Some things are, as they will be 2 years later, a little different
I’m having a very sad stepmom day as a lot of us do, and I looked up ‘stepmother struggles’ on the internet because like, that’s where we look for things we have right?
I mean, you should see my black tank top search variations.
Anyway...
So there’s this ‘Stepmother Bill Of Rights’ thing I see now and again when looking these things up, that makes me crazy because it’s all stuff that should be so obvious, but also stuff that’s such a pipe dream. The stepmother does literally all the same-if not more- of the parenting work that her partner does, often (I know in my case, anyway, very profoundly) loves their stepchildren as deeply as their birth children, but has no legal rights to the schedule, other adults making decisions for her time, and her giving twice as much time to parenting as she had to for only her own children. IT IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF BEING A STEPMOTHER. All of the responsibilities of a mother to children of which you are absolutely not the mother of no matter how much you feel like one. You aren’t their parent even when you do all that a parent would, often alongside raising your own child. So the one right that makes me craziest about that cute little stepmom bill of rights is ‘I will not be treated or thought of as an outsider within my own family or my own home’...
Wait-really? Did you not get the memo from the universe? You know, the one you should have read stating THATS THE FUCKING JOB, PEOPLE! Did you not live in the same world we all did? Did you all not know what Wife-Life was to begin with, more or less second wife life with someone else’s humans as your own responsibilities and hearts? Were they not part of what You fell in love with, jerks? When you said I do, you said ‘I do agree to be a stepmother’. Sure a lot of it is degrading, heartbreaking, lack of appreciation belittling to how much work it is- but I don’t know how you found your partner and beautiful stepchildren living in a cave hidden from society, womanhood, stereotypes, and like, LIFE for so long. We don’t get a bill of rights. We don’t get ANY parental rights. No matter how much we sacrifice, how deeply we love, how hard we parent, we are NOT legally their parents.
We get amazing, wonderful stepchildren to love. It is not the world, our partner, or their real parents job to love that about us. Or even respect that about us. Or even treat us with any respect at all (because again ladies-you didn’t see this coming? Tv? Books? All the second wives you’ve ever met?) No one ever ever told us that was part of the deal.
We are stepmothers. That was the deal.
So hey, thanks Internet. Sometimes from annoying Internet movement rage comes perspective.
Now since I went to my room for an hour, I’m going to go have the kids get off the screens my husband left them on all that time, or at least have them turn the volume down from window shaking to only minor ear damage level. Not because they’re my kids and I have a right and a whole fucking bill of them implied by a mommy blog or anything...
But because I’m their stepmom, and it’s my job. That I do, because I love them.
