STEPDADS GET A TROPHY, STEPMOMS GET THE GUILLOTINE–WTF, SOCIETY?

Why is it that a stepdad gets a round of applause just for showing up to a school play, while a stepmom doing the same is accused of “trying too hard”? Why is one seen as a hero and the other as an intruder?And let’s be real—this isn’t just a general societal issue. This is a woman vs. woman issue. A full-blown Mom vs. Stepmom War, where stepdads get to coast by on “good intentions,” while stepmoms are scrutinized under a microscope. Why is it that stepmoms get hate?

Is it jealousy? Is it deeply ingrained gender roles? Or are we just so programmed to see stepmoms as competition instead of allies? Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: Stepmoms never seem to get a break—especially from other women.

And, what role do men play in perpetuating this issue, if at all?

I WAS A STEPMOM BEFORE I WAS EVEN A MOTHER

I was a stepmom at seventeen years old.

Yep, I was a senior in high school and I was already a stepmother. And, a super excited one at that. All that I had ever wanted was to be a mother–even a step mother! Granted, my stepson lived over 4,400 miles away from me in Germany–but, I was still a stepmom!

And, in some regards, it made the effort that I had to put into bonding with him even more monumental and labor intensive; I didn’t have the luck or leisure of him visiting every other weekend.

I made it my mission to connect with him and made maintaining communication with him a priority.

My First BioMom Experience

In addition, I got my first experience with a very angry, volatile bio-mom. In her defense, my (ex) husband had not seen his son since he was four years old; didn’t pay child support; didn’t communicate with him…essentially, for all intents and purposes, abandoned him. Then, she had some random girl from The United States calling out of the blue asking to be her sons stepmom? To put it mildly, she told me off! And, I understood.

But, I wanted this boy to know that he was going to have siblings in the US and that there was a stepmom who did care for him, even if I had never met him. I did the only thing that I could do to try to earn his mothers trust: I started paying child support, I wrote letters, sent pictures and gifts. I didn’t pretend that his dad was sending any of it. They knew it was from me. Once I started to have my own children, I wrote to him about his brothers and sent him pictures of the boys as they were growing up.

At eighteen years old, my stepson traveled to the US. His father and I divorced by that time, but I went to the airport to pick him up and he stayed with me and his brothers his first night here. He knew that I cared and that I was going to do the work to have a relationship with him.

He is almost forty now and he knows that I love him still to this day!

BLESSED WITH THE BEST. WHEN STEP PARENTING WORKS.

When I remarried, I fell in love with my step children even before I fell in love with their father. I was doing a church drama and was supposed to wait in the hall before going onstage with other cast members. Some of those cast members were my step-daughters (to be). I just thought that they were precious. They were seven and nine years old at the time and so talkative and full of energy. They have a younger brother who was five years old, too, but he didn’t hang out with us for the drama.

I was their stepmother for almost fourteen years and I loved those children like they were my very own in every way possible. The years that I had with them were blessed ones.

And, I credit a large part of that to their mother. Their mother always said that as long as I loved her children, she and I were good.

I was lucky that our personalities and roles as mothers were distinctly different; and, she was a very mature woman who was confident in her own skin. She never felt threatened by me (that she ever showed or expressed, at least). Her children’s happiness was her priority; and, if that meant letting them love me and me love them, she wasn’t going to get in the way of that.

Well Behaved Kids Make Good Stepkids

It, also, helped that she expected respect and good behavior from her children. Our homes had very similar expectations.

As for their father, you will read in other posts that he was a very abusive man. I endured some hard things during our marriage, but I was always grateful that he expected the children to treat me and talk to me with respect. That laid a very important foundation that a thriving relationship was able to grow out of.

Both parents carried out their own respective roles. My ex husband didn’t expect me to be the stand in father. It was not my responsibility to communicate details of parenting time with his ex-wife. Honestly, I can only remember one time out of thirteen and a half years when she and I talked about kid related issues.

Once the children were in my home, I took on the role of mom. I was still “Jennie”, but I did all of the duties of a mom, expect discipline. I did not discipline the children. For one, they rarely ever needed to be disciplined, honestly. Secondly, their father was a present and engaged parent. He did not abandon his role as their primary (biological) parent.

While our marriage caused me a lot of trauma, my step-parenting experience was nothing but a blessing to me. Their dad and I have been divorced for almost sixteen years now and I am still in contact with my step children and love them passionately, as always.

I give their mom a lot of the credit for allowing me the safety, freedom and abandon to love her children. She treated us as allies–and I am grateful for that.

MY WAKE UP CALL

My experiences since then have been very stereotypical–sadly. I want to walk gingerly through my final experiences because a lot of healing and headway has been made, in my opinion. I don’t want to disturb relationships that are intact or hopefully still healing. The family experienced a death that was very tragic that unfortunately opened important communication, which brought revelation and healing. I don’t want that tragedy to be in vain. But, for the sake of transparency and advice in this article, I will talk about my own experience with as much tact as possible.

I did get married again. I married a man that I had known for a very long time. We attended church together. His kids and my kids had grown up around one another. His ex-wife was my children’s youth pastor, for crying out loud.

