Umm, the kids don’t come first (from Skepticlawyer)

A snippet from a fascinating, stepfamily-relevant new post over at Skepticlawyer:

An oft-repeated mantra, everywhere from law courts to dating agencies, is that ‘children come first’. No-one ever provides any argument to back this assertion, and attempts (by me) to dig up social science research supporting the argument that privileging children’s needs over the needs of their adult parents, their teachers (or anyone else) is good for either (a) those children’s long term welfare or (b) good for anyone else have proven fruitless. This I find perplexing, and I’d be very interested to see what people think of the oft-invoked ‘in the best interests of the children’ (the standard family court line) or ‘my kids come first’ (spattered all over people’s online dating profiles).

See (contrarian that I am), I suspect it’s not true. Not only do I suspect it’s not true, but I also think it’s fed into a culture of child privileging that has led to the great bulk of young people — at least in developed countries — displaying the most extraordinary sense of entitlement. My feminist friends call this kind of thing ‘privilege’, and while the two concepts are similar, I’m not sure they’re the same. Most people, I suspect, don’t have any privilege by virtue of what they are. They have to have it conferred on them, and to my jaundiced eye, it seems that conferral is done, by and large, when they are children. Their needs are placed above the needs of their parents, their teachers and wider society. And then their sense of entitlement blows up in everyone’s faces.

…..

Ultimately I think this issue is really about permissive parenting and divorce guilt, something we stepfamily types tend to be all-too-familiar with.

Head over for the rest of the article; the lively comments are also well worth a read.

Casting shadows

I recently received a question from Vicki about being stepmother to children whose mother has died, and her words got me thinking.

While it is tempting to imagine that stepparenting would be a whole lot easier without the deep shadow a hostile mother can cast over your stepfamily, there are obviously difficult issues specific to partnering a widower with children that cast their own shadows.

Information specific to what is now an “alternative” stepfamily situation seems to be limited in stepfamily literature and resources; ironically even fifty years ago when divorce was still relatively rare but medical science so much less effective at dealing with illness, disease and accidents, stepfamilies were probably much more likely to be formed as a result of death than divorce.

Sadly, in the face of more recent social shifts, wisdom about stepfamilies formed following the death of a parent seems to have been overshadowed by resources focused on dealing with typical post-divorce stepfamily issues such as extended family conflict, parental alienation, and the day-to-day challenges of parenting across two households.

Anyway, I had a couple of ideas, but thought it might be more helpful to turn Vicki’s question over to the stepmother hive mind.

Here’s Vicki’s question:

Stepmumoftheyear…

Have you heard from anyone who has experience with step children whose mum died of cancer?

This is my situation, so I do not have the “other mother” involved. I do, however, know they resent me and my involvement in the house and their lives. Now I deal with them watching home videos of the “first” family, and having them resent me because I’m not her. I do not watch the movies because I don’t want to be sucked into that old life of theirs. My husband lets them watch these videos, out of our presence.

The older one is quietly angry because she knew her mother and must do without her. The younger one just thinks life would be better if her mum were alive…mum would do all the things for her I don’t do, but make her do (cleaning room, two days of loading dishwasher, emptying two wastebaskets…on a schedule, not at 10:30 pm)

I read much about step families with the biological mother involved, good or bad, but not with a deceased biomum. The girls are 20 and 15, and both resent me. My husband is wonderful! Works so hard to make everyone happy…and he loves me so. (Our sweet comment to each other is that I say I love him more than he loves me. He says not so…that he loves me more than that.) After four years of marriage, I am finally learning to “keep my mouth shut” and not knit-pick, tattle, or criticize. I try so hard to let my husband find the not-done chores and spilled drink on the floor. He, then, can deal.

Is there any word out there about this?

Does anyone have any suggestions or input about stepparenting bereaved children (whether or not from your personal experience…)?

Small delights

I did the school run for the Boys by myself today and will be again tomorrow, since the Lovely Man has two early starts at work.

By “school run” I don’t just mean the drive in to school but the entire early-morning-drill-sergeant-get-boys-up-and-ready routine.

It only lasts about ninety minutes, but it’s quite an intense process, especially since stepmother authority to compel obedience/listening/quick responses is often fairly limited.

I sometimes dread the prospect of school run days, but today went fairly smoothly, on the whole. (Three boys of various sizes invariably = a range of at least minor hiccups, but that’s parenting, I guess.)

There was one lovely moment, though – I had made umpteen slices of toast with strawberry jam, which had been delivered to the table and duly devoured, and was standing at the sink trying to get the post-breakfast fallout cleared away.

Suddenly, a little pair of arms wrapped around my waist from behind and hugged me, and Boy C said:

Thankyou, B. You’re *really* nice to us!

