While I was researching my book, I was fascinated to discover that there is plenty of stepparenting in the animal world. Evolutionary biologist Stephen T. Emlen, for example, studied some Kenyan birds, the White Fronted Bee Eaters, and discovered uncanny similarities between their families and ours. Bee Eaters live in rather large communal apartments — okay, they're really giant bird houses in mud banks, but you get the idea. They help extended family members with provisioning and childcare (yes, juvenile bee eaters actually babysit their younger offsprings and cousins) and they also "divorce" (that's what ornithologists call it) after a nesting failure (i.e., no chicks in a breeding season). After which the Bee Eaters will "repartner." That's right, get married again.

Guess what then happens in the Bee Eater household with the introduction a new stepparent? Increased levels of conflict with juveniles, who will then disperse from the nest (that is, take their leave from home) earlier than juvenile Bee Eaters from homes without "stepparents." And if mom or dad has offspring with the new stepparent, the juvenile Bee Eaters are even more likely to disperse and live with other relatives. Hmmm.

As for primates, Dr. Dan Wharton of the Chicago Zoological Society, a primatologist with decades of experience observing some of our closest non-human relatives, tells me we might look to gorillas for some lessons about human stepparenting, and stepmothering in particular. Gorillas live in harem-like groups of a single male and a number of unrelated females with whom he has offspring. Get it? It's sort of like living with your husband and several of his ex-wives and all of their kids. Wharton says that in many cases, it's just a question of individual chemistry — a female may or may not get along with her mate's offspring with another female. "Sometimes those relations are close, sometimes they're conflictual," Wharton observes.

And, he suggests, there may be a lesson for us in that. "In the same way, it makes sense to acknowledge that in the relationship between a woman and her stepchild, there may be great individual chemistry, and the possibility for great friendship, or the possibility for very little beyond civility." As a primatologist, Wharton has this to say about stepmothering: "I think the problem is the word 'mother' in there. It makes things very confusing. From my work it seems it is better to hang back and not embrace that mothering role." Something like a friendship — with the understanding that you are indeed entitled to respect and authority in your own home — is probably a better bet.

So now I finally understand why, whenever it's not too cumbersome or awkward, I prefer the term "woman with stepchildren" to "stepmother."