Step mothering plays into the hands of patriarchy

[Stepmotheringthepatriarchysdream]

Dear step mothers,

Hi 👋 ex-step mother here. I hope you are okay in these difficult summer holiday times.

If you are struggling, please ask yourself whether the expectations placed on you by your partner, your partner’s ex, your partner’s children and society at large are fair, when compared with the expectations of a step father by the same people.

If you feel you are failing to personally thrive under the weight of said expectations, please don’t be surprised. It’s set up to cause you to fail.

Think about how it’s mainly women who contribute unpaid labour to our society to keep it running. Childcare, elderly parent care, emotional labour of family friends, organising play dates, Christmas, birthdays, holidays etc.

Observed inequalities:

•Often male partners just expect step mothers to take on emotional labour of running the home, fill in child care gaps and using their own money on children’s holidays/ activities, birthdays and Christmasses.

•Step fathers allow step children’s mother to meddle with timings so step mother has to endure a life where the calendar is dictated by an external force.

•Step mothers are up against assumptions that they are evil from children’s books (another woman hating strand) whilst simultaneously getting the rough end of the deal and doing all the work.

•Step mothers provide respite for birth mothers but their sacrifices are never acknowledged by anyone. Usually just criticised.

•SMs are scapegoated by everyone in the dynamic when things go wrong. Including their own partner, the person who she’s making these sacrifices for!

It is okay to:
•Not take on any kind of caring role of the children.
•To ask your partner to not label you a step mother. Unless you want this job title.
•To insist that children respect your boundaries and respect your home.
•To not have the presence of these children impact your personal finances negatively.
•To leave all parenting to child’s father.
•To go on holiday without step children.
•To not be liked. You won’t be anyway so make boundaries to respect yourself, you home, your sanity and your money.
•No one can force you to be a martyr so it’s important you show people how to respect you.

I hope this resonates with some of you. I wish someone who had told me years ago.
a I can’t believe how many times I hear step mothers talking about all of the free labour they’re doing for their step children.

This doesn’t happen to step fathers because women are usually covering everything.

You do realise you are talking about children here, not game pieces to move around a board?

Well my step father was wonderful and looked after me lots.
If you don't want to parent someone else's children don't get involved with someone with children.

Yanbu

Here we go!

It goes without saying that as another human being, you will treat these smaller human beings with respect and kindness!

Just because you’re not being the eternal martyr for them, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a good relationship with them. It’s the opposite. No resentment=good relationship.

No. If you do end up with someone who happens to have children, it is an option to not blindly sleep walk into a role, given to you by people who don’t care about exploiting all of your emotional and financial resources and throwing your sacrifice back in your face at any given opportunity.

@smilesup
You do realise you can get involved with a man with kids, but does not mean you have to you have to provide childcare right, as long as your kind and welcoming when they come is all that is needed, they coped with childcare before me they can cope without using me.

YANBU. Well said. The children have a father and a mother. When they’re with you the father can do the parenting. I wish more women felt they could place firmer boundaries for themselves.

Hi 👋🏻 step mother here. You should start your posts with 'some stepmothers'. Not all of us are bitter about the children of the men we marry. I am a step mother and was more than happy to take on parts of the parenting when role needed. I would never exclude them from a family holiday. I also have a step mother and a step father. Both of whom I love very much. And I seem to be pretty well liked by my own step children. I was well aware when I married my DH that he had children that were part of the package, I didn't 'blindly sleep walk into a role'.

Absolutely.

No. I’m addressing all step mothers.
Glad you’re happy with your set up.

@Stepmotheringthepatriarchysdream well you certainly do not speak for me thank you.

That is your privilege. Happy for you.

I would have thought stepfathers do far more of the day-to-day childcare stuff than SM, purely because most kids generally spend more times at their mother’s house than their dads.

If a SM is a SAHP because the SC’s dad provides for her, is some childcare for the SC not part of that deal?

To balance your initial post, which I agree does happen, sometimes it is step mothers who are the driving factor in demanding unnecessary access to step children.

My ex's new woman spent years demanding (not suggesting) that our ds go and spend weeks with them, despite ex being happy to visit ds in my home, ds preferring that, and me leaving the house so they could have father & son time together.

