Recently, after getting some great national publicity — and some notably nasty blowback from a few adult stepchildren and women whose husbands had divorced them and then remarried — I was trying to figure out why our society's suspicion of and anger toward women with stepkids runs so deep.

Of course there's the cultural script to thank — those centuries of fairy tales that paved the way for so much fear, bias and misunderstanding about who stepmothers really are. And don't forget the Wicked One's Other face — the Stepmartyr, who is supposed to be all loving and all maternal every second of every day, who doesn't mind subsuming her own needs and agendas to those of kids who resent and often mistreat her, and who will wait, patiently and forever, for the stepkids to decide she is actually okay after all, before closing shop emotionally in order to preserve her dignity. Fail to be a Stepmartyr, it seems, and you're automatically the devil.

But what I really couldn't figure out was the anger, the incredible rage elicited by the simple assertion that understanding stepmothers is a necessary piece of the puzzle, that the stepmother's happiness and healthy adjustment matter as much as anyone else's, that supporting stepmothers and having compassion for them, rather than simply lecturing to and judging them, will not just help stepmothers, but will keep entire stepfamilies healthier and on track.

"Who cares about what you feel?!" one person wrote. "Grow up!" another demanded. "He has kids and they're supposed to come first. Shut up about the stepmother already!" My favorite: "Maybe when your own kids become teen agers and hate you you'll understand us ex-wives better!"

Where was all this coming from?

Then it hit me: rage at stepmothers comes from a presumption of guilt. Forget about our legal system's main and most democratic protection — the presumption of innocence. It doesn't apply to stepfamilies and it especially doesn't apply to stepmothers. It seems to be a common assumption that virtually every woman with stepchildren is also a homewrecker. And so, this thinking goes, having ruined a marriage and a family, she has no right to think of herself, her own feelings, her own situation, at all. Now that she destroyed a family, caring about herself one iota or asserting that she will not be mistreated in her own home is akin to an outrage: she must sacrifice herself at the altar of His Kids and take whatever his ex and the world dishes out because of What She Has Done.

Now I get the rage. But let's move on to the research, and the facts.

In her article, "Stepmothers: Why So Much Stress?" a thorough and brilliant review of the sociological literature on stepmothering, Dr. Linda Nielsen of Wake Forest University explodes some of our society's most entrenched myths about divorce and remarriage. First, Nielsen points out, women initiate divorces almost 85% of the time. Sure, divorced dads have initiated the proceedings some times. But not very often. To the response that, "She probably had no choice, because he cheated," Nielsen points out that women are almost as likely to cheat as men. So the blanket presumption that, if the marriage fell apart because of infidelity, it was Him who stepped out is wrong half the time. Finally, Nielsen and other researchers have found, men only leave their wives for the woman they cheated with less than 15% of the time.

There's no arguing with the fact that it could be utterly devastating to have a spouse who cheated on you and then left you and your kids high and dry, moving on to another relationship and essentially forgetting about you and the kids. Those of us who haven't been there can't even imagine the pain.

As for the woman with stepkids, presuming that she caused that unimaginable pain is usually, it turns out, a losing gamble.

Let's say, however, that her husband did in fact leave his wife for her. Does that make stepmom the villain, or merely a lightning rod for anger at dad, who made the choice himself? And when a marriage dissolves due to the male partner's infidelity, is that the deepest root of the problem? I'm not blaming the person who was cheated on here but rather asking, was his cheating the symptom of deeper problems in the couple dyad? Many couples therapist would tell us the answer is yes. It does not necessarily make any more sense to judge the Other Woman than it does to judge the One He Left. However his marriage feel apart, whatever the circumstances, and whenever she started sleeping with him, the woman with stepkids still needs compassion and support if the entire stepfamily is to have a fighting chance.

The presumption of guilt fuels attitudes that undermine not only couples, but children's happiness and adjustment as well. When we punish women with stepchildren for what we suspect they may have done, the fate of entire families hangs in the balance.