THE DISENGAGING ESSAY
On every stepparenting forum, you’ll find users sharing links to the Disengaging Essay all sneaky-like, like they’re passing notes or hiding a dirty secret. And it’s true that disengaging from your stepkids is controversial, but that's because disengaging from your stepkids is such a vastly misunderstood concept.
True disengaging comes from a place of love and it’s been a hardcore sanity-saver for countless stepparents.
The original version of this essay was written by an unknown stepmom who sounds like she was on her last nerve. I’ve adapted that into an updated version that I hope can be helpful for stepmoms and stepdads both, as well as pre-stepparents who are still in the dating-someone-with-kids stage.
Please keep in mind that this essay is really only a starting point for disengaging, which is a long-term process that requires more than one major mindset shift and a whole lot of practice. (For a shortcut, skip right to the ebook on how to disengage.)
While disengaging from your stepkids isn’t for everyone, remember there are no rules for blending your family in a certain way. We’re all groundbreakers here! You gotta do what’s right for you, and sometimes that means taking a step back by disengaging.
PARENTING AFTER DIVORCE
In a traditional family, there are two equal parents. Each has a clear sphere of influence, and each has a certain amount of innate authority granted to them simply for parenting a kid: being there and being present.
Also in a traditional family, love and discipline are doled out by both parents. Sometimes Dad loses his patience; other times he helps me fix up my bike. Sometimes Mom gives me a big hug; other times she sends me to my room. Ups and downs are part of daily life and everyone just rolls with it.
The upheaval of divorce throws every single established family dynamic straight out the window.
Suddenly the kids aren’t sure how family life works anymore. Their parents might not agree on much of anything — including basic parenting principles. There are two houses now and the rules at each might be different.
However parenting looked before, what divorced parents feel most of all is guilt. Which typically leads to no longer parenting in a sensible way. Rules and structure fall by the wayside, especially in the case of an uneven custody split where one parent sees the child far less often. (Who wants to bother enforcing bedtimes when you only have your kids every other weekend?)
Then, one day, that parent develops a relationship with someone new: the stepparent.
life with stepparents
The stepparent, as an outsider, can see all kinds of parenting gaps in the lives of these children of divorce — things that their actual parents have long since glossed over or maybe never realized in the first place. And stepparents also see all the special gifts our stepkids have, gifts that are getting lost in or destroyed by these parenting gaps.
Since we stepparents view ourselves as responsible adults, we think it's our job to step in and help make things better. After all, we want our stepkids to grow into the best possible versions of themselves, right?
To this end, we're happy to help take over parenting duties our partner has missed or forgotten or doesn't think are important. Little things, like enforcing table manners or asking the kids to pick up after themselves. And we don’t really expect this kinda stuff to be a big deal.
Except it is.
As stepparents, we lack the bonding with our stepkids that would give us authority in their eyes to take over any parenting-type duties. We're too new. We're practically strangers, even if we've already been around a year or two (or five). And we’ll continue being viewed as the new kids in the cafeteria until our partner invites us over to the cool kid table with the rest of the fam.
In a divorced family, the single parent and the kids form their own team. A stepparent enters the game as the lone wolf outsider, not belonging anywhere...unless our partners reach out and welcome us in. Parent, stepparent, and kids all need to realize that the name of the new game is Blended Family, and everyone belongs in the family equally.
Stepparents want to contribute. We want to help with the kids, we want to give our partners a break, we want our homes to be less chaotic or our family to look more like the family we always envisioned. So we keep trying to organize chores, enforce rules, all those totally non-fun but necessary things that keep a household running. Yet what we stepparents think of as normal parenting ends up viewed as an overly harsh double standard by our stepkids (and often by our our partners too), no matter how well-meant our intentions may be.
As our contributions continue going unappreciated and unrecognized, stepparents feel increasingly isolated, confused, and stressed out.
We feel disrespected and complain to our partners. Maybe we get support behind closed doors, but it's not followed through in real life. Or maybe we're accused of not loving our stepkids or criticizing our partner's parenting skills. Which, for the record, really isn't what we're saying at all — although we can see how it could come off like that.
This miscommunication isn't anyone's fault. After all, our partners never had to back up their kids’ other parent every single time in their former family. Having to parent differently in a blended family doesn't even occur to our partners. They're still parenting the same way they have since the divorce, and that worked just fine before the stepparent came along — so clearly, the problem is us. We must be the wicked stepparents.
