The other day, my bio daughter referred to my stepdaughter as her sister — no "step" in there anywhere. Sweet, right? Especially when I think about how many years they didn’t get along. But then it clicked that I am now officially the only person in our family to still use the "step" prefix.

I always introduce my stepdaughter as “my stepdaughter SD” and I always introduce myself as her stepmom. Yet Dan never calls BD his stepdaughter, even though she is. And BD always introduces Dan as her dad, which he biologically isn’t.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me that I feel the need to clarify our relationships, insist on the correct titles for all of us. Or I worry maybe SD feels like I think she’s inferior when I say she’s my stepdaughter instead of calling her my daughter. I mean, it’s not an insult; it’s a fact. She is my stepdaughter. That is our legal relationship to each other.

Then I remember it’s society’s preconceptions around the words ‘stepmom’ and ‘stepdaughter’ that make me second guess myself and I’m like… well, screw that. If anyone thinks my relationship with my stepdaughter counts for less because I’m her stepmom rather than her actual mom, I’ve got a good sharp kick in the shins for those idiots.

To change society’s preconceptions about “stepmom” being a dirty word, though, first we need to change our own. We need to stop acting like introducing ourselves as a stepparent is the equivalent of admitting to some shameful confession: I volunteered to raise a complete stranger or two. Please don't think less of me for it.

The only way for stepparents to stop feeling like we’re lepers is to normalize stepparenting, and the best way to normalize stepparenting is to embrace our prefixes already. Let’s stop apologizing for the very valid role we play in our stepfamily, and own the stepparenting title with pride.

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Where did the word “stepparent” even come from?

The “step” prefix in “stepparent” used to mean a parent to an orphan. Which makes sense, considering that stepparents originally came about to replace a dead parent. A hundred years ago, there weren’t daycares; single-parent households weren’t a sustainable thing. If one parent died in childbirth or while working in a coal mine, you needed a replacement parent pronto.

Slowly, as the traditional family model has changed and parents began remarrying for reasons besides economic stability, the word “stepparent” has come to mean simply a parent-through-marriage.

Except it’s not quite that simple, because the word “stepparent” carries sooo much baggage… especially for us stepmothers, who will probably forever have the words “evil” and “wicked” attached to our titles. Thanks Disney! 🙄

With divorce and remarriage now pretty dang commonplace, being a stepparent shouldn’t be any cause for embarrassment. So why do we tiptoe around the title “stepparent” like we’re basically Voldemort: we who must not be named?

Wicked stepmom vs. awesome bonus mom!

Apparently audience testing in recent years has indicated that most folks respond negatively to the stepmom title, so stepmoms have rebranded. So stepmoms, in case you missed the memo, we are now no longer stepmoms: we are BONUS MOMS!

What's a bonus mom, you ask? One thing a bonus mom isn’t is just a newer, fancier way of calling yourself a stepmom! No no no no no. BONUS moms aren't like those boring, awful, wicked stepmoms! BONUS moms are the FUN moms! BONUS moms are happy allllll the time that they got a BONUS kid out of their marriage, like some fabulous relationship upsell! Act now to date this person and we'll toss in a bunch of extra kids + drama for freeeeee!

Ugh.

Any other stepmoms out there who cordially detest the word bonus mom? 🙋🏻‍♀️

I don’t know who first invented this sugarcoated nonsense; as much as I’ve struggled to feel positive about calling myself a stepmom, I’ve never liked “bonus mom” as an alternative.

First of all, I feel like it’s just one more thing for me to feel shitty about — that I don’t view my stepdaughter as a bonus to my relationship with her dad. I view her existence (and, by extension, her mom’s existence) as the most complicated and challenging aspect of our relationship. Not that I don’t accept my SD together with my husband as a package deal — I definitely do, just as he accepts my kid. But that doesn’t necessarily make this gig easier. I mean let’s be honest: stepparenting can be hard AF.

Yet apparently BONUS moms don’t feel like that. Not a bit. So by calling myself a stepmom rather than a bonus mom, am I low-key admitting that I’m the only stepmom who has ever had mixed feelings or ever struggled to figure out her role?

Then the other problem I have with calling myself a bonus mom is that I can absolutely promise you that my stepdaughter never— not for a single second — felt like me entering her life was any kind of a bonus for her. So it feels pretty self-congratulatory to bestow that title upon myself. I can only imagine her face at age 10 (back when she couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me) if I’d introduced myself as her bonus mom. She might’ve been so offended that she stopped talking to me altogether.

Most of all, I can’t stand “bonus mom” because… I mean, aren’t we marginalized enough already as stepmoms? Surely we don’t need to invent hierarchy within our own ranks: stepmom vs. bonus mom. Like bonus moms are better somehow, some kind of upgraded, modernized version of stepmoms. Like bonus moms love their stepkids — I mean, bonus kids — more than us lowly stepmoms love our stepkids, because “bonus”?

Aren’t we juggling enough challenges in this role already??  

I don't particularly care what anyone wants to call themselves, but let's just be aware of the reason stepmoms felt the need to invent the whole bonus mom thing in the first place: because we're trying to escape our own internalized stigma against the word stepmom.

We don’t want the stepmom title. We don’t want the negative qualities that are associated with stepmothers — evil, wicked, selfish, cruel — to be associated with us.

(And stepdads, you might not have quite the same level of stigma going against you as stepmoms do, but there are plenty of tropes out there about abusive stepdads, beer-swilling-good-for-nothing stepdads, and just plain asshole stepdads that you probably wish you had a rebranding committee too.)

Let's own the stepparenting name. And the role.

The way to remove the stigma around stepparenting isn’t to make up some new title to describe the stepparenting role. It’s to correct the naysayers. To lead by example. To demonstrate exactly what stepparenting IRL looks like: mixed feelings and messiness and all.

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People who aren’t stepparents often have well-meaning but inaccurate ideas about what it means to be a good stepparent or what the best way to blend a family looks like. I know this, because all the super incorrect stepparenting assumptions I didn’t realize I had myself completely backfired on me when I actually became a stepmom.

Since then, I’ve learned that the best way I can be a good stepmom is by taking a step back: being more like a one-step-removed cool auntie. That’s what’s worked best for my SD and me.

Another stepparent might have a completely different role in their own stepkid’s life, whether that’s more involved or less involved — and that relationship is just as meaningful. All that matters is what works for you.

It doesn’t matter whether you have your stepkid 50/50 or every other weekend or only see them a few times a year, your role as a stepparent is just as important and valid to your stepkid’s life as any full-time parent. Even if your stepkids struggle to like you and if you struggle to like your stepkids, your role matters and your presence matters.

Stepparenting is the long game; your relationship takes years to figure out and you’ll make mistakes along the way and that is okay.

At the end of the day, the title we call ourselves isn’t relevant. The word stepparent, just like the stepparenting role, is whatever we make of it. What matters is what we bring to our stepkids’ lives, period. What matters is that we show up every day and we keep showing up. Every damn day.

And all of that — the years invested and the second-guessing myself and the love/hate relationship I have with stepparenting and how very long it’s taken us to feel like a family and how much we’ve all broken each other’s hearts yet forgiven each other and kept trying even when we didn’t want to — ALL of that, to me, is what it means to be a stepmom.

I don’t have a damn thing to prove to people who base their judgments about my life on LITERAL FAIRY TALES. So when I meet someone new, I hold my head high and don’t feel embarrassed one bit when I introduce myself as my SD’s stepmom. Because, by god, I have earned that title.

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