He’s such a sweetie, and my smile persisted even after I looked down at where his hands had been and saw his little jam-sticky paw prints on the front of my cream dress.

That’s the other side of parenting, I guess, and I like it, jam and all.

Shades of beige

Monday was the first night of our regular week with the kids.

As usual, Boy A was fairly hostile towards me: he refused to respond to my hello, and every comment I made (not to him – I don’t waste time trying to make conversation with him directly) was met with a shrug or a smart remark.

For instance, I was talking to the other boys about making Crepes Suzette for dessert this week and describing how we would set fire to the crepes before serving them.

(Setting fire to foodstuffs has gigantic appeal to boys, in my experience.)

At this point, Boy A butted in to snidely suggest that he’d rather pour petrol than liqueur on the crepes. To which I replied that he was quite welcome to add petrol to his own serve.

Normally I wouldn’t have responded that way; that night had me teetering alarmingly close to the cliff edge of my self control.

His rejoinder?

“Yeah, that’s really funny.”

Oh, right, because it was all about me being funny at his expense.

Anyway, by 5pm I’d had it and retreated to the bedroom with my laptop for much of the rest of the evening, feeling besieged and frustrated but glad to be avoiding further hurtful comments and pointed exclusion.

Later, once the kids were finally in bed, I asked the Lovely Man how he felt the evening had gone and whether there was anything extra I could have done to support him with the kids.

I was expecting to talk about specific tasks, like me doing dinner so he could cover homework duty – that kind of mundane stuff.

Instead, I heard:

“I think it was good that you kind of made yourself scarce and kept a low profile in the bedroom, because Boy A finds it difficult when he thinks you’re too much in the foreground.”

*Cue crickets*

Finally, I found my voice.

“I’m all in favour of keeping things low-key, especially in the first 24 hours we have the Boys, but I am NOT going to hide out in the bedroom or generally fade into the wallpaper because Boy A prefers it that way. His behaviour is the problem here, NOT MINE.”

Turns out that the Lovely Man hadn’t even noticed Boy A’s nastiness, and just thought I was relaxing in the bedroom because I wanted to.

I found it disturbing and a bit hurtful, though, that it’s considered preferable that I minimise my presence and role in the house to keep the peace and keep Boy A “happy”.

Ultimately, I think those kinds of accommodations devalue and disrespect me and enable Boy A to continue deferring his adjustment to our family situation.

I understand that the Lovely Man feels stuck in a lose/lose situation, juggling to keep everyone happy, but this incident has made me wonder – if my best contribution is made by downplaying my existence in what is meant to be my part-time home, why am I here at all?

As a stepmother, are you ever asked or expected to downplay yourself or fade into beige to keep others in your stepfamily “comfortable”?

Life listing for stepmothers

For people who haven’t encountered the term, life listing is, predictably enough, the process of writing down the goals you wish to experience or achieve over the course of your life.

A different perspective on it might be to ask yourself:

At the end of my life, as I lie on my deathbed, what would I be disappointed not to have done?

What has this got to do with stepmothering, though?

I don’t know about you ladies, but one of the challenges I face in my stepmother role is not letting it descend like a gigantic sticky cloud, obliterating life as I know it and obscuring the person I am outside of supporting the Lovely Man through property settlement negotiations, planning handover schedules and doing the school run.

As women, we have a tendency to dive right in up to our corneas, trying-trying-trying, supporting-supporting-supporting, and while it might give us a sense of purpose, we can easily loosen our grips on the woman beneath who is not solely a stepmother/partner to a man with kids.

And when the kids and/or ex-wives hurt or reject us, if we’ve lost that grip, then who are we left to be?

Thinking about my life list reminded me that so many of the experiences I want to add to my life have nothing whatever to do with being stepmum of the year, in any sense. Some do, and this step-parenting gig has certainly added a lot of richness to my life. But the vast majority of items I’ve listed are about the separate me, the me I was before I met the Lovely Man and still am, underneath.

Looking through other people’s life lists, too, reminded me of all the amazing things I have done already, of how lucky I am to have been able to drink hot chocolate on the top of the Alps, snorkel with sea lions off the Galápagos Islands, watch tiny emerald kingfishers hover over Lake Srinagar in Kashmir, stand inside the Taj Mahal, and steer a yacht across oceans, watching the Southern Cross draw nearer night by night. Even with nothing added to my life lift, I am already so, so blessed.

That I’ve been able to do some of these things with the Lovely Man, my dear love and adventure partner, is itself a wonderful blessing. That some of them I did with my close friend and ex-partner, and that we can still exchange do-you-remembers together about the experiences we shared is also a rare privilege.

