Anyone else not watch their SC?

[Tapasgoofy]

I see it a lot on here how loads of step mums watch their step children/child while their OH work, go out etc. A lot seem to resent it or get taken advantage of constantly..

Do many others have a similar Set up to myself? I pretty much never have my step child on my own. I don’t say yes to extra days at ours if my OH Isn’t about etc.
I will occasionally watch all the kids on the evening if they have gone up to bed and he ants to go out to see friends etc but that’s it.

I always feel my life is so much easier this way, less stress etc. Am I the odd one out?

Why would I need to have a bond with children that I would never see again if DH and I were to divorce ? In my case I'm very much dads wife. They have a mum. I don't want or need to have a motherly bond with them.

@MavisBeacon1234 you don't need to have a bond with them. I'm speaking from my experience.

Sorry to harp on about independent research but there is a great body of research which makes it clear that step mothers have more difficulty forming attachments with step children than step fathers do. I think the term used is the Cinderella complex.
The research does suggest that step parenting for women is a very difficult role.
The following is taken from an academic research paper
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/019251396017001002

Evolutionary views suggest that stepparents find it more difficult to parent stepchildren than to parent biological children. However, gender stratification perspectives suggest that stepmothers are more likely than are stepfathers to experience role conflict in acting as both a stepparent and a biological parent. Therefore, especially when new biological children are added to the stepfamily, stepmothers, more often than stepfathers, may experience greater relative difficulty parenting their stepchildren. Using a sample of 139 stepparents with both residential stepchildren and residential biological children, we determined that stepmothers are in fact more likely than are stepfathers to find it more difficult to rear stepchildren than to rear biological children.

In many ways it is surprising. In the animal kingdom, male lions will kill cubs that are not his own. It is a good trait in men that so many will accept step children and embrace them as their own. It is obviously not all positive news, step children are statistically more at risk of being physically harmed and even killed by step fathers than biological fathers.
I just wish it was more widely acknowledged on parenting websites that being a step mother is a really difficult role and that blended families can be difficult and stressful for all concerned. A lot of posters on here are quite clear that they would never take on someone else's children. It is not fair on the children unless the woman is very confident in her ability to love and be supportive to children who are not biologically her children. Particularly, now that there is growing likelihood of 50/50 custody

@Wildlog this research is great but it doesn't actually address why step mothers find it harder does it ? Just that it's harder

There is a enormous amount of evidence that mothers (even with the most involved OH) still do more than lion share of work when it comes to the home and children and that is a expected task on top of working ect ?

Personally I think because having a uterus means I have to do more of everything is fucking bullshit and that same thing applies to step mothers.

That said to all the people on here saying if you don't watch your DSc you obviously shouldn't be a step parent is massively missing the point. Women are not default childcare ffs.

If my DSc are coming to our house, they are here to see their dad and build a relationship with him. That doesn't mean you don't spend time with your DSc and develop a bond with them. It just means your a add on to the full meal.

Honestly these comments are laughable- I'm assuming if you split with your dh, you would be happy with your child calling another women mummy ?

🙄 wait that wouldn't be acceptable suddenly 🙄

This, essentially.

@Tapasgoofy

*I honestly read this and think they are taking you for a ride.

You pay 1/3 towards everything?

Your partner hit the jackpot.

and I don’t live with my step child 50% of the time. It’s a EOW arrangement per the mums request at the beginning.*

This kind of comment annoys me. Believe it or not I have my own mind. It's my choice. I've never been pressured into our arrangement. It's never been expected of me. As I said in my earlier post, it wouldn't work for everyone.

No one is taking me for a ride. I love my DSC. My time with them is precious. They mean the world to me. I contribute to their lives because I want to.

Each to their own but it doesn’t change my opinion or thoughts.

@Tapasgoofy that's great. I wasn't trying to change your opinion or mind. Just providing my own slant on my situation as a step mum

That said to all the people on here saying if you don't watch your DSc you obviously shouldn't be a step parent is massively missing the point. Women are not default childcare ffs.

This.

My SC are often looked after by my DP friends when he needs a babysitter and some of them - shock horror - are male who work with kids.

So why am I more qualified to look after my SC than them? Is it because I have a uterus?

Oh and when one of them looks after them my SC isn't subjected to hearing abuse after they have been interrogated by their mother. So as I actually care for my SC it is in their interests for me not to provide childcare most of the time.

@deflatedbirthday do you also get an equal say in decisions around the child? If you disagreed with the mother would your opinion hold equal weight? If so then I guess your situation is fair even it's not one that I or my dp and his ex would want.

If not then please protect your heart and your wallet by drawing some boundaries. If anything happened to your ex or you split up you would have no right to see the child if his ex decided that she didn't want to facilitate it.

I have a great bond with my step children. They refer to me as family and I care about them a great deal. I managed this without doing childcare while dp worked / socialised.

