Stories like Debra’s are exactly the type of experience stepmothers can’t talk about with just anybody. Friends or siblings who have children have had time to adjust to what life is like with kids, and they don’t understand why this is so upsetting to a new stepmother who was a complete stranger to these children not long ago.
Biological mothers have a deep love for their children that balances the more challenging parts of parenting. Stepmothers are often expected to act like mothers in the daily running of a household, and that places them in a bit of a bind. First, they are not mothers. Second, they are new to parenting.
Third, they don’t have the same kind of emotional bonds to those children as the biological parent does. Even without all of the emotional issues that can stack up on a stepmom’s shoulders, the transition from living alone to living with a bunch of other people is enough to induce stress. Allison entered her stepfamily when the kids were in their teens. Late one night she got out of bed and walked into the kitchen in the half darkness.
She stepped in something, slipped, and fell. One of the kids had knocked a bowl of chili onto the floor and left it there. He hadn’t bothered to clean up. It’s a funny story for their family now, but it wasn’t funny to Allison when it happened in her first year of marriage. She remembers another story. “My house looked like an interior designer lived in it. And suddenly these whirling dervishes were living in my house! In our house. One of my stepsons ran down the stairs with his guitar and he knocked all the art off the wall all the way down the stairs, and then he left it there. He said, ‘See you later; I’m running late.’”
Heidi remembers her former life. “I lived in my very own space for twenty years before getting married at 42 years old. And my house was the same in the evening when I got home as I left it in the morning.” When she moved in with her four stepchildren, it’s easy to imagine, that was no longer the case.
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