Monthly Archives: August 2011
No More Mr. Mom
As Georgianne’s story illustrates, it’s not only your expectations about your role that are affecting the daily tension levels in your home. Your husband has his own set of ideas that are influencing his behavior, too. Perhaps he believes that this new family will assuage some of the guilt he feels for putting his kids through divorce.
Why Many Children Hate Their Stepmother? Part (2)
At first, Georgianne threw herself into the job of parenting the two children who came to live with her and her new husband. “The first year I was really game and gung-ho about it. I cheerfully drove to soccer practice. I went to fundraisers at school. But all of a sudden I realized, ‘This is crazy.’ I am the primary breadwinner in the family.
Why Many Children Hate Their Stepmother?
My stepmother, Nancy, is the president and CEO of a national nonprofit association. She didn’t have children of her own when she met my father. She put it this way: “Think about the common situations where parents are constantly on the run, bundling the kids off, getting groceries, helping with homework. If you have not come from that kind of lifestyle, and you suddenly step into it, you’ve got no time to adjust. To take that on is very risky. That’s where the resentment builds. That’s when people look for escapes elsewhere, by either working too hard or having an
What Stepmother actually is? Part (4)
Later, they really felt a sense of loss and I could finally understand why they would feel that way. But at first I thought, ‘Those ungrateful kids!’” Many stepmothers feel the urge to “make things better” for their husbands and stepchildren, who have lived through a hurtful divorce or the death of a parent. It’s understandable, but it’s important that a stepmother knows this expectation can cause huge amounts of friction.
What Stepmother actually is? Part (3)
Your family of origin has a great deal of influence on how you behave with your new family—as Heidi, the family law attorney turned almost-full-time stepmom realized when she married her husband, John, and moved cross-country to be with him and his family. Though Heidi tried to imagine how much her life might change, she didn’t know what it would be like day-to-day until she moved in with John and his four kids after living alone for twenty years. “The house was a mess; the kids had no structure. The way I was raised was so different. That surprised me,