Something is going on in the stepmothering camp. Call it an uprising, or a rebranding. There was the story about the woman in Australia who went to court to pr her daughter calling her stepmother "Mummy D". It was a small item in the news—one of those designed to make you marvel at the pettiness of divorced couples—but look closely and there is something else going on here. A mother battling to maintain her unique status. A stepmother who imagines she is no different to a birth mother, and wants to rewrite history with her centre stage in the family portrait.
I am a stepmother. I’m not crazy about the term—the step part makes it sound cold and hard, not to mention all the negative baggage that goes with it—but it serves a useful purpose, which is to clarify exactly where I stand in relation to my stepchildren, and they to me. I am not my stepchildren’s mother. I did not give birth to them. I had not even met them until they were in their s. Those are the plain facts and they are the sort of facts you mess with at your peril. What I am is a full-time parent—someone who fulfils a motherly role in their lives on a daily basis. I am the one who bandages the cuts, buys the spot cream, answers the homework questions, takes them clothes shopping, gets their hair cut, and nags them to shower. I’ve done my share of standing on the touchline in the rain, separating fights, clearing up sick and talking through various problems. It’s me who gets the phone call after the exam. Me who sobs at airports when they disappear on gap years and me who worries when they aren’t home on time. Still, I’m not their mother. I am something important, but significantly different. I am their stepmother.
The trouble is, there’s a new generation of stepmothers who want to compete for pole position, instead of accepting that they have something unique to offer. It’s the philosophy of the "me" generation taken to its logical conclusion—because I’m worth it and I do the work of a mother (even if it’s every other weekend), I deserve to be called a mother. Ladies, really, this is madness. There are so many advantages to being a stepmother as opposed to a real mother.
The author holds a quite ______ attitude towards the term "stepmother".