Evil stepmothers have feelings too (Globe and Mail)
© The Globe and Mail
Here's the Globe and Mail article by Sarah Hampson that's based on our interview from yesterday morning, it's called, "Evil stepmothers have feelings too."
I think the piece accurately represents some of the struggles that stepmoms go through — and also features thoughts on the issue by Wednesday Martin, author of "Stepmonster."
Here’s an excerpt from our interview:
Carol Marine felt that pressure when she married David Marine almost 10 years ago. She was only 21 at the time, while he was 35 and the father of two girls, Sophie and Madeleine, then 9 and 5, respectively. "I knew it would be messy, but I didn't know how messy. I was naive," she says.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Newcomb Marine, the girls' mother, was afraid that her ex's new wife was going to usurp her role. "It was like having a babysitter who moves in and you don't know her, you haven't vetted her, and yet she is given all this space to have a relationship with your kids," Ms. Newcomb Marine says.
Both women, who live in and around Austin, Tex., decided to write a book about the dynamics of the fraught relationship between mothers and stepmothers, based on their own. "It's called No One's the Bitch because there is always the assumption that one side is," says Ms. Newcomb Marine, a 44-year-old freelance writer. "With conflict, we always demonize the other person."
Initially, the two women avoided each other. They didn't speak to one another. They avoided eye contact. The turning point came when Ms. Newcomb Marine went to her ex's house to drop off the girls one day and came across a painting of Madelaine by Ms. Marine, who is a fine artist. In the painting, the little girl's head was thrown back in laughter. "It was infused with her little spirit," the mother says, but her reaction surprised her. "I was happy for Maddy that Carol got her, but for me to make room for that one good part was also a way of closing myself out. … I burst into tears in my car. I didn't even know what I was crying about."
The incident made her look more closely at her ex-husband's new wife: "I thought if she was capable of seeing something in my daughter, I wonder if there's any commonality we can build between us."
Ms. Newcomb Marine made an overture by sending a card on Mother's Day, expressing her gratitude over her attempts to be a good stepmom. "If she hadn't done that, I would not have made any effort," Ms. Marine explains in a separate interview. "It was not one of my goals to get along with her. … But the card made me think, 'She's not this bitch who is out to get us and get all our money.'" Ms. Marine acknowledges that competition over a husband's resources is a big part of the conflict.
They began talking and working together to ease the tension. In their book, they encourage women to "own their own crap," as Ms. Newcomb Marine puts it, and use manners to try to build a relationship with the other woman. "You realize both you and the stepmom are suffering with different emotions," she says.
As it turned out, Ms. Marine was feeling totally rejected by the girls. "They were these cute, sweet kids, but on the second day, when I went to help Maddy when she had fallen down, she gave me this look like, 'How dare you pick me up?' I was expected to love them … to be this perfect new wifey and think of them as my own, but it doesn't work out that way. They are good kids, but they're not mine. I fell in love with their father, not with them. It has taken me a long, long time to even admit that," she adds.
The lumpiness of a blended family is not all bad, Ms. Martin explains. "Rather than having the super-close dynamics of a first family, a step-family has instead a respect for differences, flexibility and porous boundaries." Children need time to adjust to the new relationships, she counsels, and stepmothers should not "sit around and wait for the love and approval from a child. We wouldn't do that in a first family. We wouldn't beg for a child to love us."
Now, Ms. Newcomb Marine, her ex-husband and his second wife sit down with Madeleine and Sophie and Jacob, the Marines' four-year-old son, for regular family celebrations. They also share Christmas morning. "The flipside of the bitch thing is that women are really good at responding to vulnerability, to genuine olive branches," says Ms. Newcomb Marine. "Women like to get along. They like to bond. One of the things we want to say in this book is women should take the steps to see the other as a human being. She is stressed and overwhelmed, too."
What do y'all think? Anything missing?
Thank you to Sarah Hampson for featuring us!