It was the same scenario as I had before: two step-daughters and one step-son.

I was so excited to have girls in the house again. I had been super close with my previous step-son. So, it was nothing for me to add one more boy to my five boy clan.

But, the experience was nothing at all like I had expected or could have even imagined.

Reality Hit Hard and Quick

The experience was pretty textbook as step-parenting life is laid out in the remainder of this text–and, the topic of this post. I was the evil stepmom. BioMom sent texts threatening to “kick my ass” over things her kids were telling her. Her mother–the children’s maternal grandmother–was even in the fray making threats. It was total chaos!

If I tried to bond with them, I was rejected as overstepping; If I pulled back, I was treating my own children better than my stepchildren; If I tried to use my own experiences and expertise to help my stepchildren, I was acting like I was better than bio-mom; If I talked to the kids about cleanliness and hygiene, I was “vain and materialistic”; If I gave them weekly chores, I was “picking on them”; If I had to discipline my stepson, I was told that I “thought my sons were better than him”.

And, I will tell you, once the well has been poisoned, it is hard to recuperate any trust.

Sara Abdel Aziz wrote about her struggle to bond with her step daughter. She talked about how she endured passive aggressive treatment from her step daughter for quite some time until finally, one day, the clouds parted. She wrote the following excerpt for her article in WHAT WOMEN WANT:

“It wasn’t until the last few days of the entire vacation that she started loosening up to me and allowing me to braid her hair the way I braid mine. “Sara? You’re not as bad as they said you would be,” she said. That was when I realized she had been told to act that way, she had been a victim, just like myself.

Children are walking parrots. They repeat anything you say in front of them. And stepchildren, in particular, are parrots and cassette recorders. They’d memorize anything said and retell it. That could be good and bad. Good because anything you do for them is communicated to their mothers. Bad because anything you do to them or do at all is communicated to their mothers.” Sara Abdel Aziz You can read the full article at: Why Does Disney Hate Us Stepmothers So Much?

Stepkid Dynamics Can Destroy Marriages

It was maddening. And, I admit that just months into this new marriage I already knew that I had made a catastrophic mistake. I won’t sugar coat that one. My previous marriage was very abusive–all categories of abuse. After our divorce, I stayed single–not even dated–for three years. My life was peaceful. I had created a life that I really loved and enjoyed. And, in the matter of a signature on a piece of paper, my home was hijacked by chaos and oppression. I no longer had any control over the atmosphere in my home.

Please hold any judgment of bio-mom for a little bit–at least some judgement. I mean, she chose to send the texts that were sent and say the things that were said; but, I have some enlightening information that you will read over the next few paragraphs that will bring some clarification.

BIO DAD DROPS THE BALL

In fairness to my step children and their mother, I put a lot of responsibility in their fathers lap.

Moms tend to be the primary caregivers after divorce, so bio moms and stepmoms often end up in a silent war. My ex immediately put the care and raising of his children on me; which wasn’t fair to me or them. I would bring issues to him that he would ignore–things that I could not ignore, either. I hated that part. His ex and her family, I can only assume, thought that I was taking on this role because I wanted it. I wanted to just be the step mom, the support role; I didn’t want to become their dad.

As well, I knew going into the marriage that our families had two completely different lifestyles. So, I had his children coming to my home a few days of the week after school until he got off of work to get acclimated to us and for us to get acclimated to them. I thought that this was a healthy transition. I was upfront about chores in the home, etc. He always signed off on everything–total agreement! But, once his family moved into our home, he sabotaged all of the work that we did.

His kids cried if I asked them to fill the dishwasher; and, he would excuse them from their chores. My kids didn’t understand why his kids were excused from normal daily duties and they were not.

Another small offense: all of the kids knew that they were to take their shoes off when they came into the house and put them on the mat at the door; but his kids would take their shoes off, walk them over and purposely sit them on the carpet out of spite. And, when I would tell Dad, he would just shrug his shoulders in defiance. (This was hard for me because my home is primarily hardwood floors. So, a household “rule” is to just keep shoes off of the carpets, which were very few. It was a really easy request to fulfill as the carpet is sparse).

If BioDad Doesn’t Respect His Wife, His Kids Probably Won’t Either

One situation, we actually went to counseling and discussed–to the therapists shock! My husband and his son had been at a job site and their boots were filled with clumps of mud. They walked in through the garage (where they should have taken off their boots), but step son came into the house, walked up three steps of the staircase with cream carpet and took his boots off there. I came home to my stairs covered with muddy boots and muddy footsteps. When I asked why, Dad just told me to get over it. Thankfully, the therapist pointed out the simple–and, obvious–act of taking muddy boots off in the garage and the total act of disrespect that it was. Dad didn’t concede, though.

Dad was not a fair mediator between his ex, myself and the children. In fact, just before I filed for divorce, I asked to meet with his ex-wife. We sat down and for the first time compared notes. During this meeting, we discovered that my husband had been telling us two very different stories, pitting us against one another; and, avoiding all duties and responsibilities as a father with us as scape goats. (I discovered that he was doing this with several members of his family, too.) Areas where he was dropping the ball as dad, he was telling his ex-wife was on orders from me, for instance. I was shocked at the stories his ex-wife was told about me and our home environment. It was an extraordinary betrayal.

