Guest post: Stephanie blogs at group blog, The Hand Mirror. She lives with her partner and for almost half the time with his 5 year old daughter also. Consequently Stephanie has become a step-mother. Here is her response to my 10 questions about your feminist motherhood.
Stephanie’s response to these questions as a stepmother is a first and a very appropriate addition. In her response she raises some fascinating questions of her own (including many I’ve never previously considered) around the identity of motherhood and its preoccupation with biological mothers, in addition to the way biological mothers and stepmothers are pitted against one another.
(You can find all the many other responses in this series here. If you’d like to respond to these questions yourself you can either email me your answers and I’ll put them on blue milk as a guest post or you can post them elsewhere and let me know and I’ll link to them).
1. How would you describe your feminism in one sentence? When did you become a feminist? Was it before or after you became a mother?
I think I was a feminist before I realized there was feminism! ‘Girls can do anything’ was the government-sponsored mantra for girls growing up in my era. My liberal parents were very careful not to enforce stereotypical gender roles on their kids so growing up I thought nothing of joining the school’s cricket team even though I was the only girl and then I went to a liberal multi-cultural girls’ school where we learned feminist texts and had to take on leadership roles. It was only when I went out into the big bad world and realized that the ideals I had been raised with weren’t mainstream, they were considered feminist.
2. What has surprised you most about motherhood?
That I’ve become one! I think this is true for many stepmothers who don’t have biological children, one day we are own person the next we have these little people that are suddenly in our lives. There’s no period of getting used to the concept of being a parent through pregnancy and no birth to officially ‘mark’ the point in which we become a parent. I think that’s why feel like I gatecrashing some exclusive party. Biological motherhood is placed so high on a pedestal that any questioning of the status is akin to wondering if there is a god. And by our very existence, stepmothers question the status of motherhood which is why our experience of motherhood is frequently belittled by the admonishment all stepmothers love to hate, ‘you’re not the child’s mother.’ I am aware I am not the child’s official mother, the child is aware that I am not her ‘real’ mother. Now that that has been clarified can everyone just move on?
Because despite not having the official title ‘mum’ I have done tasks we associate with motherhood. During my time as a stepmother I’ve cleaned up vomit, diffused tantrums, and generally tried to impart some of my knowledge on this kid to help her take her place in our society. I’ve also had to make all these sudden adjustments to my life now that the Child is my life. When the Child lives with my partner and I, my life is no longer entirely mine. I have to give so much of my physical and emotional energy to caring for the Child but there’s been very little support or acknowledgment of this life transition in the same way as the arrival of a new baby often brings together a community of support around a new biological mother.
New stepmothers often have to deal with so many commonly held negative prejudices around us from being wicked to the children or the stereotypical ‘other woman’ that broke up the first marriage. Moreover most of the community don’t recognize our relationship with our stepchildren as being *real* until we marry our partners even if we have lived with them for years. We also have two external conflicting emotional demands to contend with. Firstly we feel pressure from both our partners and sometimes from our stepchildren of feeling like we have to love the children involved immediately as ‘our own’ while at the same time we have all and sundry constantly reminding us that we should be not loving them in the same way as ‘their’ mother. This makes it hard for us to develop our own relationship with our stepkids which will likely be different from a biological mother-child relationship but will hopefully still have value and worth.
If I was to encapsulate the stepmother experience in one sentence it would be ‘if you think raising your kids is hard, try raising someone else’s.’
3. How has your feminism changed over time? What is the impact of motherhood on your feminism?
I would say that my feminism changed a lot when I went overseas and realized how much my wealth and skin colour really do give me so much freedom. As for stepmotherhood? I’ll get back to you in 13 years 😉
4. What makes your mothering feminist? How does your approach differ from a non-feminist mother’s? How does feminism impact upon your parenting?