All those are very helpful things to remember when sometimes it feels like every conscious thought is in danger of being hijacked by stepfamily life. Think of it as the perfect antidote to stepmother rumination.

I haven’t yet finished my life list, but I’ll post it tomorrow shortly.

What would be on your life list?

Happy Stepmother’s Day

Yep, the Sunday after Mother’s Day is apparently (and unofficially) Stepmother’s Day.

Though, as the Lovely Man said when I told him what day it was, I don’t think we’d better hold our collective breath waiting for an annual public holiday to be declared in our honour. Even the Australian love of a gratuitous day off won’t get that one through the door. Not when so many adult children of divorce can’t get past their resentment (justified or not, but often not) of their stepmothers.

I wouldn’t dream of mentioning Stepmother’s Day to the Boys, in any case. Not unless I really, really wanted to get studiously blank faces at best and dismissive comments at worst. So no cakes, no cards, no breakfast in bed. Shrug.

Wednesday Martin’s recent article about Stepmother’s Day dishes the dirt we all know about why stepmothers can cop it so badly from our stepkids and their mothers, the wider culture and sometimes (saddest of all) their own partners.

Even if it never becomes official, even if our partners and stepkids recoil from the idea, even if the only people aware of the significance of today are other stepmums, it gave me a happy feeling to know that I have a community around me – web and “real” – who gets that our job is worthy of acknowledgment.

Happy day(s) to us all, then.

Stepmother mantras

Reading this post from stepmama metamorphoses (who has been so inspiring as she works through the process of stepping back from her husband’s ex’s dramas) as well as Sherri’s weekly affirmations at Too Many Toasters, I got thinking about the unspoken mantras that help me cope with the Boys and their Mum when things aren’t going so well.

The first is something I remind myself before every visit to or from the children.

How this goes is up to me.

Obviously, I can’t control what happens during our time with the kids. But I find that my sense of satisfaction is almost entirely linked to how well I feel I respond when challenges come up (and there are always challenges!).

So, for me, it works to remind myself that success, in these terms, is actually something I can control.

Boy A can be as sullen or even as actively rejecting as he likes, the other Boys can be behaving like orangutans on stimulants, the Lovely Man can be grumpy or tired or shut in the office, but if I manage my responses/reactions in a way I’m happy with I can still feel like I’ve done well.

What this involves has varied over time; it used to be that my benchmark was “keep your mouth shut and keep smiling” but increasingly, and with the help of our counsellor, I’m recognising that it’s more important to be authentic and voice my concerns and boundaries than to be a perfect Stepford Stepmum.

The second and third mantras are questions I ask myself.

What is this person really saying here?

This helps me to listen for the true interests and concerns buried in another persons’ words or actions, and hopefully to address those directly rather than get distracted by the emotions or information that we all sometimes use to “top-dress” our communications, for whatever reason.

And finally,

What is my truth here and how can I speak it?

This has been a big barrier for me. As much as I say I believe I matter in this family, I have tended to not speak up about things that bother me or assert my boundaries, mostly through not wanting to burden the Lovely Man or create extra drama, or through fear of nagging and criticising.

What I’ve found, though, is that one way or another the stress comes out.

And it’s better for me to clearly say how things are for me as they arise and ask for what I need than to have a sobbing conniption at 10pm ostensibly because the Lovely Man is late home from work.

So, when Boy A next tells me or says in front of me, for what feels like the eleventy-billionth time, that his Mum is very intelligent, instead of just repeating “Yes, I know” like an automaton I can hopefully say something like:

Yes, I know she is, Boy A. You’ve said that before. It’s great that you’re proud of your mum, but I’m not sure why you think it’s important to be telling me this?

(As suggested by our counsellor, who says it’s time to for me to start insisting on respectful boundaries in these situations, as opposed to my previous style of just putting up with any old shit in the name of being positive about the Boys’ Mum.)

And while it’s not exactly a mantra, I’ve found in general that waiting to respond to something that is upsetting until I’ve taken time to think about it from the perspective of the other people involved makes me a lot less likely to react in anger or out of pain.

As well, I’ve learned to be watchful about getting dragged down into a spiral of negativity. When I find myself making negative comments or statements about the Lovely Man’s ex or the situation generally to people, then feeling bad or disloyal about what I’ve said, it’s a cue that I need to address my underlying unhappiness, and usually, that there’s something I’m not speaking up about.

What mantras and reminders do you use to get through?

Making rules…

…but for pity’s sake don’t even think of calling them “family rules”! I can almost hear the reaction now, echoed back from eleventy million step households: “You’re not my family and you don’t make rules for me!”

[Sarcasm switches off]

Anyway, the Boys arrive tomorrow and I’ve been attempting to negotiate our first formalised set of house rules with the Lovely Man.

