It's hard being a stepmother

It is a hard and thankless job being a stepmother. I mean yeah, it's hard and thankless being a mother at all, but imagine having a child you love more than life but you can only see that child every other weekend or less. Now imagine that you keep getting told that you are not allowed to do anything for this child. Yet at the same time, you can't ignore the child. You are constantly told to butt out but if you butt out you are a cold bitch. You love the child and you are told "stop trying to replace me" or "I'm the mother not you" and so on. HOWEVER, if you step back and just kinda show no emotions towards the child "why are you ignoring him/her?" or "why are you treating my child like he's not wanted there?"

I mean COME ON!!!!! Make up your mind already!? Are we to love the child or not? Are we to butt out or pay attention? What the heck?! Why are we being treated like the enemy? A child gets a stepfather and it's "how wonderful, another person to love the child" or "It's so nice she has someone to help her raise her child." Yet when a stepmother comes on the scene it's "she's so horrible!" or "I can't believe she would volunteer at the school! How dare she?!" and so on. What happened to the philosophy of more love for the child?!

The examples I used are not necessarily from my life. Do my stepson's mother and I get along? No. Did I quote her in the above? No. Does my point have anything to do with her what so ever? No.

My point is that society as a whole believes the way I stated above. I have been having conversations with a friend about my stepson where I just said "my kids" and went on and someone has interrupted me saying "He's not your son, he's your stepson." Yeah, and? I am perfectly aware that I didn't give birth to him, so what? I didn't give birth to my cats either but I call them my babies. Gonna take issue with that too?

Society as a whole has been so accepting of stepfathers yet they refuse to do the same for stepmothers. It's repulsive! Stepmothers are viewed as evil (thanks a lot Disney), as home-wreckers (even if she didn't come on scene til years after a split), and other horrible things. Why is this? What is so wrong with stepmothers?

Yes, some stepmothers are horrible. For years I tried to find stepmother groups where the stepmothers were POSITIVE about their stepkids and all I could find was women talking about how horrible the kids were and other ghastly things. I would leave the group almost as quickly as I joined it. So I am well aware to how many awful stepmothers there are.

But, come on people. We are not all like that! In fact, I would imagine that they are the loud minority. Thankfully I have found some absolutely WONDERFUL stepmom groups on Facebook (invitation only, unsearchable, not giving names here - sorry). These groups and these women are who helped me through the transition we went through almost a year ago when my stepson was moved out of state. If it were not for the support and encouragement of those women, that transition would have been so much harder on me than it was (and it was still pretty tough). But instead, I was able to be supported by the women and I was able to support my husband instead of him having to suck it up and support me.

Well, that went off point. LOL I guess I really just want to make people aware that not all stepmothers are evil, despite what Disney movies want you to believe. So the next time you're talking to a stepmom, instead of criticizing her, why don't you tell her what a good job she's doing?