Stepmother, stepfather: a role without instructions

“You don’t get to tell me when I go to bed. You’re not my dad.” The eleven-year-old slams his bedroom door. The man in the hallway stands there with his phone in his hand; it is 10.40 pm, there is school tomorrow, and the boy’s mother is at work until midnight. Is he right, because it is late? Is the boy right, because he really isn’t his father? And what now: knock, leave it, ring her?

For almost every family role there is some kind of script. We know at least roughly what a mother does, what a father does, what a grandmother does, even when we disagree with the script. For a person who lives with their partner’s child, there isn’t one. As early as 1978 the American sociologist Andrew Cherlin described remarriage as an “incomplete institution”: society has no worked-out rules for it, no settled expectations, sometimes not even the words. English has stepmother and stepfather, but the first word sounds as if it came out of a fairy tale and the second out of an official form, and plenty of people use neither about themselves.

How a stepfamily is built, and why it needs years, is the subject of Stepfamilies: why “mine, yours and ours” takes time. Here I am interested in a narrower question: what exactly is the new partner’s job in relation to the children, who gets to say “no” to whom, and where the child’s other parent fits into all this.

A role with no script

Where there is no script, everyone writes their own. The new partner may picture being “like a father” or “a second mum” to the child. The parent may mostly want help with everyday life. The child did not want anybody. The other parent is afraid of being replaced. Four people, four different descriptions of the same job, and nobody has said theirs out loud.

The stories we carry from childhood weigh on the role as well. In fairy tales the stepmother is wicked almost without exception, and women who find themselves in the role often describe trying twice as hard just to be nothing like her. On top of that, the woman of the house is still expected to do the caring: to cook, to drive, to know when parents’ evening is. In their review of the research, Lawrence Ganong and Marilyn Coleman conclude that the stepmother role is, on average, more demanding than the stepfather role precisely because of this gap: a lot of responsibility, little recognised authority, and alongside it the child’s mother, who as a rule is very present. Less care and more “order” is expected of a stepfather, which is a trap of its own; more on that under discipline.

What the role is not: a replacement parent

The most useful starting point is a simple one: the child already has parents. Even when one of them lives far away, is rarely in touch or is no longer alive, their place inside the child is taken. Anyone who tries to sit in it puts the child before a choice they cannot make without feeling like a traitor.

The place is marked out in law as well. Under Slovenian family law, parental responsibility belongs to the parents; a parent’s partner does not acquire it automatically by living together or marrying. What that means in specific situations, at the doctor’s, at school or when travelling, is a question for a social work centre or a lawyer, not for a blog. For everyday life, though, the message is the same as the psychological one: the new partner is not a third parent.

What are they, then? Research and clinical accounts describe several roles that work: an adult friend, someone like a fond aunt or uncle, a mentor, “one more grown-up who cares about me”. What these have in common is that they compete with nobody, and that the child can accept them without taking anything away from anyone. What the relationship is called, and what the child calls the adult, is best left to the child. A name is no measure of closeness: a child who calls a stepfather by his first name all his life may be closer to him than one who was taught to say “Dad”.

Relationship first, rules second

The psychologist James Bray followed stepfather families in a study lasting several years and found that the first two years tend to be the most turbulent. During that time, the stepfathers who quickly took over parenting and discipline fared worse. Those who began mainly by monitoring did better: they knew where the child was, what interested them, who their friends were and when the match was, and they stayed out of the parenting. Only later, once the relationship was standing, was warm and consistent parenting by a stepfather linked with children doing better.

Ganong, Coleman and their colleagues found something similar when they asked stepmothers, stepfathers and children what had built the relationship. What worked best was something unglamorous: one-to-one time over something the child had chosen. The drive to training, mending a bike together, a series that only the two of them watch. It mattered that this did not stop when the adult moved in. Those who made an effort only during the dating period and then switched to “I’m part of the family now and there are rules here” quickly used up the goodwill.

Papernow sums this up in a principle worth remembering: connection before correction. The relationship is the account that discipline draws on. A parent has years of deposits in it; a new partner starts at zero.

Discipline: who says “no”

This is where couples most often get tangled, and the tangle has a typical shape. The new partner, looking at the child from the outside, sees where the parent gives way: late bedtimes, an untidy room, a tone they would not put up with. The parent, who has known the child since birth and still carries guilt over the divorce, sees how much the child has already been through. So the first pushes for firmness and the second for understanding. The more one tightens, the more the other loosens, and the other way round. Papernow counts this among the five typical challenges of stepfamilies: parenting tasks split the adults apart instead of bringing them together.

