The expectations that others have of women with stepkids–and that we have of ourselves–are beyond huge, greater than great. They are enormous, outsized, and the root of much evil (or at least the cause of much misery and divorce).
We might think of those stepmothering expectations as hopes woven into judgments tethered to ignorance. Women with stepchildren struggle with misogynist stereotypes (the menu of choices is stepmonster or upbeat, ever-loving stepmartyr who puts herself last); a lack of understanding (combined with a conviction that they know best) from friends, colleagues, and even some so-called “experts” (“All you have to do is be nice!”); and most of all, a pervasive cultural climate of unrealistically high hopes (“The Brady Bunch could do it, so you can too!”; “It’s easy to become a blended family!”; “Subsequent families can and should be just like first families!”). We know from a growing body of research that negative stereotypes about stepmothers have a dramatic impact on how women adjust to remarriage with children. It only makes sense, then, that great expectations, and the “failure” to meet them, will effect our adjustment as well.
Add to the brew the fact that women are highly relational, affiliative, and social, placing high value on how we are perceived, and deriving much of our self esteem from being in successful relations with others, and you see the problem. Between the way our culture works and the way our brains work, it seems, it is going to be a long road for women with stepkids to lower their expectations of themselves. But the payoff–and I invite you to consider it for a moment–would be incredible.
In the spirit of encouraging that change, I’m going to outline, over the next few days, some of the great expectations that keep women in remarriages with kids down.
Great Expectation #1: You’re Going to Win Those Kids Over, No Problem!
The unspoken flipside of this expectation is: When there are problems in the stepfamily, or in the steprelations, the real problem is stepmom. She’s just not loving enough, or kind enough. She’s just not trying hard enough. She’s just not warm. And so on. Recently, a therapist was quoted in a magazine that shall go unnamed, advising women with stepkids, “Remember, the more affection you give to your stepkids, the more you’ll get back.” The fact of someone getting stepmother reality so utterly wrong–an “expert” promulgating, in print, a damaging misconception, was beyond frustrating to me. But it wasn’t a huge surprise, since this particular great expectation of stepmothers is so rampant in our society. Why should psychologists necessarily know better?
And now the facts about this expecation: those in the “If you’re loving they’ll always come around” school don’t understand the dynamics and characteristics of stepfamilies or remarriages with children, those things that set us apart from first families and first marriages. They are, among other things, LOYALTY BINDS, PERMISSIVE PARENTING, and POWER IMBALANCES. LOYALTY BINDS occur when a stepchild of any age (and I’ve seen it in 50-year-olds) has a sense that liking stepmom would just kill mom. In the face of a loyalty bind, progress is a two steps forward, four steps back affair, because your stepchild senses that liking you is an act of enormous betrayal. Every time he or she builds some closeness with you, there is a feeling of shame, and then a need to turn stepmom, who elicited the feeling, into The Bad Object.
Occasionally, adult stepkids are able to shake their loyalty binds over time by themselves, but they are remarkably persistent. More often, stepkids of all ages need explicit permission from mom to like stepmom–and too often, it’s just not forthcoming. Over and over women have told me of pouring their hearts and energies into developing closeness with a stepchild–only to feel frustrated, years later, that these efforts and feelings still go unreciprocated. FACT: You can’t make a child in a loyalty bind love or even consistently like you. And you shouldn’t try. Drs. Marilyn Coleman and Larry Ganong, stepfamily researchers at the University of Missouri actually found that, in the case of a child with loyalty binds, the more attractive, appealing, kind and warm a stepmother was, the more forcefully a child would reject her. If mom won’t release her kids from this hell, find a better focus for your energies than bending over backwards to win the child’s love and approval.
PERMISSIVE PARENTING is a scourge in white, middle and upper-middle class post-divorce families according to a number of experts on divorce and remarriage, including some that I interviewed while researching Stepmonster. The most important thing to know about permissive parenting is that 1) it makes a stepmother’s own standards of neatness and civil behavior seem draconian in comparison to mom and dad’s lax standards (talk about a set up!) and 2) the sense that they are in charge often gives kids in a remarriage the feeling that they have veto power over dad’s girlfriend or even life partner. Do the Forces of Ignorance out there think that kids who see stepmom as a threat to their power and relationship with dad are going to welcome her warmth and attentiveness? Or be open to it? Or that she can, by herself, “fix” this unhealthy family dynamic with kindness? In the context of permissive parenting, these kids will find her threatening, and expecting to get back what she gives will be a draining exercise in futility. Better to take up the issue of discipline with her husband or partner and come to an agreement about how to have a couple-focused versus child-centric household first.
Which brings us to POWER IMBALANCES IN STEPFAMILIES. James Bray has written about the “percolator effect” in remarriages with children–how the mood of the household and the power percolates up from the kids, rather than dripolating down from the parents as it does in a first marriage family. In this unhealthy “percolator effect” developmental setting, kids are getting an unrealistic sense of their centrality in the family and the world–and are unlikely to see stepmom as someone to respect. Then there’s the fact of stepfamily architecture in which the stepparent–and especially the stepmother–is the stuck outsider until/unless she is invited into the inside of the family by her partner. Dr. Mavis Hetherington, in her 30-year Virginia Longitudinal Study found that the kids often like stepmom to stay on the outside, feeling insecure and threatened about letting her in; and that too often, dad tacitly cedes to their wishes out of guilt. Is a stepmom’s love and affection enough to overcome these entrenched power imbalances? Not a chance. Again, hard work with a partner to reset the power dynamics in the household is the only real solution. Until then, pouring on the love is mostly pointless, as it will likely be viewed with suspicion by the kids, and create resentment in her.
Let go of the first great expectation. Remember when you are struggling that, in Patricia Papernow’s words, you are feeling rejected or unloved and unappreciated by the very people your husband feels nourished, loved, and appreciated by. Finding each other across that fundamental divide in your relationship is the first order of business for couples in a remarriage with children. Only then can a good or good enough relationship with his kids develop. Don’t kid yourself, and don’t let the world kid you: good intentions and being nice are not enough.
Next time: Great Expectation #2: Stepparenting is just like parenting.