What is the point of stuff like this? Dad sets the tone of the relationship between step children and step mom. If he supports disrespect or acts of passive aggression from his children, its nearly impossible for step mom to recover any ground. Carpets can be cleaned, but the message that this sends is catastrophic…and, it was for us, for sure!

And, it didn’t start or stop at carpets. But, in the spirit of being gentle, I chose that as an example.

Not to mention, this situation has effected my current relationship. Be very wise about who you partner up with! It could have lasting consequences.

MOMS VS. DADS: CUSTODY, LOYALTY, AND GUILT

Oftentimes, the relationships that follow up a divorce happen way too soon; before the children have time to adjust to the change in their family unit and parenting schedule. In my experience–men especially–want to quickly move into a new relationship to proudly flash or parade in front of the other bio parent. This can quickly establish the new partner as a tool and threat to their family dynamics. In the case of bio dad flaunting his new girl, the children will see, hear and sense this whole childish dance and may feel guilty bonding with a stepmom. Children don’t want to betray their bio mom. If they liked dads new partner, the children may see this as hurting their mother, too.

But bonding with a stepdad? That’s usually seen as a good thing. Not always, as with my first husband and my second. My first husband did everything he could to sabotage any bonding with my first two sons and their step dad. Following that one experience, I witnessed bio dads being more appreciative of the role that the step dad played in their children’s lives.

My second husband was very grateful for his children’s step father. His children were allowed to bond with their step father (just not me). Their dad liked that the step dad taught them how to hunt and taught his son to “be a man” because he was, as I have stated, a very apathetic father while the kids were minors. The relationship that his children had with their step father was a convenient one for him; and, luckily, step dad was–and, is–a very easy guy to like.

Stepdad’s Have It So Easy

My children really liked my second husband, oddly enough, because he was so apathetic! People saw him as “a good man” simply because he was hands-off. Since my previous husband was so abusive, this new husband could get away with an apathy that would have otherwise looked like sheer laziness and neglect.

A stepdad can just “be there” and still receive praise. Meanwhile, a stepmom is often expected to handle all the emotional and physical labor of mothering—without overstepping the bio mom’s role.

When a stepdad is distant, people assume he’s “giving the kids space.” When a stepmom is distant, she’s labeled “cold and unloving.” A stepdad gets credit for showing up. A stepmom is expected to nurture, care, and discipline—but never “replace” the mom.

Parenting expectations set a much lower bar for men, while stepmoms are held to impossible standards. Stepdads have historically been given passes that stepmoms have not. Society embraces stepdad relationships but often treats stepmoms as competition rather than additional support.

Social Media Reinforces the Bias

Throughout all social media apps you can find stepmoms being slandered and bashed while posts about stepdads are upbeat and positive. Take a look at TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook and you will find more than plenty of examples of this. Stepdads are seen as gentle, devoted, involved, sexy or loving for their involvement–no matter how small–in their step children’s lives. Whereas, stepmoms are more or less threatened to ‘know her place’, or back off from “playing like a mom”.

DISNEY AND POP CULTURE HAVE BEEN TRASHING STEPMOMS FOR DECADES

Think about it: Cinderella, Snow White, and even modern movies like The Parent Trap all paint stepmoms as cold, evil, and power-hungry. From Cinderella to Snow White, stepmoms have been villains in storytelling for generations.

Meanwhile, stepdads in media? Usually depicted as the fun-loving, hardworking guys just trying to connect with the kids (e.g., Mrs. Doubtfire, Blended).

Society has been conditioned to mistrust stepmoms and root for stepdads.

THE HEROIC STEPDAD VS. THE OVERSTEPPING MOM NARRATIVE

Stepdads are seen as “stepping up” when they take an active role in their stepkids’ lives. Society views them as a bonus, an extra layer of support, and even a savior if the biological dad isn’t involved.

Stepmoms, on the other hand, are seen as “overstepping” when they try to be involved. They get called controlling, manipulative, or even accused of trying to replace the bio mom—no matter how much or how little they do. Stepmoms constantly get questioned: “Why is she acting like their mom?”

Example: A stepdad taking a kid to a baseball game is bonding. A stepmom taking a kid to get their nails done is crossing a line (Could you imagine!).

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Maybe it starts with dismantling the double standards—calling out the applause for stepdads who do the bare minimum while expecting stepmoms to be saints without recognition. Maybe it’s about bio moms and stepmoms choosing allyship over animosity, and dads stepping up instead of sitting back. This “evil stepmom” narrative is outdated and harmful. The reality is, stepmoms aren’t the villains of the story—society just loves to cast them that way. It’s time to rewrite the script.

If you are a stepmom, have you experienced or felt this bias towards you? How did you overcome it? Let us open a discussion on this issue of why stepmoms get hate in the comment section below!

If you would like to read my post on how to get your children used to living in two separate homes, you can click on the link.