What makes being a stepmother so stressful?
Stepmothers tend to underestimate the complexity of their role. They don’t anticipate the feelings they subsequently have of maybe resentment, confusion or ambiguity. The second area is in their interactions with their stepchildren – they’re just not sure what that relationship is or what it should be. And the third area is their relationship with their partner’s ex. The women I talked to really cared what the biological mother felt about them and they wanted to make a good impression. But the flip side is that they would get sort of annoyed about the biological mother too. It was a real dichotomy. Are biological mothers the bane of a stepmom’s existence? Some of these women manage to develop a really good relationship, or at least a workable relationship, but I would say they are in the minority. Generally, the two women are sort of set poles apart and it’s a real shame that we don’t have anything in society that encourages this relationship. You feel that if you could just get them t
