hard slog and it's still quite tough.

@candlelightsatdawn you speak to me in spades and are absolutely spot on with your posts.

@KiloWhat I read your post this morning and it's one of the reason's i posted today. I just thought WTAF?

As for language and tone - yes things to get lost and misinterpreted. Saying that I don't know who coined the phrase Golden Uterus but it's a classic and I've recently discovered Nachokids which I wish I'd come across years ago *-)

@sadpapercourtesan

I think it's because blended families are, almost without exception, a total clusterfuck. Everyone is angry and resentful and the children are the ones being shortchanged, while often being blamed for the whole mess at the same time.

I've been on MN since 2003 and I've seen the same pattern time and time again. However fine the intentions are when a couple get together, when there are existing children the situation always devolves into the same nightmare of petty resentments and bitterness. Terms like "golden uterus", "bm" and "poor deprived child, haha", squabbling over wills and "why should I keep a bedroom for someone who is only here four days a month" and "SC get double the Christmas presents", blah blah. It's foul. Anyone even vaguely approaching normal would feel sorry for the kids who didn't ask to be dragged into all that toxic nonsense.

This isn't actually true in rl.

The posts on MN only showcase the worse of blended families.

My family and friends where all adults behave appropriately, even if they need some prompting from others around them to do so, don't need to post on MN.