***** for Stepmonster from Stepmom’s Toolbox
The May 26 review of Stepmonster on The Step Mom’s Toolbox is out! Tool Box Girl calls Stepmonster “a must read for every stepmom, and a great tool.” She says my research is “impeccable and eye-opening” and calls Stepmonster “priceless and eloquent.”
Wow, thanks Peggy, I am blushing! Check it out for yourself, and have a good look around Peggy’s helpful and information-rich website while you’re at it:
http://thestepmomstoolbox.com/
Tags: http://thestepmomstoolbox.com, review, stepmonster, The Stepmom's Toolbox
May 26th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I’m so glad you liked my review! I loved your book and have been recommending it to all my sister step moms!
Peggy
May 26th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Thanks Peggy, I appreciate your recommendations, and am happy to have you drop by on my blog. I visit yours regularly!
xx wednesday
May 28th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Wednesday,
I have started reading your book and cannot put it down! I am a step-daughter and also a mother of 3, and I am wondering– all these feelings step-mothers experience (ambivalence about the kids, resentment towards them, competiton for dad) aren’t these the same feelings all mothers have? My kids drive me crazy sometimes, I can resent the time they take up etc etc. I think Bettelheim wrote that step-mothers in literature embody kids repressed feelings about their mothers, but isnt it also that they also take on universal repressed feelings mothers have about our own kids, more exaggerated and visible in the step-mom dynamic, normally hidden conflicts playing out much closer to the surface, making us all recoil, finger point at step-moms instead of the good mother icon herself.
May 28th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Dear Margot,
Thanks for reading Stepmonster and for commenting here! I think you are so right that mothers and stepmothers have some things in common! As a mother who’s also a stepmother, I frequently find myself exasperated with my young son and sometimes I tell my husband, “If I were his stepmom I would be even MORE fed up and impatient!”
I also think you’re so right about the bad stepmom/perfect mother dichotomy. In the earlier versions of Hansel and Gretel and Snow White and others stories of evil stepmothers, for example, they were actually evil MOTHERS!
The crucial difference between mothers and stepmothers, I think, is their contexts. First family dynamics are radically different from stepfamily dynamics. This means that in first families there are more valves for letting off steam, fewer feelings of being an outsider, fewer potential conflicts between husband and wife, and more social support. So while stepmothers and mothers have similar feelings toward the very same kids, context is everything! Mothers usually have years of common ground with kids who love them; stepmoms almost always find themselves in a very different situation!
Please keep me posted on your thoughts and about Stepmonster and the blog!
Best,
Wednesday
May 28th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Wednesday,
Thanks for your reply, very true about context. Along with the “wicked stepmother” cultural icon/ imaginary, did you come across much in your research about “the homewrecker”– another demonized female figure– and what happened in cases when both images manifested in one?
May 28th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Yes, Margot, that’s another powerful image. The “homewrecker” is sort of a subcategory of a larger “sexy, seductive stepmother” phenomenon. For me this starts with Phaedre, the young, attractive stepmother who wants to seduce her stepson Hippolytus in the Euripides play of the same name, and schemes to kill him when he doesn’t return her interest. I see the Wicked Queen in Disney’s Snow White–sheathed in black leather or black rubber, homicidal, a red, bloody gash for a mouth–as a direct descendent of Phaedre. Sexy is the opposite of maternal, and boy is that scary to kids and exciting to anyone looking for a villain. If you want to see a scary sexy stepmother, check out the one in the Berlin Ballet’s production of Snow White!
In reality, we know that the “homewrecker” image of stepmothers is quite misplaced. It turns out that something like less than 10% of men actually marry or become serious with the woman they “left the marriage for,” if I’m remembering my research correctly. Also, statistically women are just as likely to cheat as men–yet the notion of men leaving for another woman is a powerful fear that outrages us, and as a culture we don’t really interrogate our concept that in a divorce the mom is always the victim. Finally, women initiate a divorce something like 85% of the time. Again, it seems that it might be just as likely that stepfathers are the homewreckers, but that doesn’t seem to interest us. You might like the research of Linda Nielsen, a sociologist at Wake Forest University, on this topic!
May 23rd, 2012 at 11:08 pm
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