What makes my mothering feminist is that I do think critically about the experiences we give our stepdaughter and the way that decisions over small things help shape her character. The child’s mother is a non-feminist which creates inherent tensions. The child has so much pink princess stuff it looks like a flamingo threw up in her room and for the last six moths I’ve been silently grinding my teeth as Ive heard ‘Girls do this/Boys do that’ replayed millions of times and wondered why no one could tell her about the different body parts with their real names so that we could move on from forcing outdated gender stereotypes on this little girl. But part of being a stepmother is knowing which battles to pick. While pink frilly stuff and baby language for body parts annoy me, they are things I just let go as the shitstorm that would ensue from describing the actual difference between boys and girls would outweigh any benefits. Where possible I try to offer alternatives some of which the child likes others of which never see the light of day.
5. Do you ever feel compromised as a feminist mother? Do you ever feel you’ve failed as a feminist mother?
Constantly! The division of labour is a huge issue in our household. My partner works in a high pressure job with the attached hours and earns far more than I ever will which has equity implications. I do a lot more of the ‘housework’ and he brings home more of the cash Because I don’t share as a closer bond with the child as my partner sometimes has difficulty understanding why I need time to take a step back from the Child when I feel like she has exhausted all my energy.
The other problem I have as a feminist stepmother is that I feel that I am constant warfare with the child’s biological mother. Feminism teaches us that we must support each other as women in our roles, even if we disagree. To that end, I try to be respectful of the relationship that the child has with her biological mother, never saying a bad word about her within earshot of the child and helping the child make Christmas cards and Easter eggs. Unfortunately this respect has not been reciprocated and from day 1 I’ve been the enemy. I’m mature enough to realize that the personal attacks and constant badmouthing from the maternal family aren’t about me personally but more about my position as a stepmother. But that still makes me feel like I am failing at stepmotherhood because no matter how hard I try to care for the child, my efforts are never going to be good enough because I am not the biological mother of the child .
There isn’t the same inherent tensions in the biodad/stepdad relationship which I find interesting and I suspect is because it is acceptable for men to derive identities from multiple sources while motherhood is pushed on girls as being the only real choice from before we can talk.
6. Has identifying as a feminist mother ever been difficult? Why?
Amongst the other difficulties associated with stepmotherhood, my partner is involved in a rather messy custody dispute with his ex. Our parenting decisions are literally being judged by others on frequent basis, whether that be by the child’s mother or the officials involved in the case. Some of my ideas go against ‘mainstream’ ideas of what a ‘good’ stepmum should do and I constantly worry that these ideas may cost my partner the relationship with his child.
Writer after writer urges stepmothers to step back and defer completely to the children’s father when it comes to discipline, leaving all responsibility to him. I don’t believe that is healthy for anyone in our family for me to say “oh well, let him handle it” while I passively stand back and remove myself from a situation that is intimately entwined with my life. And it seems that step-parents are the only group in society that are routinely told that we have no authority over the children we care for. Adults in other settings with young children like schools, pre-schools, babysitters, sports teams etc. are never to told just be the kids’ friend and leave discipline to someone else. So I think telling stepmums to just ‘stand back’ infantlizes us and tells us that our value as a person is always going to be diminished by our stepchildren.
Being a feminist stepmother means that I refuse to give up the right to being an adult in my home just because the child’s biological parents aren’t living under the same roof. The argument that stepmothers should not disrupt things for the sake of the child often leads to stepmothers being treated poorly by our stepkids, our partners and the biological mothers of our stepchildren which I don’t think is healthy for anyone and it is so unnecessary. In general stepmothers didn’t disrupt the family’s routines, the divorce/death meant that family life was often already disrupted before we entered the picture and no matter how hard we try to pretend life is always going to be different for the child/children of that family. Stepmothers shouldn’t be punished for the biological parents’ separation and shouldn’t be the only ones always compromising who we are for the ‘best interests of the child.’ We deserve to have ours needs met just as much as the other members of our families.
I think things would be a lot easier for everyone if there wasn’t this horrible dichotomy for stepmothers of being either some spiteful, evil woman or a selfless Mother Theresa-type giving of her everything to her husband’s first life. In reality, I’m just a woman who happened to fall in love with a guy that had a little bit more of a past than most and I love him enough to accept that past as part of our future together.
7. Motherhood involves sacrifice, how do you reconcile that with being a feminist?
In many ways I think stepmothers have it a bit easier on the ‘you must sacrifice everything for your children in order to be a good mother’ front. There have been times where I’ve had to detach from a situation stating ‘not my kid, not my problem’ in order to keep sane. But then I also have to deal with the weight of constant third party scrutinization of my decisions means that in many ways I have to sacrifice my feminist ideals in order to manage our parenting relationship.
