I was a stepmother over a decade ago. For 8 years, from age 20 to age 28 to a 10-18 yr old boy, an 8-16 year old girl and a 4-12 year old girl.
Those children lived mostly with me and their dad, sometimes they'd flit to their mums for a few months, but mostly with us. He wasn't a very good dad and she wasn't a very good mum. I knew that about her but it wasn't so blatant with him until I was well and truly trapped.
Because of my own experience with a stepparent hating the children of the marriage when I was little, I tried my best for these kids even though I was little more than a kid myself and certainly closer to a sister in age than their mum. Despite this I cooked and cleaned and washed and shopped, clothed and provided makeup and cool shoes and music lessons and instruments and all the things they'd never have been able to do or have if I hadn't worked my arse off to provide them. I spent hours waiting outside counselling sessions for two of them, I drove them to their mums, I even paid their mum to have them when she had spent all her money on other stuff and couldn't feed them. I bought all the birthday and Christmas presents, and I made every birthday cake, exactly how they wanted. Did all the typical stuff like chores for pocket money, taught them to cook and bake, coached two of them through their GCSEs. I genuinely do feel I went far above and far beyond what was expected of me for these children.
BUT. I never did birthday parties. Two reasons. One- I couldn't afford them what with having 3 fully grown kids to support with zero maintenance from the other parent. Two- I felt that their PARENTS should do that, they were their kids, not mine, and I did everything I could do to make sure they were clean, fed, clothed and housed and that their mental health was taken care of. But their parents never pulled their fingers out of their lazy arses and did it. I would let them have friends over for tea or for a sleepover and when the older two were teens I paid for them and a couple of friends to go to the cinema and McDonald's.
Despite everything I did, they were vile to me. I tried not to take it to heart, they had a hard and very traumatic upbringing with their parents- more so than I realised since I was pretty much a kid being lovebombed by their dad and duped into sticking around. But yes, they were vile to me in so many ways, and when me and their dad split up, they said they never wanted to speak to me again for "using" their unemployed, deadbeat father, and none of them have contacted me for more than six years, which has been quite blissful! But today, I got a "Facebook user" message in my inbox, "hi skanky bitch! We saw your son's party pictures on Instagram. Funny how you can do parties for him, but never did for your stepchildren but I guess we weren't worth the money. You have to be a special kind of evil to never give a party to a child."
I imagine this is from the middle one. Who would be 28 now. I'm not usually bothered by nastiness from that direction but this really does upset me. I went without for 8 years and sacrificed so much to make them feel they had the same as anyone else because their parents wouldn't, and they repaid me with misery upon misery which necessitated 3 years of psychotherapy to overcome. And now, because I only had what my job paid me in the early part of the century instead of a magic money tree, some grown woman has messaged me just to be horrible to me. For never arranging and paying for an actual party for her or her siblings when she had two parents who claimed benefits I didn't know existed in order to look after their children. 😡😡
I don't think there's any point to this except to get it off my chest