The more we talk to our partners about how to make things better at home, the more convinced they become that we are the worst parent figures ever.
Everything was just hunky dory before we stepparents came into the picture. We must be at fault. We're overreacting. They defend their kids' behavior and make the stepparent into a scapegoat, further reinforcing an "existing family" vs. "outsider syndrome" mentality.
When or partners give our stepkids permission to ignore or dismiss our efforts, they actively undermine the importance of the stepparenting role.
Or they may passively undermine our role by taking no action whatsoever — by denying our need for support; by themselves ignoring or dismissing our contributions.
Where the STEPKids Fit In
And how do the kids feel in all this? Well, they knew their expected place pre-divorce, and have adjusted (pretty much) to their post-divorce life. A stepparent messes that up completely.
While there might be a honeymoon period when a stepkid thinks a stepparent seems kinda cool, once everyone's settled into the everyday business of living life, it's time for kids to start testing boundaries.
This is totally normal, by the way. Kids test boundaries with their regular parents too. With a primary parent, though, that love/discipline bond is already fully developed and so can better withstand the boundary-testing. Plus, kids are hardwired to want their parent's approval — a stepparent, not so much.
Kids have a limited amount of life experience with which to make decisions. A stepparent is an unknown factor they haven't run into before.
Kids don't know how to handle living in a stepfamily or how to act toward their stepparent, so they look to their primary parent for guidance. Can I talk back to my stepmom, or will Dad get mad? Can I ignore my stepdad, or will Mom speak up? When the lady my dad is dating brings me stuff, do I have to say thank you?
If a stepkids' poor behavior toward a stepparent is not immediately addressed and redirected by their primary parent, that behavior will continue and intensify.
The kids feel they've received unspoken permission to defy this new person in their lives. And because partners don’t realize they need to back stepparents up, the only problem they see is the problem of us complaining about our stepkids’ behavior.
The frustration/resentment cycle accelerates and worsens:
The kids feel like their stepparent is always coming down on them.
The primary parent feels exasperated that this person who was supposed to help them create a new blended family is instead making everything more difficult.
The stepparent feels marginalized and pushed to the sidelines.
Stepparents feel like we're getting scraped off the bottom of a shoe by this so-called family we're making incredible sacrifices for — a family that basically treats us like unwelcome interlopers. We feel angry and unappreciated. We wonder what we're even doing here. And it's quite possibly been like this for years.
If all of this sounds a little too familiar, then it’s time to disengage.
how to disengage
The first step in figuring out how to disengage from your stepkids means accepting several hard truths:
You cannot overcome the parenting (or lack thereof) your stepkids have already experienced in their lifetimes
You cannot parent your stepkids without your partner’s active support
Your ability to influence the type of adults your stepkids become will always be limited by the amount of influence your partner is willing to let you have
You’re not the default adult who is responsible for raising your stepkids
You’re not the default adult who is responsible for disciplining your stepkids
You’re not the default adult who is responsible for creating and/or enforcing household rules
And the hardest truth of all?
Your stepkids aren't going to turn out as awesome as they would if your partner supported you. Finding peace in your stepparenting role means learning how to accept that.
One of the toughest challenges stepparents face is giving up the need to change our stepkids into our idea of what we think they should or could be.
In other words, you need to stop parenting your stepkids. Your partner needs to start parenting them. And you’ll need to let your partner make parenting mistakes along the way, even if that makes life somewhat messier for everyone involved. (Hopefully only temporarily!)
The process of disengaging means letting go of your expectations for your stepkids as well as letting go of your expectations around your partner’s parenting. Because here’s another hard truth about disengaging:
The real problem isn’t your stepkids. The real problem is your partner.
And until your partner is willing to change, your stepfamily situation won’t change either.
Not your circus, not your monkeys
The very act of being in a relationship with someone who has kids implies that you’ve agreed to help parent those kids. But just to be super clear: while you may have agreed to help parent, you never agreed to be your stepkids’ only parent. Your partner should already be parenting their own children.
If your partner wants your help with parenting, and they’re happy to receive that help — great! However, if taking on extra parenting responsibilities leaves you feeling criticized, unappreciated, accused of double-standard stepparenting, taken for granted and/or fuming in resentment, you’re allowed to decline to parent.