An excellent example of this sort of power plays in a stepfamily in our house was the laundry situation. The Child would often go through 3-4 outfits over the course of the day all of which ended up dumped on the floor by the end of the day. Guess whose responsible for laundry in our house? That would be me. When my partner was solely in charge of setting the rules, the child’s happiness was seen as being the only determining factor so anything would go and I ended up feeling very angry and resentful of all this unnecessary work being created by her stays. I eventually offloaded the responsibility of laundry on to him if I wasn’t going to have a say in setting the house rules involving the creation of laundry then which lead to even more chaos and resentment. Eventually we were able to come to the conclusion that the child would not be permitted to have multiple wardrobe changes and that she would be responsible for tidying up her clothes. The child wasn’t too happy about this enter biological mother and grandmother who were outraged at the new rules being set down down due to my presence. This incident prompted repeated torrents of abuse directed at my partner about what a horrible person I was for trying to lay down some ground rules in our house.
So just a simple family situation can lead to quite intense scrutiny of my motives and also of me as person. Somehow my feelings are more suspect because I am the stepmom. If I express displeasure about something, I must be bitter. If I express happiness about something, I must be selfish. If I criticize the biological mother, I must have an inflated sense of importance, because who the hell do I think I am—I’m only Daddy’s girlfriend. In the end we stuck to our guns on the laundry situation but we are constantly asking ourselves ‘how will the maternal family/a judge interpret our decisions.’ Even in a non-acrimonious situation the parenting decisions we make are not always our own and this involves sacrifice.
8. If you have a partner, how does your partner feel about your feminist motherhood? What is the impact of your feminism on your partner?
My partner was raised by a feminist mother and pro-feminist father so feminist mothering isn’t some alien concept to him. He knows he has to be involved and in someways will always have the leadership role in parenting the child. But I do think my presence has prompted him to start think critically about the parenting decisions he makes and the experiences he gives his daughter. It will be interesting to watch how the dynamics of my family would change if my partner and I were to have biological children together.
9. If you’re an attachment parenting mother, what challenges if any does this pose for your feminism and how have you resolved them?
Obviously as someone without any biological connection to my child who came in later in the piece, attachment parenting doesn’t really figure into the stepmothering equation so I will flip the question and ask what challenges does stepmothering pose for feminism?
I think the biggest challenge stepmothering has is that it reminds us all that it is easy for women to fulfill ideals of feminism in the good times but they don’t mean anything if you aren’t going to live up to them in the bad times. Women can’t expect equal division of housework and childcare with our partners, then use parenting time as a weapon after the relationship with the partner has ended.* One can’t go without the other. A parent during the relationship is still a parent after it. I find it interesting that father’s rights campaigners and feminists often behave like opponents instead of partners but don’t they ultimately want the same thing: equal parenting? Perhaps the dialogue that needs to happen between these groups might come through stepmothers. I will hasten to add that in no way do I endorse the tactics that some fathers’ rights groups have used such as intimidating judges and lawyers but we aren’t going to understand each other if we don’t start having this dialogue and perhaps stepmothers are the ones who will bridge this gap.
* I acknowledge the flip side of this argument is that men can’t expect to be more than an ATM for child support post marriage when they were nothing but a salary while they lived with the mother and kids.
10. Do you feel feminism has failed mothers and if so how? Personally, what do you think feminism has given mothers?
I think feminism has both failed and and has the potential to save stepmothers. As I touched on earlier, I think that the inherent tensions in the stepmother/mother relationship stem from the fact that being a ‘real’ mother is the only real yardstick for which women’s success in life is measured while men’s identity can be derived from multiple roles. Perhaps the constant battles that break out between stepmother and biological mothers would be avoided if motherhood wasn’t the only role on which women are judged on. Biological mothers wouldn’t be so threatened by another woman being on her ‘turf’ and stepmothers wouldn’t feel the pressure to be the ‘perfect parent’ from the word go. Feminists need to be mindful in our discussions of parenting not to leave out those of us who, for whatever reason, are raising children they are not biologically related. While I think the biological processes such as pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding are important parts of the motherhood equation that should be part of feminist discussions, they are not the only part of what makes a parent.
