Step-ism: A prejudice hiding in plain sight

"That's Sharmila*", whispered an acquaintance. "The woman Srinivas** married after his wife died".

Srinivas, an engineer in my town, lost his wife the day their twins - a boy and a girl - were born. His wife died at childbirth, before she could even set eyes on her children. Srinivas, pressured into another marriage, married a young widow 6 months later.

"Oh, so she is now the twins' mother!" I said. After all, six month old babies don't know the difference. The woman raising them for the last three years IS their mother.

The acquaintance made a face.

"As if!" she said. "She's a stepmother, you see....! The other day when they were at the temple, she shouted at the boy. What does he know, a boy only 3 years old, who only did what all 3 year olds do - run around. And she shouts at him! Ugghhh."

I suppress a smile. Which mother has not, at some time or another, shouted at her child? And, after running around with two energetic three year olds day after day, one cannot always be patient. Perhaps the woman had a very genuine reason for the shouting - maybe she was afraid the child will stray too far, and get lost.

But such is the lot of stepmothers. You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't. If you discipline the child, you are evil. If you don't discipline them, you are letting them run wild. "After all, it's not her child, so why should she care? She's just the stepmother".

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Welcome to the world of Step-ism - a world where stepmothers are presumed evil. This is a prejudice that lurks everywhere, actively encouraged by fairy tales, films, television, and day to day phrases like "stepmotherly treatment" that are flung about so casually when referring to unfairness. A prejudice that is planted in young minds right from elementary school days.

I mean, look at the caricatures: beautiful Cinderella forced to dress in rags, and ill-treated by her stepmother who is not just bad, but downright UGLY to look at.....Even Cinderella's stepsisters are ugly - courtesy Evil Stepmother DNA :)

Snow-white's stepmother is beautiful, but that redeeming quality is soon lost - she turns out to be a crazed woman who doesn't think twice about murder, and poisons Snow-white. Moral of the stories: ugly stepmothers are bad; beautiful stepmothers are even worse.....

Tell this to a real-life stepmother and you'll be lucky to get out of there in one piece :D. Ask her gently, and she will weep in your arms and pour out her tale of woe. She is depressed, she is sad, she never thought it would be so tough. Oh GOD, what has she gotten herself into?

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Parenting is hands down one of the toughest things in life, and one often feels lost. A stepmother has this difficulty in spades: she is raising someone else's child(ren), whom she hasn't known from birth and who have no bond with her. The children are no placid Cinderellas and Snow-Whites. They are insecure - fearful of losing their father's love, and upset at seeing their father with a woman who is not their mother. As a result, they are often trying their best to break up the marriage. The children show their rejection of the stepmother in several subtle and not-so subtle ways: from putting her down at every turn "You are not my mother!", to complaining about everything she does, refusing to eat what she made, making up stories that show her in poor light to their father, setting her up for failure...Disrespecting her when their father is not around, and acting like model citizens when he is.

(Studies show that it takes YEARS for a stepfamily to bond; for the children to settle down. Children not settling down is the reason that second marriages have a higher chance of failure than first ones).

The woman is dumbfounded by the children's reaction and angry. But she swallows her frustration, and tries to prove to all and sundry, especially the children and their father - that she is "good" - not that evil fairytale stereotype. She takes abuse after abuse, and seethes in silence. She understands the children's insecurity, but cannot talk about her difficulties with anyone. She has tried talking to her husband, and seen the fallout: the father in him goes into protective mode and starts to resent her.

Sky-high expectations all around don't help her either. Her husband expects her to be his idea of "ideal" motherhood (never mind that one cannot live up to one's own idea of ideal motherhood) and constantly criticizes her approach. If she has children from a previous marriage, she will be subjected to "comparisons": people will watch for signs that she is treating her children better than his. Her easy bonding with her children (after all, they don't reject her) will be mistaken for favoritism, and she may feel pressured to curb her own maternal love.

She cares for her step-children as well as she can, but gets no thanks for what she does; only comments that a "real" mother would have done it so much better. Nobody stops to think of her efforts to make life easier for her spouse, and his children. Not even said spouse and children....!

In all this, there is little time for the marriage with her new husband, and hardly a soul volunteering to help her out or give her a break. Oh, there are several people who are only too quick to judge her. Who fling about phrases about stepmothers being Evil, while having absolutely no idea what is like to be one.

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If you truly want to know what it looks like from the other side, watch Tamil films like "Mundhanai Mudichu", or that 90's bang-on true but highly underrated classic: "Keladi Kanmani".

Read Joanna Trollope's novel "Other People's Children". And talk to a few women - regular, good-hearted women - who have dared to love a man with children. Who are braving a life they were totally unprepared for, or, like Radhika's character in "Keladi Kanmani", had become scarred by their attempts to do it.

After this, you will recognize Step-ism anywhere, and see its unfairness. You might even point it out to the Step-ist, and ask him/her to stop. I have done this, and continue to do it. I should know - I almost became a stepmother.
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*, ** - Names changed.