The other night I found myself standing outside of a Rita’s Water Ice for 20 minutes because Youngest didn’t want me in the car while she explained to Jeff why she was in tears. For those of you not familiar with the sweet treats of the Philadelphia area, 20 minutes is an absurdly long time to stand outside a Rita’s that has no line. After I got my root beer water ice, I looked for a place to sit only to realize that all surfaces within any reasonable radius of a Rita’s have the kind of stickiness that comes from lots of children, lots of sugar, and too few napkins.
While I thought about the myriad diseases clinging to these surfaces, I had an epiphany: it really doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a stepmom, you will continue to find moments where you either feel like an outsider or are literally/physically forced outside your air conditioned (and sanitary) SUV.
This moment was particularly significant both because our 11 year anniversary was that weekend and because I’d been spending a lot of this summer reflecting on the kinds of resources and community I wanted as a stepmom early on (and even today) that are still lacking and had been toying with writing a book on the subject. How humbling to realize that after 13 years of being in the kids lives, 11 years as their stepmom, and the last six years with their biological mom not in the picture, that when the shit really hit the fan, I wasn’t welcome.
Incidentally, this was all brought about because we tried to do a nice farewell dinner for Youngest before she returned to college and it turned sour. To be honest, special evenings rarely go well and Jeff and I decided after this one we’d keep our “big dinners” at home. In this particular case, apparently the overall noise in the restaurant, combined with me suggesting Youngest meet with her advisor early on to discuss options for fellowships or programs after college, was just too much. As a note, I have gotten feedback from several mediocre men in the workplace that I can be “intimidating” and my husband has kindly explained that this “intimidation” is also felt by our kids and most of his family, so I was taking a very patient and considered approach in this conversation.
I started from a place of “it’s really overwhelming to be thinking about graduating at your age” and moved to “we don’t want you to feel pressured to find your perfect job while you’re still so young” and paused repeatedly to ask “how do you feel about this? I’m not trying to overwhelm, just looking at a calendar!” I landed on “it would be great if you met with your advisor in September just to find out what your options are so that if anything has an early application, you don’t miss it.” I got minimal response or engagement so we kind of moved on but fast forward 15 minutes later to a 19 year old crying outside the restaurant and me wondering how I’ve struck out again.
See, that’s the thing, I don’t need a guide on “how to have a pointed but compassionate conversation with a soon-to-be graduate who you want to support emotionally but you don’t want to support financially or with long-term housing.”1 I just need to be able to complain and move on because this is what I signed up for and stepped into.
I find myself in those moments texting the small handful of friends I have who are stepmoms because they understand how different the dynamic is—yes, age of kids, custody and relationship with the ex will vary but there is one constant: you are not their mom, yet still have the societal expectations of being a woman and a number of unfortunate stereotypes you are forced to navigate.
There’s no formal count of the number of stepmoms in the United States because they stop keeping track once kids are legal adults, but rough estimates put the number around 30 million. 30 million women playing a part reserved for villains in fairy tales and, while a number of things change when your kids are legal adults, the negotiations and diplomacy continue. Frankly, given what I’ve seen anecdotally with Gen Z and issues with “failure to launch,” I’d argue early adulthood brings as much stress as the teen years, you’re just not feeding them every day.
So why are we here?
Because I don’t want a how-to guide, I want to know I’m not crazy and my feelings are valid. My husband tries but he still comes back to defending the kids and explaining to me why they are the way they are. The reality is that I don’t need him to explain, I took Psych 101 in college, but I do need him to understand that it is embarrassing to find yourself outside of the car exposed to hand-foot-and-mouth disease at worst and staining at best because someone whose college tuition you pay can’t talk about being “stressed” in front of you.
I’m hoping my words and this space can provide some validation and solidarity for all of us who are stepparents, parents of older kids or experiencing the general chaos of family life — blended, extended or complicated.
Actually, I’m still open to pro tips on this one…