It’s Not Over ’til It’s Over, But…
As I researched my book over the last three years, lots of women with older and adult stepchildren shared with me their sense of frustration upon discovering that stepparenting isn’t just suddenly over or easier once the kids turn 18, or 21, or move out of the house. Sometimes, a father’s emotional commitments and financial contributions continue into a stepchild’s thirties and beyond. We’re not talking about caring and spotting someone $20 for cab fare here. Women have told me stories of husbands who unilaterally decide to pay a thirty-something child’s rent for the long haul, or remain embroiled in unhealthy emotional dynamics more suited to a parent and an adolescent.
It’s hard to watch, and frustrating to live this way, women told me over and over. Please, they asked me, set the record straight for all those people who tell me, “He’ll be off to college before you know it, and you’ll be off the hook.” One woman was outraged that a romantic trip she and her husband had long planned for her sixtieth birthday was suddenly cancelled–because her adult stepdaughter (in her thirties) was accepted to business school, and her husband wanted to use the money they had saved for the trip to pay the tuition. It’s easy to share her sense of being wronged, because she was. From their father’s guilt to an adult stepchild’s financial dependence and failure to separate and become independent, to dealing with issues of estate planning and stepgrandchildren and grandchildren, it’s often tough to be a woman with “adult” stepchildren.
That said, in my recent time on stepmother support boards, I’ve been reminded just how much easier life is once visitation, child support, and regular communication with a husband’s ex are all things of the past. The words I’ve read and heard in the last weeks of time in online communities have taken me back to a place I have been happy to forget. The stories about exes who play “chicken” with visitation; or send kids to visit dad and stepmom dressed like the Poor Little Match Girl in the dead of winter; those awful, angry voicemails and infuriating emails and last minute refusals to meet halfway for drop-off; the controlling notes about what the stepkids should do when they’re with you; the critical remarks a stepchild passes along…I would like to conduct a study about high blood pressure among women with stepchildren, but I already know what I’d find.
As someone who has come out on the other side, with two young adult stepdaughters who are high-functioning and on-target developmentally, focusing on their lives and their futures, I wish I had some advice to impart here, other than “it will get better when they’re older, you’ll see.” That’s cold comfort when you’re in the middle of it all. All I can say is, I’m not the forgive and forget type. But I have most certainly forgotten a great deal about what was difficult in the early stages of stepmothering. Thanks to all the women with stepchildren recently reminding me about what we go through. In return, I promise you that you are due, in relatively short order, for a little more peace.
Tags: adult stepchildren, stepmother, women with stepchildren
April 21st, 2009 at 6:33 pm
That was very well said, Wednesday. I felt as though you were speaking directly to me about these issues. I agree that, although in some ways it gets better when the stepkids grow older, it also continues to be complicated. The issues of competition between my biological children and step children as well as my interest and loyalties towards grandchildren (also biological and step) come up often for me. Actually it’s not so much an issue for me as a sometimes guilt feeling at losing interest in the stepchildren and their families. The guilt doesn’t last long, though and I usually figure out a way to handle each situation. Often my husband is more comfortable seeing his kids and grandkids without me. He tells me it’s sometimes easier if I’m not around because he can then totally focus on his “own” grandchildren and children without worrying about whether I get aggravated. The complications in stepfamilies are indeed very stressful and it’s important for us to be able to keep open communications with our spouses.
April 21st, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Sally,
I always love your thoughtful comments. Thank you for reading. I’ve missed you!
Your husband’s strategy is interesting here. I wonder what he thinks you’d get aggravated about? Kudos to you both that he can say such a thing to you, and you can hear it. You’re always setting a great example for me…so thank you!
April 21st, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Hi again;
I will clarify. We he goes to one of our nothern most states to visit his kids (they all moved far away), aside from the long drive getting there, the days are always very long and filled with many different activities…all involved with spending time with a whole big group. I usually begin to need some quiet time and space after just a few hours. It becomes overwhelming to be with so many people. So, he can usually sense when I am getting impatient or tired and want to go back to our hotel for a few hours. He feels pressured to accomodate me but also wants to see his grandchildren. Also, I have come to intensely dislike the long car rides involved with these visits. We could fly, I know, but that is still a big deal for just a weekend. That is why it is sometimes just easier for him to go alone. It’s not always a popular position to take but my husband and I have discussed it many times and it seems to work for us. This is not to say that I will never go and visist but this arrangement feels more real and not coerced.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Thanks for the great Post, Wednesday! I have repeatedly told my three stepchildren (14, 11, 9) that I’m moving to our family cabin during their teen years and they can come and visit me there when they are feeling happy and not moody. Ha! But then I would miss out on so much. Thanks for the reminder that time is fleeting.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Jacque,
Thanks for reading. Love the cabin concept–sometimes a woman with stepkids truly needs an escape hatch! But knowing that you wrote that great book, I’m presuming that you have the next best thing to an escape hatch–a room to call your own in your house. Sometimes that’s enough!
And please don’t be a stranger–come back soon.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Sally,
Thanks for clarifying. Your situation at these family shindigs with your husband and his kids and grandkids reminds me of one of the most important points about stepfamily relations and stepfamily life. Unlike first family members, who can all bond as a group, the research shows that stepfamily members bond diadically–one-on-one. Because all-together group activities tend to bring everyone’s anxieties about being an outsider to the fore. So it only makes sense that you find it overwhelming to be around everyone all at once–it’s just not what works for us, and the studies bear it out!
