Don’t want stepson all the time

[Sky1248]

I want to see if I’m being unreasonable at all and all comments are greatly welcomed!

I have been with my partner for nearly 7 years and when I first met my step son he was just turning 2! He was always very clingy to his dad and I always tried which sometimes I loved having him and sometimes I dreaded it!

we now have a 3 year old and 9 month old together and sometimes I appreciate the times it’s just me my husband and my kids however my husband is saying he wants our stepson included in everything and wants to invite him to absolutely everything! Even my 30th meal I said don’t worry about inviting him as he’s quite rude to my family that were coming but my husband was adamant he wanted him to come.

i have no person issue with my step son I do find him a bit spoilt and he has such a better life with his mum always doing nice things so I don’t know why my husband always wants him with us.

am I unreasonable to say I sometimes want to do things without him and just our kids?

And the whole "step children stop visiting because of meanie step mum" is just another way this is shown. If we just expected dad's to parent their own kids in the way women and mothers are expected to then really there wouldn't be much, if any expectations on a step mother anyway.

The amount of times on here I read "yes he's shit but you shouldn't take it out on the children" I.e. carry on doing everything for them even though their own dad won't because WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILD. It's laughable. How about placing the blame exactly where it should lie... the DAD/man. If he's a shit parent he's a shit parent and it is never the responsibility of his partner to make up for that by sacrificing her own time/work/money/mental health.

I mean c'mon, how many step fathers do you think are out there that are left to do all of the care for their DSC whilst the mum swans off to work every weekend without even asking or saying anything until the night before? Or however many of the other scenarios we see here time and time again of MEN dumping the responsibility of their children onto their female partners.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/stepmonster/201106/why-its-easier-love-stepfather-stepmother
The trouble is that so many people talk in stereotypes when discussing stepparents. @PapaIndigoTangoAlpha @ShakeNvacStevens describe the stereo type of the stepfather going golfing etc when his step children visit., Interestingly, I do know one stepfather who coaches his stepdaughter's football team. In real life I don't know of any stepfather who abandons his wife's family to play golf. In the same way talking about the wicked stepmother stereotype is dangerous. Both stereotypes don't help the concept of the blended family. Dangerous thing, generalising in this way.

Half the time they don’t even need to be leaving the house to be passing on their parental responsibility. I don’t know about others but when I say I’m not doing their lunch, I’m not looking after them. I’m not doing x y or z for them he actually takes offence and is shocked I won’t do it. I think for a lot of men as evident in the utterly exhausted and fed up women, most men have a tendency to just expect the woman to do what the kids mother does without any control or discipline and it’s the silent expectation that’s a problem. Then the attitude when we refuse. What else can we do? We don’t want to be around the kids that are the reason for so many arguments / debates. If you can’t solve a problem you avoid it

@Brabican You misread my post, I've not said anywhere that stepfathers disappear off to do their hobbies. In my experience it's fathers who do this much more than mothers, and it's men who tend to do less than their fair share of housework etc than women even when as PP said they're not actually going off anywhere. Far from it being anecdata or a generalised stereotype this gender inequality is well documented with this article being one of many:

https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/43506-men-and-women-disagree-how-much-they-contribute-ho

It doesn't take much of a leap to concede there might be some validity in a stepmother posting that she has more expectations placed upon her vs a stepfather. In fact the link you posted from Psychology today actually supports this:

As it turns out, it's not just that most women with stepchildren try hard, at least initially. It's that they feel they have to, because they face significant challenges that a stepfather doesn't....Stepfathers, on the other hand, have a wider berth to step back and let things develop on their own with their stepkids. As one man with a stepson told me, "I wanted my wife to be a mother to my son. I even thought it should come to her 'naturally' somehow. But I didn't feel the pressure to be that to my stepsons. They already had a dad and I was clear about that. I was there to be someone extra to do things with them, listen to them, stuff like that'."

So it seems we're actually in agreement that the expectations placed on men and women in a step parenting role are not comparable?

As for golf, quite a few of the male managers at the last office I worked at played golf. I'd originally thought of football as my example - wish I'd stuck with that now!

Your husband is just being a good father.

His child willbe involved in most family occasions.

However, if your own birthday meal occurs on a day when SS is normally at his mother's then it is fine that he is not in attendance.