Rules and boundaries generally seem to be touchy topics and getting to this point has taken ages; the first time I raised the idea of house rules was nearly eighteen months ago! Even talking about it has been delicate, particularly the bit about introducing set bedtimes.

I gather that lots of separated parents, and especially dads, really struggle with firming up on boundaries for their kids. One blog I particularly remember described a dad saying to his wife, the stepmother of his two children, that he was “OK with having rules but not comfortable with there being consequences”.

And doesn’t THAT sounds like a hiding to nothing and nowhere for the unfortunate stepmother trying to get some kind of grip on the behaviour of the kids in her house?

The more superficial stepparenting books suggest that it’s a bad idea to “assume” an authority figure role with your stepkids, but I’m convinced those authors must have full-time nannies at their disposal. If not, there will be situations when the stepparent is forced to be the adult in charge and needs to direct the kids in some way. I try to minimise it, but basically, if the Lovely Man wants to work while we have the Boys, it’s inevitable that I have to step up from Wingman to Maverick status sometimes.

I described being an adult in charge in our hitherto (mostly) “rule-free” house to the Lovely Man as “a bit like trying to herd lobsters underwater”. That’s right, I think it’s harder than herding cats.

Not being one of the Boys’ parents, I don’t have natural authority with them, other than a little with Boy C perhaps. And yet there are many times when I need them to do what I ask, like when I’m doing the school run, when they’re hurting each other, or when I can’t in good conscience do one more speck of cleaning up without them contributing.

And those times are when I hit a brick wall, because without either (a) the natural authority that blood parents take so much for granted OR  (b) clear house rules fully backed by the Lovely Man, I often may as well sing to whales as expect the Boys to obey me.

So, rules are good. Ultimately, of course, they’re at least as necessary to our stepkids as they are to us. Our stepfamily psychologist reminds me that rules help stepkids feel that they actually live a normal life with their other parent, rather than just being occasional visitors. And that despite the whingeing, that sense of normality, of having a place and a role, is something children of divorce crave.

BUT…

Whether it’s about Dads wanting to avoid being the bad guy, feeling afraid of losing the “popularity contest” to a more permissive mother or just wanting their limited time with the kids to be all fun-fun-fun, it seems that setting and enforcing even simple rules is a fraught process in many stepfamilies.

So far the Lovely Man’s and my rules list is running to about four pages and is full of fluffy abstract concepts. Not exactly a collection of snappy ideas that I’d choose to post on the fridge, then.

It needs whittling big time. Like with a chainsaw.

So I’m wondering:

Do you have specific house rules in your stepfamily?

If so, what are they?

And how did they get put in place?

No place like home

Another week in stepmother land is over. I’m home, back in my city after what feels like many weeks but has actually been a little over three.

The Lovely Man, on the other hand, worked out mid-last month that he would spend four nights in our home in our city in the six weeks ahead.

Admittedly, we were on holiday sans enfants for over two weeks in the middle of that time, but the time away from home brought about by our fly-in/fly-out step/parenting schedule costs us both in terms of feeling settled and as though we have a secure base.

The Lovely Man is still with the Boys in their city. The time apart can be hard to cope with, too. It’s doubly hard for the Lovely Man, who, of course, is almost always away from either the Boys or me.

Still, we’re lucky we have the option to maintain this two-city life. Financially, in terms of our work commitments, even our energy and health, it’s a stretch – changes to any of these factors could potentially derail our opportunity to sustain our base in our city, the one that actually feels like home.

As I’m sure any non-stepmom would be happy to tell me, I knew what I was getting into.

Of course, as any stepmother could affirm, you never really know what you’re getting into.

It’s very hard sometimes – the travel, the sense of dislocation, being away from my friends and family, going so quickly from single to having three kids to help care for.

I wouldn’t change it. Not for a second.

But I’m so, so glad to be home.

A sticky one

Boy C, in the car on our way home from dinner last night, within earshot of Boy A, Boy B and the Lovely Man:

B, I want to ask you a question?

Me:

Sure. What do you want to know?

Boy C:

When will you have babies?

Me:

(Gulps, hearing Boy A’s ears swivel around to listen)

Boy C, continuing at warp speed:

If you do, will they be girls? Will they be super annoying? Will they try to push me off a cliff?

Me, very relieved at where the second, third and fourth questions took this discussion:

Ummm. Well. What I can say is, if I ever did have babies and they pushed you off a cliff, that would be much worse than annoying.

Perhaps I should have engaged with this question seriously and dug to find out if Boy C was feeling a bit insecure, but attempted in front of Boy A it would have been a straight-back-to-Mummy, lose/lose endeavour.

So I didn’t.