This post is really interesting to me – having lived with four stepmothers of my own (two successive partners of my father, and two of my mother), and one stepfather (my mother’s first partner post-divorce).
However, my experiences were so different from the one that Stephanie is living that it would be difficult to make comparisons. While I was 5 when my stepfather moved in, I was 10 for the first two stepmothers, which is quite different than 5, and then 16 for the second two (again, very different!). Also, my parents had no conflict over custody (we went weekly between their houses) and my mother was always a strong feminist.
The most difficult thing for me was living with my father’s first partner and her three children. The clash of parenting styles etc was pretty full-on and, ultimately, their relationship didn’t work out because of this. That was pretty hard on my Dad.
Enough said really. It all gets a bit too personal, doesn’t it?
Fascinating comments, Stef. Thank you!
my ‘stepmother’ experiences on the other side haven’t been great either, so I also read this with interest.
Your comment about being at war is a really important point, I think it extends both ways. Being criticised as a mother by someone who I didn’t even know, who had no children and only barely knew mine, got under my skin in a way nothing else ever has.
My child had had behavioural/health problems since toddlerhood, and her father had absented himself from her care for years.. And suddenly here was a person who was a stranger to myself and my daughter going through her medical records and making judgements on my decisions. It was extremely confronting. It also added to to my fury later on, when she and he had custody of child, ( they could do a better job, apparently) didn’t cope with her at all, and ended up leaving her in the care of a sexual predator. But that ended up being my fault too – because the way I had parented before they cared for her made her ‘impossible’.
Battle lines! it’s so close to the heart. And this woman doesnt care like I do about this smaller person, so I don’t understand her need to impose herself between me and the kid. She has him, and welcome. She makes the rules at her house. But she isn’t at this table as an equal because I don’t trust her to consider my child’s interests if they clash with her own. the only way it will work is with mutual respect, and that includes respecting my ‘turf’ – the primacy of that relationship.
Biology may not be the only part of parenting, but surely a relationship with one of the child’s parents doesnt suddenly grant a person an equal interest or role in a child’s care as that of one of the parents!
I agree that step parents by necessity have to develop some kind of relationship with the child, and obviously this involves boundaries on the child’s behaviour during time spent at the step parent’s home. The points you raise are reasonable and rational, but I’ve heard the same from the other side, my guess is that how well this situation works depends on the good will of the women involved.
( an aside – when my ex-partner was going out with someone who I did get on with, my approval actually seemed to make her a less attractive prospect. )
Equal parenting to me has become another battle line. there was no question of equal parenting when I was with my ex, or during the years that he was single. He picked it up and dropped it as it suited him. In my case case the only way it has been used is a leverage to try and reduce child support payments. When he wanted custody of my daughter, this was made plain – he even said he had not done it previously because it wasn’t worth it financially. Seems to me that ‘equal parenting’ involves the mother as default parent. Dad gets to demand what he wants, or to walk away, and she has to pick up and go on with whatever is left. And this can change any time he chooses.
It sounds like the obvious solution is that a switch of roles, with hubby taking on primary parenting and domestic duties, would be perfect. Money always hangs around our necks but assuming Stephanie can find reasonable work that pays for the essentials this would lead to a much better balance from the sound of it.
Most high paid professionals who work into the ground also have options for negotiating better hours, they just tend to be buried into their ‘career’ as an immovable axis to which they’re tethered.
But it’s complex and messy, just suggesting, not pontificating…
As a dad the notion of another man being closely involved in my kids’ lives, especially with Bear, makes my head asplode. It is not even possible to speculate rationally on it. This is not entirely unrelated to my time working in child protection.
rose – I agree that boundaries and mutual respect are really, really important components to successful blended families. I might help with homework and insist on chores at our house but I don’t go to parent-teacher nights nor do I take the child to the doctor. I have never taken the child out by myself on outing nor have I mentioned the term ‘stepmother’ around the child (I’m her friend) due to the tense situation with the biological mother.
