Now Blogging on Psychology Today
I'm now posting for psychologytoday.com about women with stepchildren. I'll be posting there weekly, and the posts will be different from the ones on my own blog. Have a read...
I'm now posting for psychologytoday.com about women with stepchildren. I'll be posting there weekly, and the posts will be different from the ones on my own blog. Have a read...
November 16th is National Stepfamily Day. And women with stepchildren are the lynchpin of the stepfamily system — research tells us that stepmother is the most challenged and stressed stepfamily member with the most complicated adjustment process.
I'm not sure many people noticed the presence of Joan Kennedy at Ted Kennedy's funeral. But I did. Writing about stepmothering skews your vision sometimes, and brings things into focus that interest only you (and, hopefully, other women with stepchildren).
In my last post I considered just how unrealistic the expectation that women married to men with kids will be able to win those kids over with warmth, kindness, and good intentions alone is.
One of the biggest points of confusion and controversy as I talk to people about Stepmonster and stepmother reality is the injunction, "Put the kids first" and "The kids should always come first" and other variations on this theme. It's become a virtual mantra since Constance Ahrons introduced the idea of "The Good Divorce" and highly cooperative co-parenting after a breakup as ideal for the kids. The members of the ex-couple, Mom and Dad, should put their differences aside, Ahrons urges, for the sake of a more harmonious "bi-nuclear family" or divorced family that spans two households. This will spare the kids from ugly, painful loyalty binds and help with their adjustment to the shattering of family life as they knew it.
My stepdaughter would deem the title of this post totally random. And it sort of is. But there is a deeper logic, sort of: these are the ladies and places I want to call to your attention — and thank.
I already said I'm not apologizing for my love of Star magazine. Ok? It has been a valuable research tool, allowing me to keep up with what is supposedly going on between Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, and Bruce Willis all these last years. And to thereby track our national obsession with what I will call the Overly Cozy Divorce.
You knew Catherine Zeta-Jones was an Oscar-winning actress. But what about her side job — carpenter? Or, more specifically, the side job of women with stepchildren the world over: family carpenter. At first glance, a recent story about Catherine and her stepson in the Daily Mail is heart-warming: Catherine helped bring Michael and his wild-child, hard-partying young adult son Cameron back together after years of estrangement, telling him "You are a huge part of this family and you are always welcome" (see the full story as it ran in the Daily Mail a couple of weeks ago: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/femail/article-1151830/Catherine-Zeta-Jones-hot-girl-Zorro-brought-father-says-Cameron-Douglas.html). He's grateful for it, and it's nice to hear a new riff on the old narrative in which stepmothers are wicked excluders, surely.
I can't even remember his name. It's true that I'm not much of a sports fan, but he seems like the least important player in the game I care about. It's the women — one married to him, the other the mother of his child — that have me (and perhaps you) interested.