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The evil stepmonster or the nurturing caregiver: What does it take?
By GERIANNE WRIGHT
Staff Writer
I was talking to a woman the other day about her experiences as a stepdaughter – the abuses she suffered at the hands of her stepmother, the effect it has on her today as an adult. This woman will forever be scarred by a bully who by virtue of the fact that she was married to her father and held a position of power over her until she could defend herself. No one stuck up for her, no one protected her, least of all her father.
Coincidentally, I was listening to On Point on National Public Radio (http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/08/a-stepmothers-view ) Aug. 4 when they interviewed Wednesday Martin, author of the book, “Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel and Act the Way We Do.” The program was peppered with quotes from the book and calls to the show from people who had nightmare experiences with stepmothers, and stepmothers who had awful experiences with stepchildren.
I nearly picked up the phone to call in myself, only I would have been calling to defend my own stepmother. What is it that creates step experiences straight out of “Cinderella?” Why would a woman treat her stepchildren cruelly and, in many cases, abusively?
Children are complex organisms, and in the case of children of divorce, I’m sure the dynamics are particularly complex. Children of divorce have both parents to deal with and when one of them brings another companion into the equation, I’m sure it can be hard on everyone concerned. Children have a romanticized image of their parents always being together, and sometimes, that just doesn’t happen. To a child, a new step parent means her parents aren’t going to get back together.
Of course, the way to help ease the transition is for parents to act as the adults in the family and treat each other civilly (I’m not referring to situations where there is abuse of any kind. Then the parent it is the responsibility of the abused parent to just get out).
Some parents overcompensate for having broken up the family, and the children are placed first when a step parent is in the picture. There’s no doubt that’s going to create friction with the step parent. In Martin’s interview, she spoke to the topic from the point of view of a stepmom who entered a family after the children’s parents had divorced. I can’t speak to that, I can only speak from my own experience as a stepdaughter in a family that blended well.
My mother died when I was 12. I was the middle child of six kids. My father met and subsequently married a widow who had six children of her own. Their father had been killed a few years before in a car accident. From the beginning, there was never a line of demarcation – a them and us or “step” designation. We were brothers and sisters, mom and dad.
We weren’t forced to acknowledge the step parent as “Mom” or “Dad.” We all just did because both went out of their way to treat us all the same, all fairly and with love. That’s 12 kids to love unilaterally and unconditionally. When my half-brother was born, giving us a baker’s dozen, it only just helped to cement the family together.
It’s made it difficult to explain over the years, how one of my sisters is only six months older than I or why one of my brothers was the same age but we weren’t twins. I talk about my mom and have to explain which I’m referring to depending on the situation. But my mom (step) has been my mother for the last 35 years, three times longer than my mom (biological), and she’s every bit my mother as she would have been had I been born to her.
When my step brother died at the age of 41 of pancreatic cancer (he’s the one who was the same age as I), I grieved as hard and as long as I did when my biological sister died in a car accident at the age of 17. So did her “step” siblings. When my dad died the same year as my brother, the “step” siblings grieved as hard and as long as his biological children did. To us, there was no difference.
So when authors and stepmothers like Wednesday Martin make blanket statements about “real” stepmothers and how they think, feel and act the way they do, I’d like her to speak to my mom – my “real” mom, the woman who sat by my bedside when I was sick, the woman who made my dinner for me every day after school before I went to my part-time job even though it was an hour before the rest of the family would eat dinner, the woman who made me beautiful dresses, gave me wonderful gifts, takes care of the house I grew up in.
I’d like Martin to talk to my mom and ask her if my children are every bit her granddaughters as any of the other 30 grandchildren in our family. I’d like her to ask my mother what she calls me. I’ll lay odds that it’s not “stepdaughter.”
