Step-Parenting….

The winter time dark days and long nights have turned my thoughts to more serious topics....

Step-parenting is a topic that I’ve been thinking about recently.  I got to thinking about the topic during Christmas when my step-children were over with their children for Christmas Day celebrations.  As I watched over the gift giving and meal of the morning I couldn’t help but think about how blessed my life is as a result of these children.  Without them I would have lived a ‘childless’ life and would have missed out on all the joy of children.

But those thoughts also brought to mind the many stories I’ve heard of step-parenting gone bad…and even of those that I have lived first hand.

In my own life I have a half-brother.  He and I share the same father but different mothers.  Our father was a kind and loving man.  His second wife, my mother, was a good woman in many ways, but she was not a loving step-mother.  I won’t detail my brother’s life, but at a very young age, as a witness to what was going on, I knew she was unfair and unkind to my brother. 

Now when I look back on my family, I see a pattern that has emerged.  My father was raised by a step-mother.  His mother died when he was 5 years old.  His father remarried a widow with 5 children from her first marriage, and they had 3 children together.  My father’s perception…his reality…was that his step-mother was unloving and unfair.  He felt this way until the day he died, at 87. 

I remember at my Grandmother’s funeral, how Dad debated attending.  She was 97 years old, had had a debilitating stroke when she was 93 and been virtually a vegetable until she died…and still my loving, sweet father, could never forgive her.  The sins of a step-parent have long-lived, unforgiving repercussions. 

My brother and I were not close growing up.  There was the age difference; he was 5 years older than I.  And there was the difference in status in the family.  I was, without a doubt, the princess.  I was my mother’s favorite and while Dad treated us both the same, with great love, my brother never had the family experience that I had. 

When we became adults we had an unusual opportunity to become much closer and get to know each other better.   We both moved to Alaska and turned to each other in the initial months for companionship.  I got to know him well enough to marvel at the person he had become, in spite of his step-mother.

I marveled even more the day of her funeral, while I sat with little emotion my brother sobbed.  I was completely perplexed….how could he sob for a woman who had loved him so little.  But then, she was the only mother he had ever known. 

I can’t help but wonder about the family dynamics in my grandfather's life.  His mother was a step-mother to his half-brother and sisters.  There is no one left to ask.  They are all gone now. 

I also wonder about the next generation.  There is now a step-mother in my great-nephews’ lives.  I can’t help but wonder if the pattern is being carried forward.  What will their thoughts be the day they attend her funeral?

I wonder at this pattern because I am a step-parent, with a profound, personal understanding of the responsibility placed on anyone who carries the title.   The lessons to be learned from a family’s experience with step-parenting are simple.  It is the parent’s responsibility to protect and love their child regardless of the relationship with a step-parent.  If an adult cannot love a child, any child, from the depths of their soul, without prejudice, without favor, then the title of ‘step-parent’ is misplaced.    

Enough said.