New woman (when ds was very small) made a case for her & ex having full custody 'because I worked, while she didn't, and it made much more sense'.

New woman kept sending parcels to ds, toys that she'd opened and packed the cavities with sweets. Or sending ds(9) a self help book for Xmas though he is a normal, happy well balanced child and not in need of any 'help'.

I spent a decade fending off her interference. DS is now shaving, and she has finally given up, 😀

I suppose what I'm saying is that every circumstance and approach varies. Step mothers include the good and the bad.

You're kind of making the OP's point here...!

As much as this isn't my experience, I'm very lucky to have a supportive DH and I also love being a stepmum, I do understand where you're coming from. You only have to read the step-parenting board to see that there are plenty of women miserable in the role, taken advantage of, treated badly by stepkids, having their life dictated to my the ex.

Also, my DH took on his ex's son as his own from the age of 2, he calls him dad and he spends more time at our house than his mum's so there are definitely some amazing stepdads out there, but there's definitely less pressure on them and much less expected of them compared to stepmums.

I don’t think so. Men are attracted to single mothers because they can become another child in the home set-up, with myriad systems created by the woman in order to nurture the children.

You hear it all the time. Men being pretty useless domestically. It’s undeniable.

Single mothers are vulnerable in a way that single men aren’t for the reasons you state.

Financially they’re usually at a disadvantage because they have the majority of care of the children so can’t physically work as much or for as much.

Why get involved with someone with kids? If you don't want to be involved with someone else's kids, don't be involved with someone's who has kids.

It's not that you're unreasonable as such, a lot of what you say is true, but individual men have a choice about whether to go along with thr privilege the patriarchy is offering them. If the specific man in question is such that you need these kinds of boundaries in order to protect yourself then that man is an arsehole and yoi shouldn't be involved with him. If he's not an arsehole then these boundaries don't need to be quite so rigid because they are anticipated and respected as a matter of course. Too many women get involved with a divorced man believing his version of events as to why the previous relationship failed, and don't find out that the problem was actually him all along until their lives are tangled into the mess themselves.

Please never use the phrase birth mother in the context of step parenting. That phrase is useful in the context of adoption in a situation where the birth mother has no active parenting role. It is really insulting and offensive to use it of your partner's children's mother.

I didn’t say we shouldn’t be involved with kids.
There’s involved and there’s exploited.
Two completely different things.

Sorry you found the term birth mother offensive.

So much misogyny is internalised, so I think even we’ll meaning good men can be acting out in auto-pilot based on society’s models that they’ve grown up seeing.

Hence why I’m pointing this stuff out to raise awareness and to push back against the current narrative.

There's being involved and then there's having the bulk of the work dumped on you. Being expected to cook and washing clothes for the kids, do the school run, implement routine and boundaries while dad works for 12 hours a day and goes to play football or out with his mates at the weekend. And if the SM complains it's because she must hate the kids and she knew what she was getting into.

Exactly this!

I think there's some truth in what you say, but it does read somewhat like the SM is just a passive bystander with no agency of her own. I'm a step mum and my DH has never tried to exert any of those behaviours on me. But then I'm not the passive type and wouldn't enter into a relationship where that was the expectation.

Step mothers are up against assumptions that they are evil from children’s books (another woman hating strand) whilst simultaneously getting the rough end of the deal and doing all the work.

This is the point I would question. Step mothers can behave badly in sensitive situations which adds to this stereotype, so there is a need to recognise that. There can be a need to control and dominate that impacts the blended family dynamic. My own experiences with my SM have born this out. My brother recently broke up with a woman who was trying to dictate when he should see his kids in his house (they didn't live together) and demonstrated some very controlling behaviours early on.

I referenced research in a previous thread that stepfathers are more likely to be expected to absorb step children, to financially pay for them and to act as a father.

www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/stepmonster/201106/why-its-easier-love-stepfather-stepmother

There is also research that shows men find it much easier to accept in laws (SILS, MILS, BILS than women.

Do some research. Probably women should think hard about becoming a step parent because historically women find it harder than men.
Also men traditionally have been expected to work and support their families. Many women retire much earlier than men although they live longer because they take on a caring role for their own parents. Traditionally they do not do this for their husbands parents. There are exceptions but statistically men make 'better' step parents than women and are more accepting of their in laws.