Double standard of being a stepfather or stepmother
Good Morning America played an interesting segment on “Mom vs Stepmom” on Friday, April 3. The idea was ignited after a well-known model, Gisele Bundchen, made an innocent comment about her feelings for her stepchildren. He simply said that he considers them 100% his. Why wouldn’t it feel like this? More specifically, why shouldn’t it feel like this? After all she it is married to her biological father. Have we not all learned that we should love not only the person we are married to, but also their entire family? That includes children, obviously. In-laws, however, are an exception, particularly the mother-in-law. It seems like it’s okay that you don’t like them, or at least you don’t get along with them.
Divorce seems fine too. Oh sure, they tell us that we should only get married once, only marry the person we are in love with, never cheat on that person, and never divorce. However, the divorce rate for first-time marriages is 50%. The divorce rate for subsequent marriages is 66% and even higher for married couples with children (families). That is, if the couple even wants to remarry. Many couples choose to cohabit (living together / living in shacks) instead, because they do not * want * to divorce again. It was so painful the first time that they realize why do it the second time.
These indices themselves reflect a contradiction in the so-called family values of our society. On the one hand, we uphold the importance of family values, staying together, loving everyone, treating everyone the same, and so on. However, on the other hand, we have pretty much accepted these divorce / separation rates as fact and they are not likely to change. In fact, someone just told me THAT last week, don’t expect the divorce rate to go down. FOREVER !! So we have accepted the fact that separation / divorce occurs, as well as the reasons for them, including infidelity.
The dynamics of reconstituted families, then, is the epitome of conflicting family values, and the stepfather or stepmother is the biggest victim of double standards. We are all led to believe that we * can * love whoever we want, and that love * can * last forever if we try hard enough. They make us all believe, thanks to movies like Yours Mine and Ours, that we can also form a mixed family and that we will all live happily ever after. However, anyone who has been in a reconstituted family knows that this is not the case. The reality is that stepparents and stepchildren do not automatically or instantly love each other just because the adults in the family remarry. In fact, in many reconstituted families (mixed families) love does not arrive until several years later. In other reconstituted families, love NEVER comes. That is one of the reasons why the divorce rate for reconstituted families is so much higher than for biological / traditional families.
We don’t choose who we love. Also, we can’t make someone else love us. We choose how we treat people. We must ALWAYS choose to treat people fairly, courteously, and with respect, which is especially important in reconstituted families. It is not okay to instantly love stepparents or stepchildren as long as you treat them the right way.
Reconstituted families are a good example. We hope that the stepfather automatically loves the biological children by marrying their biological father; however, we do not hold children to the same standard because they are “children.” So if children try to break up because they are unhappy about having another parent, the stepfather or stepmother is expected to be the older person and not frustrated or upset. Many parents revolve around children in the hope of making them happy without understanding that all children want is for their biological parents to get back together, which is not a possibility in 99% of cases. That is why it is important that reconstituted families figure out how to make the new union function as a reconstituted family unit.
Then there is the other side of double standards, as in the case of Gisele Bundchen. She internalized these family values that the Great Society has embraced over the years. She internalized the message and took it seriously. She has every intention and hopes to be as good as the biological mother of her stepchildren. In every bone of her body, she believes that she will love her husband’s children as if they were her own and treat them as her own children. In that sense, he considers them 100% his own. The other side of that same coin, however, is the simple fact that they are not your children. No matter what you do from now until the day you die … even if you bond deeply with them, you will never have a biological bond with them. She can never replace her mom. She knows that neither can and did not expect to try to replace her mother; however, she believes that she can be to them everything that her mother can be. In fact, it can, everything except the level and quality of love (bond) that only exists between a mother and her biological child.
The other factor that was not considered, and is generally not known or understood, is how stepchildren really feel about their new stepmother, the new family, the new environment (neighborhood, home, friends, etc.). Nor are the feelings of the biological mother known or understood. Many, many women have a hard time seeing their former spouse with a new woman. This is particularly harsh if the new woman is perceived (by the ex-wife) as prettier, younger, better known, or more glamorous. This can be even tougher if, God forbid, she was the “other woman” while the biological father was still married. Women, more than men, can feel very insecure about these qualities themselves. When they see their ex with a new woman who has these qualities, their insecurities come to the fore. In the minds of many of these ex-wives it is that he broke up with her because she was not pretty enough, she was too fat, too thin, too scruffy, not glamorous enough, … you get the idea. In reality, those reasons generally have nothing to do with the reasons for the initial breakup. Suddenly things that didn’t seem like a problem before are now a problem for the ex-wife. This puts the stepmother in a precarious position from the start. It’s a long uphill road that often takes her by surprise, to say the least.