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 affair because they’re so overwhelmed and scared.”
Too much disengagement means you stay disconnected from your family, but there is a healthy amount of emotional distance for stepmothers. If you throw yourself in too far, too fast, you can also get in trouble. Georgianne, a consultant for a luxury car manufacturer, became a stepmother to four children ranging in age from 8 to 15 when she married her husband, T. J., at 43 years old. She had lived alone for thirteen years prior to that.
She’s an independent woman who loves to spend time alone and she catered to those qualities by choosing a career as a consultant so she can work in her home office. At the time of her marriage, her stepchildren all lived with their mother three hours away, but six months after the wedding, two of the children asked to move in full-time with their dad.
For the next three years, Georgianne took care of those kids while her husband, who worked long hours, was away. “We got married in February 2002, five months after we started seeing each other. We are both pretty grown-up and knew what we were looking for. It didn’t seem at all ridiculous, but then to be saddled with kids so quickly stopped the development of our relationship.”
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