To all the step mums who do regular childcare, do you not think it's odd that your partners don't want to spend their contact time with their children?

@NewNameNigel I have equal say during our 50% time and for larger decision the three of us speak together. We're all involved with school.

For me, life is too short to think about the what ifs. I prefer to live in the moment and spend my time and money on what makes me happy now.

I appreciate him being an active and involved parent with all our kids, same as he appreciates me being a good parent as well. He doesn’t get bonus points for being a step parent turned adoptive parent. Why? Because that’s a form of ‘othering.’ As an adoptee himself, he doesn’t WANT special kudos. He’s simply her dad, the same as being a dad to the bio minions and it’s something he’s been incredibly blessed to be a part of. We both consider ourselves lucky to be a part of our kids lives, to watch and guide these amazing people as they grow.

Maybe that’s the basic difference. Neither of us consider parenting a burden. We both chose it, made the decision to be all in. Neither of us had good childhoods, so that absolutely impacted our decisions to become parents, and the kind of parents we wanted to be. We both know what it’s like to be ‘othered’ by family, him by adoption, me by having a stepparent and extended family who had no problem with treating us different because we weren’t REAL insert last name here

We all have to make the choices that work for us, and that we can live with.

@NewNameNigel my children's stepmothers didn't do childcare either.

@ChubbyMorticia Each to their own. Most people do not adopt their step child so are never their parent, so do expect "special points" for looking after them because it isn't their responsibility like their own kids are, they're helping out.

@ChubbyMorticia you are not at all talking about the same situation aa any one else here. Your partner is her adoptive dad not her step dad. My partner is also adopted and I think he'd find it offensive that you're equating the two.

Also, imagine if I had to come into dp's life and decided that dscs were mine and treating them as such with a view to adopting them. Do you think that would have been at all appropriate given that they have a great mother? Do you think the children would have wanted that? Not to mention how their mum would have reacted.

I feel like you're taking your own very unique situation and using it to pass judgement on people who are in very different scenarios.

@ChubbyMorticia I think most people know the difference between dad not on the scene and then you'd dh adopting your kids vs blended family where mum and dad are very much on the scene.

It's got nothing to do with how much you guys love parenting or your background.

Its dynamics in your family are so far removed from the norm in step families (not that there are many norms with step families) that comparing the two comes across wilfully ignorant and or naive.

Since you don't have to deal with ex partners or existing family dynamics that contribute to making blended families tricky - your comparing apples and oranges and saying oranges are awful 😂

Yep, I am in the same boat. The one exception was during lockdown when DP was deployed into a different role that had him working out of the house while I was WFH and so DSC were with me during the day but in the circumstances it was fine.

@NewNameNigel , he was her stepfather for well over a decade prior to adoption. So he’s had both legal roles.

When you choose a partner that has children, you’re choosing to accept them as well, imo. Not as a burden, people to tolerate, but as family members who should be treated as such.

I’ve been the stepkid who experienced the division between hers, his and ours. Not something I’d put a kid through.

Step parent is not a legal role.

Yours bears little to no resemblance to the experiences of people who have come to their relationship with children from past relationships on both sides.

Stepparent is a legal role in Canada, afaik. On forms and everything, at least where I’ve lived (each province has their own family laws).

And I’ve been the stepkid, so I’d say my experience from the other side is valid. You disagree with my perspective, and that’s fine, but doesn’t mean my lived experiences are wrong.

DH looks after my DS sometimes when work demands I leave the house for the day and it's during the school holidays, but this is rare and with prior agreement from DH.

@ChubbyMorticia But whether or not you're of the opinion that a step parents should need to be fully involved, and never do anything that suggests they are less responsible for their SC than they are for their own DC to spare the SC's feelings, that doesn't negate the fact that the parent can and should feel grateful to them for doing it, and recognise that they did not have to and have done a great act of kindness to them and their DC by doing so.

That’s interesting, I didn’t know that about Canada. It’s very much not in the UK, so step parents are between a rock and hard place. Absolutely no clear boundary lines except the ones they themselves draw.

I’ve been a step child. My step parent had no children prior, so it was easier in that respect to just slot in and see me “as their own”.

As a step parent, I already had a child and to suddenly treat her as 1/4 would have a detrimental impact on her. Which is unfair. So we don’t. Finances for the children are separate. I pay for mine, he pays for his. I’m talking about clothing and expensive extra curricular activities there, not small things like sweets from the shop, trips to the park. That is the boundary line I drew. They are all treated the same in terms of behavioural expectations, emotional support and so on.

@ChubbyMorticia I don't see them as a burden to tolerate but as children who have two good parents who are responsible for them.

I'm also a step child and dad had one gf who tried to act like she was my mum and I hated it. I found her suffocating and overbearing and, looking back I made her life hell. That's not something I'd want to put a kid or myself through - this doesn't mean I see my step children as a burden.