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April 25, 2024, 8:00 am
Years ago we celebrated my youngest stepdaughter’s sixth birthday in a play paradise with bouncy castles and climbing frames. A friend who was invited stayed near me all afternoon. She was a bit shy and found the party quite overwhelming.
After the cake and lemonade we played tag and hide and seek on the big blue cushions. She was having so much fun that she forgot her shyness and asked what I was about the birthday girl. I told her I was her stepmother and explained what that meant. She nodded and started counting to ten while I had to hide again. At the end of the party she came up to me, took my hand and asked, “Would you like to be my stepmother too?”
Also read: How editor Nienke organized a children’s party for her toddler (and yes, you can copy this plan)
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I’ve never forgotten it. Never before had anyone looked at my stepmotherhood with such an open mind. She got to the heart of what I was feeling—the fun, love, and familiarity between me and my stepdaughters—which doesn’t seem to square with how we view and talk about stepmotherhood. If we even talk about it.
Little girls can sometimes dream out loud that they want to be a mother when they grow up, but a stepmother? My eldest once sighed that she would never grow up to be a stepmother. To my somewhat indignant “Why not?” she rolled her eyes and said, “I’m certainly not going to take care of other people’s children.”
A stepmother must mother, care and participate.
Stepmothers don’t have a good reputation. Fairy tales have created a persistent and negative image. She doesn’t have the best credentials in real life either. There is a heaviness to the role of stepmother that doesn’t seem to be attached to the role of stepfather.
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According to Johannes Mol, author of the book Stepfather families, the expectations we have of stepmothers are much greater than those of stepfathers. He spent ten years researching stepfamilies and interviewed 350 stepchildren, stepfathers, mothers and stepmothers. He says: “A stepmother must mother, care and participate. That expectation is in everyone: partners, children, neighbors, teachers, grandparents and stepparents themselves.
It is an extension of the enormous social expectations we have of mothers.’ Stepfathers have more freedom to fulfill their role and, according to Mol, do it well more quickly. With stepmothers it is exactly the other way around: on average, stepmothers try harder and get it wrong more often.
Also read: Stepparents desire appreciation and support: ‘I tried so hard that it almost broke me’
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Ouch! My eldest was right, you would be crazy to throw yourself into the arms of a parent and dream of lasting happiness. Yet I did exactly that when I fell in love with her father sixteen years ago, when she was 5 and her sister was 2. They were sweeter than sweet and their father had the most beautiful brown eyes.
I knew, if I chose him, I also chose two girls. It was that simple, just like the realization that it would probably not always happen automatically. We have been a blended family for fifteen years now and I have been a stepmother for just as long. We co-parent with the girls’ mother and stepfather – although the eldest recently moved out – and had another son together.
Sustainable happiness? Certainly! Complicated? That’s what it was sometimes. Actually just like when I became a mother. But also different. When I was pregnant with my son, I was able to draw on endless information about motherhood.
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Also read: How do you form a blended family? ‘It is difficult and accompanied by tears’
I had a world of examples, rituals and guidance available. How different it was when I became a stepmother. No rusk with mice or a stork in front of our window. No app that took me into this new world day by day. Online I found articles that did not match the happiness I felt, I was shocked by the one-sided image and emphasis on problems. Books on the subject barely filled a shelf on my bookshelf.
The only stepmother I knew was the mother of my stepdaughters – her new partner already had a daughter – but it felt strange to consult her. “The stepmother is on her own,” I read years ago as the conclusion of a large-scale study in England among 250 stepmothers. It touched me. Despite all the lovely people around me, I too had often felt like I had to figure it out alone. Stepmothers, how do you actually do that? If I didn’t know it already, how could those around me help me?
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I was painfully inexperienced. And that made me insecure.
It was a Wonderland and I was Alice. When I stayed over my first night, I had not taken into account that the eldest would crawl into bed with us in the morning, close to her father, and whisper in his ear that she thought I smelled strange.
Or that from now on I would shower with girls coming and going who, while sitting on the toilet, noticed that my breasts were much smaller than mom’s. That during our first holiday in France I forgot that you can’t drink Pernodjes in the village if there are two girls sleeping in the caravan. I was painfully inexperienced. And that made me insecure.
I sometimes lost sleep over the new role that had just fallen into my lap. Would I ever win my stepdaughters’ hearts? And vice versa? I thought they were sweet, well-behaved and smelled wonderfully of Zwitsal and mandarin oranges. But love them? My mind thought sternly about what my heart should feel. They didn’t deserve this, a stepmother who didn’t know if she would ever love her stepchildren!