The other big issue is trust. Stepmothers can and do consider child’s interests even if they clash with their own. If you read through stepmother blogs, you will find that there are also biological mothers who have upped and left their children with the stepmothers picking up the pieces. So neither biology nor a relationship with a parent doesn’t automatically you a parent with all the parent rights attached, it’s the relationship we have with our kids.
Armagny – I will add that my partner is quite good about trying to make stuff work. He leaves work early to pick up his daughter and takes time off to take her to the doctor, first day of school etc. But that time has often been made up on the time when the kiddo doesn’t stay which impacts on our relationship. It’s like anything finding a balancing act.
I will add that I know that statistically stepparents (in particular stepfathers) are far, far more likely to hurt or kill kids than biological parents. But there are ‘blended families’ out there that have made it work.
My cousin fathered a child in his late teens and the relationship didn’t last. This kiddo’s mother has gone out of her way to really involve the extended paternal family in this kiddo’s life even though she has subsequently re-partnered and the dad went overseas for a year. I’ve seen the mum, stepdad and paternal grandparents go to school functions together, have christmas together and even go away on holiday together! I keep this situation in my mind on days when I want to scream!
Ay. And I meant no slur on the wide gamut of stepfathers, more an acknowledgement of how hard I would find this situation (which I expect won’t, I should add!).
Although stepfathers and their stepdaughters seemed to be a little disproportionately represented in child protection, I was hardly seeing a cross section of functioning society. Every day brought some shade of hell through the doors. Often it was women, or biological parents, or a treasure trove of other abusive or neglectful delights.
Just a highly irrational dad:
http://armagnacd.blogspot.com/search?q=androgens
I accept it. I’m looking into tai chi. Chamomile tea.
I know that I – as do a lot of people – tend bring subjective experience to it. So easy to do. So i hope i am not misreading you
I take your point that not all mothers do the right thing, and some of them do the wrong thing. Same with fathers, and same with either parent’s new partners. But I don’t think this is the majority of mothers who are coping with this situation. I don’t think it’s any fairer – or more accurate – to assume that mothers are at automatically at fault where there is a step-parenting situation than it is to assume that all step parents are evil.
But I do think that that the partner will take the side of the parent they are partnering when things get difficult. And this causes a whole raft of problems itself – new battle lines.
I don’t know what your situation is, but you are openly critical of mum’s choice of pink and the baby language she uses to describe body parts. the latter creeps me out a bit too, and obviously mum has her own taste, but what I hear when I read that is your contempt for mum’s opinions and choices.
And as a mother I have sat in exactly that place, where nothing is being said directly to the child, but it is made clear to me that someone else thinks that the choices they will make for my child are superior to mine.
It’s not like hearing your choice to be an attachment parent meant your partner was excluded and you’ve turned the kid in to a spoilt brat from some external source – you’re hearing from someone who is going to try their approach – on your child.
“So neither biology nor a relationship with a parent doesn’t automatically you a parent with all the parent rights attached, it’s the relationship we have with our kids.”
I think that this is a bit glib, it doesn’t seem to actually mean that much. My children have relationships with many people, parents, grandparents, friends. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that my relationship with my children is biological or simply that it began with them when they were in utero, but these relationships have an intimacy that is completely different to any other relationship in my life.
I prepared for their father to develop a similar relationship with them, ( he chose not to) but I was not prepared to have someone I had no feelings for or interest in to feel that they had a place within that intimate zone. I really did not appreciate ( and neither did the children, though that was apparently my fault too) someone continually pushing boundaries over what decisions they could/couldn’t be involved in. Now I think I am getting subjective – this appears to my experience and not yours, although I think it is an issue for many women.
all I can say the only way is respect and more respect. Mothers do need to understand that they don’t set the rules of behaviour in Dad’s house.
But I stand by the fact that a step parent – male or female – needs to respect the child’s relationship with the child’s biological parent is a unique one, and is not replaceable.
