Can stepparenting wreck your mental health?
In her book Stepmonster, Wednesday Martin, Ph.D. calls stepmotherhood the “perfect storm” for depression. One study showed that stepmoms reported depression at nearly double the rates of biological moms, a statistic that probably doesn’t surprise any stepmother out there. And while, generally speaking, stepdads tend to have it easier than stepmoms, that’s like comparing two different ways to climb Mt. Everest: still damn hard.
Becoming a stepparent involves countless factors that can negatively impact your emotional well-being. And because most of those stressors are unique to blended family life, we don’t talk about them or acknowledge them, instead writing them off as our own personal shortcomings.
How can stepparents protect our own mental health in this role that innately undermines our emotional stability?
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Stepparenting is damned hard
Nope, you’re not imagining it: life in a blended family really is more exhausting, more frustrating, and generally more of a pain in the ass than living in a traditional family. No matter how much you love your stepkids or they love you (but especially if your stepkids reject you), no matter how committed you are, no matter how much you want this whole stepfamily thing to work, being a stepparent can be really fucking hard.
Feeling overwhelmed by the stepparenting role isn’t just common; it’s typical. But why does being a stepparent take more out of us than, say, being a traditional parent, which is also plenty tough?
I mean, I was a single mom already when I met Dan. I was basically a pro at being stressed way before I became a stepmom. So why was stepmotherhood the thing that finally knocked me flat… and for years? What makes the stress of stepparenting so pervasive and insistent and all-encompassing?
To answer this, let’s dig into a little Psychology 101.
Where stepparents fit in a blended family
Psychologist Abraham Maslow developed what he called the hierarchy of needs, theorizing that mankind’s basic needs must be met before we can focus on higher-level self-actualization. Among our basic needs are physiological requirements like food, shelter, and safety. Other needs that contribute to our psychological health include love and a sense of belonging, confidence, and respect from others.
When I met Dan, I had a clear sense of who I was and where I was headed in life. At first, my relationship with Dan seemed to complement and enhance my personal evolution. As our relationship continued, though, I became less sure about my place in life, not more.
The near-daily barrage of judgement, scapegoating, and resentment leveled at me for simply existing whittled my formerly strong sense of self down to a rickety, anxiety-ridden toothpick. Self-doubt replaced self-confidence. I went from knowing my exact role as a single mom to having no idea where I really fit in as a stepmom. I went from feeling grounded and solid and sure to uncertain, isolated outsider with stepmom PTSD.
If our psychological health starts out looking like a tower, the onslaught of stepparenting stress forces foundational bricks out from key locations like a vicious game of Jenga. Self-confidence? Gone. Our sense of belonging? Also gone. Respect from others? Nope. Are we even loved or valued? Who knows! 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
With so many aspects of our essential psychological health threatened and teetering, stepparents can quickly find themselves drowning in stress.
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Stepparents and the stress of daily life
Stepmoms and stepdads are full-time stress jugglers trying to manage all the emotional labor we’re expected to perform. We live daily life under constant low-grade stress as we try to figure out what the heck our role as stepparents even is. And then that daily low-grade stress is peppered with periodic bursts of more intense stress, like when we’re supporting our partners through their court battles.
Our lives feel out of control because everything about stepfamily life and the normal daily requirements of the stepparenting role just happen to tick every single box on the brain’s “Is This a Threat?” checklist.
Yes. Yes, this role is a threat because stepparenting does negatively impact our health and well-being. Therefore, we can’t fucking relax. Like, ever. Therefore, we are always, always, always stressed out. And therefore, our mental health looks like Swiss cheese.
But it’s not like you came from some completely stress-free unicorn land where you had zero stress before you met your partner, right? You were probably already living in some degree of full-time stress pre-stepkids. Most of us do. So what changes when we become stepparents that suddenly the walls feel like they’re collapsing in on our heads? Is it just that there’s more stress?
Well… yes. There’s definitely more stress. But also, that’s not exactly the problem.
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Stepdads, stepmoms, and Outsider Syndrome
The human need to feel like we’re a part of something — like we belong — is an essential requirement to our mental health and stability. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, he ranks love and belonging as the next most important psychological need after basic food and shelter.
And go ahead, every stepparent who feels like they have a clear sense of precisely where they belong in their stepfamily, raise your hands. 🙋🏻♀️
No? Nobody?
Exactly.
There’s a good reason why so many stepdads and stepmoms suffer from Outsider Syndrome: because we are outsiders. We’re not just treated like outsiders; we’re never allowed to forget we’re outsiders. The loneliness that stepparents experience as they adjust to their new role is so common that I included isolation as one of the recognizable stages of becoming a stepparent.
Feeling cut off from our people hits us right in the most primitive part of our brain; humans need togetherness to survive. So when we feel like outsiders, our brains kick into overdrive trying to figure out how we can rejoin our tribe. This can look like everything from over-engaging (trying way too hard to be the “perfect” stepparent) to endless worrying over issues we can’t control.
As hard as we try, we’re met again and again with an avalanche of evidence that seems to indicate our contributions don’t matter… or worse, might actually be making life harder. We think this means we must not be trying hard enough, so we redouble our efforts, perpetuating a cycle that only increases tension.
If all this sounds futile, that’s because it feels futile. No wonder stepparents are more prone to depression.
Stepparents, mental health, and self-care
So how can stepparents get our mental health back on track? Especially if our emotional well-being depends at least somewhat on feeling consistently loved and valued by our stepkids and partners, a factor we really can’t control.
My answer, after many missteps and soul-searching and personal development books and a decent amount of counseling, is this: we need to focus on valuing ourselves. Proving to ourselves that we belong.
We need to focus on the positive. And I don’t mean that in an “Oh just focus on how much your stepkids love you and that’ll make being a stepparent alllll worth it!” kind of way (gross 🤮), but we do have to find ways to help positivity grow even though nothing else has changed. Even when you still want to throttle your stepkids, even when your partner is being a total knucklehead, even when the ex is pulling their usual shenanigans.
This acceptance — finding a reserve of calm within ourselves, discovering inner confidence that doesn’t require external validation — is just disengaging by another name. By disengaging in a loving way, we carve out enough time and space to let ourselves heal.
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Stepping back a bit can retrain our minds to focus on healing rather than focusing on the stress. Switch the soundtrack in our head every time we catch ourselves humming that catchy negativity tune. Stop mindlessly scanning through a lineup of worst-case scenarios, searching for everything that could possibly go wrong. And then we can plant positivity to grow there instead.
After months or years of taking care of everyone except ourselves, self-care can feel selfish to stepparents. Boundaries can feel selfish. Except prioritizing our mental health isn’t selfish; it’s us returning to ourselves… after way too much time spent erasing our voice in an attempt to keep the peace — at home and between houses.
And once we find our voice again, once we’re standing firmly rooted in our personal beliefs and morals instead of compromising them for the greater good of our stepfamilies, we’ll recover our sense of belonging. With that foundation in place, our mental health can come back online, too.