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Stepmother’s Bill of Rights

I found the following on The Wicked Stepmom’s blog and thought it was a good creed for all stepmothers out there.  Some pieces of it are obviously more delicate than others, but all in all, it’s a pretty good foundation.  If adhered to with love and respect on both sides, perhaps it could solve many of the problems we stepfamilies face.

Stepmother’s Bill of Rights  

1. Our marriage is our first priority, and we will address all issues together.
2. I will be part of the decision-making process in my marriage and family at all times.
3. People outside the immediate family – including ex-wives, in-laws and adult children – cannot make plans that affect my life without my consent.
4. I will not be responsible for the welfare of children for whom I can set no limits.
5. I must be consulted about which children will live with us, when they can visit and how long they will stay.
6. I will not be solely responsible for housework; chores will be distributed fairly.
7. I will be consulted regarding all family financial matters.
8. Others may not violate my private space at home, nor take or use my possessions without my permission.
9. I will never be treated as an “outsider” in my own home.
10. My husband and stepchildren must treat me with respect.

Confusion can be fun… Um, no!

Sometimes life is confusing. I find myself struggling with how to explain our particular family dynamics to people who don’t know us. It’s uncomfortable sometimes. We’ve made “choices with consequences” in the past and we just don’t have the idyllic Ken and Barbie existence (got the dream house, but not the dream car or the RV) that others around us do. And inevitably we get the “Ohhhhhhhhh” response (usually with a slow head nod), like the recipient of the aforementioned explanation is wasting tons of CPU cycles just trying to fit all of the pieces in place. It seems so much easier to just make it a funny thing. “Yep, we just have too many last names in our family to count.” Even better, “We’re the Brady Bunch on acid.” I like that one the best. That seems to take the edge off of the difficult conversation and make whoever happens to need this information laugh. Kind of like, “Well, if you’re okay with that, then so am I.”

I do wonder, though, why people need so blessed much information. And why when you provide it do they always manage to change it somehow and cause more difficulties than there might otherwise be. Case in point, filling out the information page on the church website. Should be easy enough, right? It WAS easy enough. Separate records for each person in the family, ability to enter different last names without the whole system freaking out and spitting up random electrical parts, etc. I entered all of our information carefully, one record at a time, until all six of us currently living under the same roof were in. Good enough… until Sunday morning when we went to check in and everything was different! Someone attempting to be helpful, no doubt, merged our old record in with our new record. Suffice it to say that the old record couldn’t handle the different last names, so everyone was now the same and it caused great consternation when nametags were printed. Under no circumstances should we, the owners of the records, have enough power in the system to change our own records back to the way they were entered in the first place. So we have to wait for the single, solitary “administrator” to utilize her power and fix the glitch. Until then, we’ll just try to explain why some of us answer to what the nametag says and some of us don’t. Funny how the decision to keep different last names to avoid confusion in Kindergarten causes confusion in every other arena on the planet. Sigh.

I am grateful, though, that to the younger members of our family this existence is fairly “normal”. It’s kind of funny, actually, to watch our oldest daughter explain it to people. She’s one of those kids gifted with language and determined to use it, so she has no inhibitions about sharing all kinds of squirrely information with whomever happens to be listening. So the dental hygienist, the school crossing guard, the high school kid behind the counter at the pizza place all get a glimpse of how things work. “This is my stepbrother, my half-sister, and my brother and my sister.” Sometimes it’s fun to watch from somewhere unobtrusive and wait for the eyes to roll back in the head. Sometimes the head even spins around. Generally, folks are polite enough not to drill the child for further information, and they just spend the rest of the time looking slightly puzzled, like their subconscious is really working it out in there somewhere.

For the kids who’ve been part of the “Brady Bunch on acid” for seven years now, all of our mismatched pieces fit into a nice, hand-stitched quilt that keeps us all warm and cozy most nights. For the grownups, we’re still settling into the roles we have. Sometimes it feels too bad that we’re not Ken and Barbie and we have to explain things more than “normal” people. So, for the nights when the stitching feels a little sloppy, and the drafts come in right along with the questions, we go to counseling and learn to deal with it.