You're not obligated to a life of thankless servitude just because you married someone with kids. You don’t need to volunteer your time and energy to help a partner who doesn’t want your help by parenting kids who don’t want parenting.
When you disengage from raising your stepkids, you return all the parenting responsibilities back over to your partner — which in turn takes your partner off autopilot and requires them to make conscious choices that inform the family dynamic.
If your partner wants you to help with their parenting efforts, then they’ll need to actively support you in those efforts. If they choose not to support you, then they’ll need to parent their own kids.
Your partner has no right to expect more parenting from you than they are willing to do themselves.
LIFE AFTER DISENGAGING
Will your partner support your decision to disengage from your stepkids? Probably not. But hey, your partner isn't currently supporting your attempts to be active and involved, either. 🤷🏻♀️
And make no mistake: having a positive relationship with your stepkids absolutely requires the active support of your partner. Your partner is the expert on their kids. It’s their job to guide you in your role as a stepparent, including the best way to connect with your stepkids.
A lot of partners (well, and a lot of stepparents too) think that if a stepkid doesn’t like their stepparent, that stepparent must be doing something wrong. That’s not necessarily the case, though.
It’s super normal for stepkids to reject a stepparent, especially in the early years of blending your family. Here’s a deeper dive on that: ➡️ WHY DOES MY STEPKID HATE ME? 5 REASONS WHY STEPKIDS REJECT STEPPARENTS 👀
Moving past this awkward stage requires your partner to become your active advocate. One way they can do this is by taking on the lead parenting position, which then takes the stepparent out of the bad guy role— aka, the role you’ll inevitably find yourself in if you’re the only person parenting your stepkids.
Will your partner feel happy about having more parenting responsibilities after you disengage? Probably not. No one wants to take on more adulting. Including you. Yet that's exactly what you've been doing: taking on more and more responsibilities while your partner has declined to either parent their kids or support you in parenting them.
Disengaging from your stepkids wakes your partner up. Without you there to act as a buffer, they’ll start feeling the full impact of their actions and inactions as a parent. This is the necessary motivation that will enact positive change.
Your partner will also develop a new understanding of just how much work you’ve been putting in… and a greater appreciation for the times that you do step in. As well they should! You have every right to feel appreciated. You're in this family by choice, after all.
A stepfamily’s ability to blend depends on a complex mix of ingredients: parenting philosophy, divorce psychology, child psychology, the dynamics between co-parents (especially if the ex is high conflict), and even random circumstance. And sure, the stepparent’s impact is a factor in all that — but a stepparent’s presence is not the only factor.
The stepparent can’t function as the glue that's barely holding their stepfamily together. Feeling like that is a red flag that you’re putting way more work into this than your partner is, which is not a recipe for stepcouple success.
And while there's no guarantee that disengaging from your stepkids will fix all your problems, you can at least count on feeling less angry, less frustrated, less resentful, and less hurt as you work toward redefining this role in a way that works better for you and for your stepfamily.
When trying harder has, up till now, only pushed your stepkids and/or your partner away, stepping back and giving everyone a little breathing room — including yourself! — becomes an act of trust, respect, acceptance, and love.
They say that trying the same thing over and over again in the same way and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. By disengaging from your stepkids, you’re trying a new approach toward the stepparenting role that can finally break the frustration/resentment cycle.
Even if nothing else changes, disengaging can have a ripple effect that radiates throughout your household, improving life at home not just for you as a stepparent, but for your entire family.
READY TO DISENGAGE?
If all this sounds like “hell yes” yet utterly impossible to actually begin (let alone stick to), I totally get it — that’s why I wrote an entire ebook on how to disengage: ➡️ NOT YOUR CIRCUS, NOT YOUR MONKEYS: THE FRUSTRATED STEPPARENT’S GUIDE TO RECLAIMING PERSONAL PEACE 👀 It’s only $14 and goes into waaay more detail, including my personal story about why and how I disengaged from my stepkid. (We have a great relationship now btw, even it took us a hundred years to get there.)
I talk about disengaging regularly in my Sanity Sunday newsletter, so make sure to sign up if you’re not already! You might also want to check out these related blogs and more help for stepparenting burnout & recovery.
Oh, and my favorite reminder for disengaging? This NOT MY CIRCUS, NOT MY MONKEYS sticker. 🤩 Because hey — we’ve gotta find the fun in stepparenting wherever we can, right?