Wow, such a great addition to your blog! I have also had my sole experience of being part of a step-family only as a step-child, and it’s always interesting to me to read/hear discussions of how people can find a way to work together as an extended/re-blended family…
When my parents separated, it was under incredibly acrimonious circumstances, and my Mum (who I was living with most of the time) was living with her new partner almost right away (I’m talking within weeks!). Looking back, it is of enormous credit to my father that despite his own feelings around his marriage breakdown, he at least had the werewithal to recognise that it was the best thing for me to have some kind of constructive and workable relationship with my Mum’s new partner. God knows how they did it, but between the three of them they managed to raise (and/or contribute to) the relatively well-adjusted adult I am today.
The ‘battle lines’ statements I do find quite affecting… I see it frequently these days with separated parents – yes, there do seem to be battle lines drawn with the child as occupied territory, and child custody seen as some kind of moral victory reflection on the ‘winning’ parent (does that even make sense?). I know it’s not necessarily what is being referred to here between steph and rose, so please don’t think I am being critical of either of you.
And additionally, may I just say… Steph feels like the stepmother role is seen as being inherently ‘less’ than biological motherhood. Well, sometimes the ‘stepchild’ role (or being a ‘child of divorce’) is seen as being inferior as well… There are people who like to infer that kids who have divorced parents/multiple homes are messed up, emotionally damaged, neurotic, insecure, ungrounded, and possibly even a moral contaminant to kids who come from good proper nuclear families. Well yeah, we might be, but living in a standard heteronormative nuclear family set-up is certainly no guarantee that YOUR kids will never have those issues. So off yer high horse! But yeah, I think I might be topic derailing here, so I’ll let you all get back to it….
this is a great read, thanks for this…
Thank you so much for this post. It’s given me a lot to chew on. It’s not something that I’ve ever personally had to deal with but it certainly made me think about feminist parenting from a different perspective.
I don’t know what your situation is, but you are openly critical of mum’s choice of pink and the baby language she uses to describe body parts. the latter creeps me out a bit too, and obviously mum has her own taste, but what I hear when I read that is your contempt for mum’s opinions and choices.
And as a mother I have sat in exactly that place, where nothing is being said directly to the child, but it is made clear to me that someone else thinks that the choices they will make for my child are superior to mine.
I find this one a bit difficult. Stephanie says she has bitten her tongue on this one, and very much deliberately not said anything about it, to the child or to the child’s mother, even though she doesn’t like it. Isn’t that more-or-less the right thing to do? I don’t think a woman should be asked to put aside her own opinions to the point of not having them at all. The difference is whether or not the opinions are expressed, and in particular, expressed to the child and to the biological parent. Stephanie hasn’t said anything to the child’s mother about the flamingo effect, so isn’t that exactly what should be happening?
(Disclosure: I blog with Stef at The Hand Mirror, so she’s a friend of mine, ‘though I’ve never met her IRL.)
I find this difficult too. I don’t know Stephanie, I don’t know the mother concerned and I don’t know the circumstances.
I do not think I could take on a step parent role. I recognise it as extremely difficult.
Whether or not Stephanie is doing the ‘right’ thing in her situation is so subjective, I would have no idea, and no basis to make a judgment on her specific circumstances.. Her reactions to the situations she describes, the choices she makes, sound like reasonable and rational responses to a difficult situation.
my reaction was to the very distinct battle line that is drawn when she shows her contempt, even if it’s not directly to the people concerned. the line is in the sand – we see that she judges the choices this mother is making for her child.
Being on the other side of the fence, this was exactly what I feared ( and I don’t think this fear is uncommon) and exactly what I have encountered – and even though this attitude was not initially expressed directly, it came through very clearly in my ex’s comments and in very strong emphasis on ‘correcting’ certain behaviours, which at first I didnt even notice, but then became very visibly critical ( in my case, my then 12 year old was not allowed to wear black clothing.( and sometimes dark clothing was a problem too) I noticed it after black shoes were returned with a note.)
If mothers and stepmothers are not going to be pitted against each other, then judgement has to be suspended.
In my experience the relationship between parent and child can be an intense intimate space and to step into that space is a fraught thing. To step into that space and judge and criticise is a blow directly to the heart.
Deborah – You say a woman shouldn’t be asked to give up her opinion to the point of not having one?
If as a step parent your opinion of the child’s mother is that you don’t like her and don’t like how she’s bringing up her child, then you might be entitled to it, but you can hardly expect the mother to be thrilled about you being included in her child’s life, and inevitably, by extension, in hers.