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This mom understands that feeling: Rush hour: ‘The love for your own child is different than for a stepchild’
And there were still some wheels to invent. Did I dare to live together? I kept putting it off, afraid to trade my free life for a four-under-one-detached house in the Vinex. Would the girls listen to me if I helped raise children? And was I actually allowed to interfere with that, because hadn’t I read somewhere that stepmothers are better off keeping a low profile?
Was I as sweet as their mother? And how did she feel about entrusting her daughters to me? Our contact was good, but maybe she had to bite her tongue when she saw us together. And would I ever get used to the ‘well-intentioned’ jokes about evil stepmothers and impertinent questions: ‘So they’re not really yours?’
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As a stepmother, I stepped into a story of which the first chapters had already been written and the roles were divided. The age of my daughters, the good contact between their parents, the agreements that everyone kept, ensured that the girls and I had plenty of space to get used to each other and the new situation. Just like their parents, I put the interests of the children first, after all, they had not chosen this.
So we took a step forward and sometimes a step back. The reactions of others made it clear that I did not have my ‘job description’ with me. The word ‘stepmother’ carried a stigma with it, which seemed to put me 1-0 behind in advance. Not only did the outside world have a set of prejudices, the word also felt like a second-hand coat to me.
Also read: Being a stepmother or father: how do you deal with that?
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When I told people I was their stepmother, it felt like I was distancing myself from my girls: they belong to me, but not really. Again that distinction between real and not real, as I had to hear too often from others. Language can be infinitely inadequate or wrong.
A whole new word for stepmother would be nice. And although you hear the words ‘bonus mother’ and ‘plus mother’ more and more often, there is no widely supported alternative yet. I would like a word that can stand on ‘its own two feet’ and is not an ‘addition’ of the mother. One without shadows, that gives space and celebrates a new kinship.
When my girls were little, they would shout ‘daddy’ a hundred times a day, but never ‘stepmamaaa’. Because they had difficulty pronouncing my name due to their age, they changed it to Pina, a loving corruption that has remained. I am their Pina, and in the playground it sounded loud and clear: ‘Pinaaa’.
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When I took my eldest to a party once, I introduced myself to the birthday boy’s mother as her stepmother. She started laughing and waved my words away: ‘You’re her mother, you mean? I come from Curaçao and there a child has many mothers. We don’t know stepmothers. Nice to meet you and your daughter, would you like something to drink?’
The comment at the birthday party got me thinking. I have friends who are like a mother to my children. That is very fortunate. No areas need to be demarcated or entered carefully. Friendship and good intentions show the way automatically.
I noticed in small things that my love grew.
After a year we moved in together and became a family. I discovered that the complexity was also matched by a lot of beauty. Like my new ‘name’. That Sunday happiness can consist of laughing and cuddling. How funny my girls were, their questions disarmed me. My favorite was tucking in because I was reading from The BFG and Dikkie Dika new ritual that I introduced.
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I noticed in small things that my love grew. That I also kept thinking about them when they were with their mother. That I lingered in the bookstore with the reading books and Ronja the robber’s daughter bought for when they were older. That I told a friend that the youngest liked garlic olives and herring. And that it didn’t matter to me if my girlfriend yawned behind her hand.
The steps became steps. I helped raise children and the girls listened – okay, they listened better to their father, but his voice is louder than mine and his boundaries are less flexible. I found my place at school and joined the ten-minute conversations, together with their father and mother.
And no one was surprised by that. We got our own habits as a family, we went on holiday together and celebrated birthdays and other festive occasions. The back and forth between two houses, the sometimes loss of the other parent, the daily hustle and bustle of growing children, the adjustment and more than that. What was different became normal.
Also read: Co-parenting: 12 tips for divorced parents
I found my niche as a stepmother and love squared with my cheerfully composed, anything but perfect but loving family. I discovered that there is enough to hold on to. That you are well equipped with common sense and a sense of humor. That you can create your own story with the children – from the shadow of evil stepmotherhood and holy motherhood. That it takes time, but that there are also many beautiful things to experience during that time.
I hope we will tell more stories about stepmotherhood, the subject could use some lightness and love. Because – if you are a stepmother – you not only want to hear what can go wrong, what the pitfalls and problems are, but also what can go right and that it can go well. And that it is more than worth it.
Up to your ears – A cheerful look at stepmothers by Jasperina Roozendaal is published by Pressburg publishers (20 euros).
Tags: Jasperina wrote book stepmother painfully inexperienced
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