When are you considered a stepparent?
When you become a parent, there's a clear before-and-after sequence. One day there wasn't a kid around. The next day, bam. Baby. Even an adoptive parent or foster parent experiences this before-and-after shift.
With a stepparent, not so much. Really, becoming a stepparent is the opposite of a clear sequence. Because no one says "I'm now a stepparent!" after they've been on a couple dates with someone who has kids. I never called myself SD's stepmom until after Dan and I got married. Which was ridiculous; if I wasn't a stepparent by then — at 4 years in and living together — what was I?
A huge challenge in the stepparenting role is trying to figure out when, in fact, that role begins. Not on the first date. That would be crazy. Not even the first day we meet the kids. And yet it makes no sense to wait until we move in together or get married to express our opinions about these kids we're (ostensibly) supposed to help raise, or the ex that's making our partner's lives hell — and maybe our lives too, by extension.
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Becoming a stepparent vs. becoming a parent
When you become a regular parent, everyone congratulates you and warns you how hard it is. How hard, yet also how precious: "Enjoy these years! They go so fast!!" When you become a stepparent, no one tells you anything... because no one can figure out quite when you became a stepparent.
One day, you're just dating someone with kids. At some point you're awarded an official girlfriend/boyfriend title. Next thing you know, you're picking your stepkids up from school (well, your future stepkids, you remind yourself, if this all works out.... right now, they're technically still just your partner's kids) and trying to convince the suspicious office workers that yes, you are a responsible adult who takes care of these children sometimes even though you are not one of their parents.
You're resisting the urge to slap the people who ask why you're sooo involved with your partner's kids, anyway: "I mean, they're not even your kids." As if you're playing house and don't understand the gravity of what you signed on for.
You understand, all right. You feel the weight of that decision every damn day. And that stepparenting title feels about a million times heavier than you ever thought it could.
Once you're helping with homework and asking kids to pick up their socks and going out to movies all in a group like an actual family, are you a stepparent now? Have you made enough contributions to count as your stepkid’s family? Do you get an official vote yet in the dynamics of your future family or how your stepkids are parented (or not)?
If not yet, then when?
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what does it mean to be a stepparent?
I married Dan not knowing the answer to any of these questions. I do remember feeling vaguely relieved that marriage technically meant I was a stepmom so at least I could stop stumbling over what to call my SD. And I think somewhere in the back of my mind, maybe I thought that once we were officially married, SD would respect me more or HCBM would stop treating me like Dan's side chick. (Neither of those things happened.)
Just like the act of stepparenting itself, using the titles "stepmom" and "stepdaughter" felt horribly awkward at first. I remember forcing myself through those words, hating the word "stepmom" because the next immediate thoughts that come to mind are "wicked" or "evil." And I hated saying "stepdaughter" because I worried that people might think I was diminishing my SD somehow — like "Oh this is 'just' my stepdaughter; she's not like a real daughter. She barely counts." Especially since Dan introduced both my daughter and his as "my daughters"— no differentiation between my biological daughter and his own.
And then I'd feel guilty that I felt the need to clarify at all. That I couldn't put the girls on equal footing like he did, so effortlessly. Which surely meant I was failing as a stepmom. A good stepmom would surely love her stepdaughter perfectly equally to her biological daughter. Exactly the same.
Not until years later did I realize those were all my own preconceptions tied to those words. This role. A bunch of wrong ideas about how life in a blended family "should" work and how we "should" feel toward our stepkids. The reality of stepparenting is much different.
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Am I a stepmom yet?
I can tell you the exact day my daughter was born, down to the hour and minute. I can't tell you when I became a stepmother, or even when I started thinking of myself as a stepparent. Can any of us? We're like the poster children for imposter syndrome: we're all neck-deep in stepfamily life while simultaneously questioning the validity of our role.
A new parent faces a steep learning curve filled with sleep deprivation and plenty of mistakes. But they roll with it. They have faith they'll figure it out, that the hard times are temporary, this will all get easier. That underneath it all, they're still a perfectly good parent.
Stepparents? We question all of that.
A new parent also gets gobs of endless support from everyone around them. They're armed with books on what to expect when they're expecting; what to expect the first year; what to expect the next 18 years. People bring you casseroles because they know you're exhausted, and bags full of hand-me-down baby clothes because they know money is tight.
Stepparents receive no such outpouring of support.
I say this a lot, but today feels like a good day to say it again: stepparenting being hard doesn't mean you're failing. Hard is the default setting. And while there may not be a clear starting point for the moment you become a stepparent, one thing that stepparents and biological parents have in common is this: there is no end point. Your role is always evolving, always growing and changing. You'll always learn more, you'll always find better approaches, you'll have good days and rough days and in-between days.
You will both love and hate stepparenting. You will fake it till you make it— and, at the same time, you'll probably never have a day where you think to yourself "This is it! I’m totally comfortable in my role now. I have arrived as a stepparent."
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Blending a family takes time
Blending a family requires years and years of emotional labor from stepparents, and those years do start at your very first date, even if you can't call yourself a stepparent just yet. Your relationship with your future stepkid begins the day you meet your future stepkid, even if you don't consider yourself their stepparent and probably won't for who knows how long.
So prepare yourself. Just like no expectant parent would sit around waiting for that nursery to remodel itself, get ready. Read up on blended family dynamics. There might not be an official "how to" guide for stepparents, but there's some good resources for stepparents out there if you dig. If the ex is high conflict, read up on high conflict. If you're struggling in your role, see a counselor. If you and your partner are both struggling, get counseling together.
Stepparenting is inherently challenging. But once we know that, we can brace ourselves. And hopefully, we can also be more forgiving with ourselves for maybe not knocking out of the park every minute of every day.