This is not about the judgment on the flamingo pink that stephanie is making. – if you look at it the other way, how would someone who is feminist react to a stepmother who insisted on pink tutus and and bratz dolls and disney princesses every alternate week? or decided to include the child in a diet programme?
I’m not sure I’d call the child occupied territory here – we all want what we think is best for our children, and having that either criticised or undermined – I think – can effect a parent in a very visceral way.
– I think the best outcome for children has to have the adults in their life finding a common ground on parenting. To try and get on. And yep, I think in some cases the step parent has to suck up the fact that the two biological parents had certain ideas about parenting that were established before they came onto the scene. I admire the way Stephanie has chosen to be friend rather than parent – I hope that works for her.
I also realise all this is not always possible.
and I wish stephanie all the best with the road ahead – a peaceful, calm resolution BEFORE the kid hits adolescence.( though sometimes adolescence means the kid’s behaviour will put you all on the same page if you weren’t before.)
very interesting discussion, you all.
thanks again stephanie for sharing your experiences with us.
Thanks Stephanie for sharing and explaining your experiences/life with us. Very interesting. So much of being a mother/parent when the kid is young is the physical work of it all, especially when they’re younger – making meals, making them eat meals, the loads of laundry you mentioned, blah blah…. everything….. So, I’d say it’s insulting to be one of the primary parents in terms of workload (and that’s before getting into any of the emotional work you do for the child) and yet not get the same respect/recognition because you aren’t biologically related. I commiserate with this! Anyway, thanks heaps for sharing!
“So much of being a mother/parent when the kid is young is the physical work of it all, especially when they’re younger – making meals, making them eat meals, the loads of laundry you mentioned”
yet if we try to weigh up the worth of a parent according to this logic, the people at daycare should also have a parenting stake in my child’s upbringing.
And i think this buys into the idea that working mothers are ‘less’ worthy than stay at home mothers – that your earn your ‘right’ to motherhood by the hours you put into being in physical proximity to the child – that choosing to work means you are less committed as parent because YOUR job is to wipe the bottom and pick up the food off the floor.
Doesnt this then also mean that the parents/step parents are competing? and the family court is handing out value judgements on time served when it awards custody? Isnt that better avoided?
I also think that you sell a good step parent short when you judge their contribution this way. My ‘primary carer’ after my mother died ( the woman who was having an affair with my father while my mother died) was also quite violent. I don’t give a crap how much washing she did for me – I’d still like to shove her under a bus. Extreme? maybe. But I still have the scars on my shoulder from being hit with a cane… and the rib she broke – and never sought treatment for – still shows up on x-rays.
A relationship with a step-parent strikes me as being similar to a relationship with an in-law. It’s one we have to deal with because they love and want to be with someone we are related to. It can be a fantastic relationship or a terrible relationship or anything in between, depending on the people involved. I still love the woman who was my mother in law for ten years. we only met – and spent time together – because we had her son in common, but she was a wonderful person and I believe that I am richer for having her in my life and in my children’s ( her grandchildren’s )lives. We no longer keep in contact at my ex’s request, and i agreed because I did not want to make her feel like she had to compromise her loyalty to her son. ( though i have sent her things re. the children over the years.)
It would be nice to think that a step parenting relationship was a relationship that could run alongside a parenting relationship. I don’t think that can happen if it is a competition.
[…] Milk presents Guest Post: Stepmothering and feminist motherhood posted at Blue […]
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I know this is a really old post, but I just wanted to say that this is literally the most useful thing I have read trying to grasp my new identify as a queer stepmum to a five and eight year old. Honestly, the more conventional, non-feminist and non-queer advice and commentary out there feels so utterly useless to me.
At the moment what I am most trying to grapple with is how to reconcile the two fundamental facts that a) I’m not the kids’ mum and did not choose parenting for myself, and b) I share a household with my partner, who is a mum of two kids, and I believe in the equal division of mental and material labour when you share a household, heterosexual couple or not!
Anyway, this post is excellent and I really appreciated stumbling across it. Been a while since I’ve been on this blog! 🙂