July 5th, 2009 at 9:10 am
I have been looking all over the internet for something wise about adult stepfamilies. My mother died of cancer a year and a half ago and my father is getting married to someone both of them new from their church. What I don’t understand from anything I read is why the stepchildren are always referred to as something that has to be “dealt with,” and why so many comment threads demonize children who take longer to grow up. Far as I can tell, it’s not totally their fault – they are, after all, the products of parenting as well as of culture. It must have hurt for the woman who was going to go on a trip not to get to go because her husband wanted to spend the money on his daughter’s schooling. And there must have been some other solution. But what I can only assume about that (and this from personal experience) that the father may have done that some “absent” thing that my father did, and so, feels responsible financially for what he couldn’t provide personally. Lots of fathers of adult children look at their children and feel like they’ve missed out – and need to emotionally deal with that at the same time they deal with new marriages, I bet. At least that’s what’s happening to me. Adult stepchildren are still children – their position as children in the family doesn’t decay once their mothers or fathers die -
July 5th, 2009 at 9:10 am
I have been looking all over the internet for something wise about adult stepfamilies. My mother died of cancer a year and a half ago and my father is getting married to someone both of them new from their church. What I don’t understand from anything I read is why the stepchildren are always referred to as something that has to be “dealt with,” and why so many comment threads demonize children who take longer to grow up. Far as I can tell, it’s not totally their fault – they are, after all, the products of parenting as well as of culture. It must have hurt for the woman who was going to go on a trip not to get to go because her husband wanted to spend the money on his daughter’s schooling. And there must have been some other solution. But what I can only assume about that (and this from personal experience) that the father may have done that some “absent” thing that my father did, and so, feels responsible financially for what he couldn’t provide personally. Lots of fathers of adult children look at their children and feel like they’ve missed out – and need to emotionally deal with that at the same time they deal with new marriages, I bet. At least that’s what’s happening to me. Adult stepchildren are still children – their position as children in the family doesn’t decay once their mothers or fathers die -
July 5th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Hi Katie,
My book devotes a chapter to adult stepchild/stepmother relations. It’s an important topic, I agree with you. You might also like to check out the book Step Wars: Overcoming the Perils and Making Peace in Adult Stepfamilies, by Grace Gabe M.D. and Jean Lipman-Blumen, Ph.D. One of the few other researchers on adult stepchild/stepparent relations is British psychotherapist Sarah Corrie.
The research is clear that prolonged financial dependency is a growing trend in families, that it extends into the thirties and sometimes even forties, and that it retards the development of healthy separation. It seems to be especially prevalent in families where the father has divorced or been widowed and then remarried. As you suggest, it is often a result of dad feeling guilty that he wasn’t there more for his kids while they were growing up. Prolonging their financial dependence on him, however, does nothing to change that score. When adult stepchildren fail to establish financial independence, they will miss an important milestone in their own development and likely create stress in dad’s remarriage. Of course, dad is responsible for such a dynamic, unhealthy for all, persisting. Being an adult who is also someone’s child is very different from remaining forever in a child-like relationship to one’s parent.
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September 28th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Nice info. I heard it all, read it all, did it all. And we find out the exwife is bipolar and both kids are too. They won’t get treatment so … it gets worse the longer it goes untreated. Not the same happy ending as yours but all we can do it try.
April 22nd, 2011 at 9:43 pm
I’m sorry to have to admit it, but if I got to choose again, I would not marry my husband because of the stress and hurt caused by his adult children and the way my husband has handled things. We married in Oct. 2010.
May 23rd, 2011 at 1:06 am
Marigold, I’ve been there, that awful regret that’s so hard to admit. I married a man with 2 SDs, ages 9 and 10 and they loved me- couldn’t get enough of me and their new baby sister. Then, immature and jealous BM decided we were too close (50-50 custody) and decided to tell younger SD (at age 11) that her dad, my husband, was NOT her BD!!! Well, BM effectively f*cked up both her children and their relationships with us from that point on.
All of their angst, disrespect and anger has been directed mostly at me for the last 7 years, and I’ve had the hurt feelings, resentment, ulcers and depression to prove it! Thousands of dollars spent on several child/family therapists over the years was seemingly a waste of our time and effort, because the BM undoes everything good. She’s such a piece of work- I think she’s separated from Husband #4 right now…
Now the SDs live solely with BM, still actively hate my guts and lie about me- but life is much more calm around our home since they moved out. My guilt-ridden husband wants everyone to get along and keeps trying to push us together, but I’m insisting on respectful behavior first- or they’re not welcome in my home. I’ve had many arguments with my husband on this issue (that I should bend more and be “more understanding”), to the point where I regretted our marriage several times. I finally realized that this is the only thing we ever fought about- his unrealistic expectations of me in my role as his kid’s SM.
So I went to a therapist on my own to give me the power to voice my needs or break up, I was at that place. I told my husband that he can see his daughters all he wants- somewhere else. I refuse to put up with their disrespect in my home, period. He needs to understand that they are the ones with the problem, and I’m done trying to make it work- it’s not my responsibility! I am so relieved because this HUGE weight of trying to make everyone LIKE me is gone. I just gave it up and it feels great. I hope you get to the point where many of these balanced and happy SM are at who have written on this site. You CAN focus on a happy, healthy life for yourself. And here’s my hardline- If you’re not supported by your husband even after therapy- kick him to the curb- because you’re worth so much more.