The research is fairly consistent about the way out. Until the new partner has a solid relationship with the child, discipline should stay with the parent: the parent sets the rules, the parent states the consequences. The new partner upholds the rules the adults have agreed on, on the parent’s behalf, the way a babysitter or an aunt looking after the child would: “The agreement with Mum is that the phone is in the kitchen at nine.” Not “because I said so”, but “that’s the agreement”.

The difference is small in words and large in effect. The child can resist the rule without having to resist the person. And the new partner is not thrown into a fight they cannot win, having neither the history nor the mandate.

Style matters too. A strict, commanding approach without warmth, which psychology calls authoritarian, almost always damages the relationship when it comes from a stepparent, according to Papernow. An approach that is warm and clear at once does work, but only when the relationship has been built. The difference between the two is described in the entry Parenting styles, and I write about setting limits in a way the relationship survives in How to set boundaries with a teenager without losing your connection.

What the parent has to do

A lot of advice for stepmothers and stepfathers overlooks the fact that the key lies with someone else. The new partner’s standing in the home is set by the parent.

The parent’s first task is authorisation, spoken in front of the child: “When I’m not here, this and this applies, and Maja makes sure it holds.” Without that sentence, every attempt by the new partner to uphold a rule is overstepping; with it, it is an extension of the parent’s word.

The second task is not to overrule the partner in front of the child. If the parent disagrees with what the partner did, they say so later, in private. A child who sees that the adults are divided about them will use that crack, not out of malice but because any child would. There is more on what adult disagreements mean to a child in Arguing in front of children: when it harms and how to repair it.

The third task is the hardest: to remain the child’s parent. That means actually taking on the discipline, rather than handing it to the partner and then criticising them. It also means keeping time for the child that is theirs alone, and a space where they can say they do not like the new partner without being punished or talked out of it. A parent who listens to a child’s complaints is not betraying their partner. They are showing the child that they have not lost their parent.

If the new partner has children of their own, the question of fairness is added. Nobody feels the same about a partner’s child as about their own, and there is no need to hide that from yourself; what does need care is that the rules and privileges in the home are not different for “mine” and “yours”. How children experience unequal treatment is described in The favourite child: a quiet inequality in the family.

“You’re not my dad”: what to say

Sooner or later, almost everyone who lives with a partner’s child hears the sentence from the opening. It hurts because it is true. And that is exactly why the best answer is to agree with it. The next day, once the dust has settled, the conversation might go like this (composed; not a real person):

“Yesterday you said I’m not your dad.”
“Because you’re not.”
“That’s true. I’m not, and I won’t be. You have a dad.”
“Then why are you bossing me around?”
“I’m not doing it in my own name. You and Mum agreed that on school nights the light goes off at half past nine. When she isn’t home, I make sure that holds.”
“And if I don’t do it?”
“Then I tell her, and the two of you sort it out.”

Three things happen in this short exchange. The adult does not compete with the father, so the child has no need to defend him. He says where his say comes from: from the mother, not from his own importance. And he hands the consequence back to where it belongs. The boy will probably still roll his eyes. But “you’re not my dad” has lost its power, because nobody is arguing with it.

The ex-partner: the third adult in the story

The child’s other parent is part of the stepfamily even if they have never set foot in the house. Their rules apply for a large part of the child’s week, the child can feel what they think of the new partner, and their pain at someone else now living with their child is real, even when it comes out as sniping.

For a stepmother or stepfather, a few rules follow that are easy to state and hard to keep:

• The parents make the arrangements. Schedules, school, the doctor and money are discussed by the child’s two parents. The new partner is not a negotiator in those conversations and does not write messages in their partner’s name, even if they could word them better.
• Nothing negative in front of the child. Half of the child is made of the other parent. Every remark about that parent is also heard as a remark about themselves.
• No competing. A better dinner, a more expensive present, a more exciting weekend: the child notices the contest and feels like the prize in it, not like a child.
• Anger goes to the partner, not to the child. If your partner’s ex gets on your nerves, that is a conversation for the two of you, in the evening, behind a closed door.

A parent who has died holds a special place. A stepmother or stepfather who joins a family after a death is not competing with a living person but with a memory that cannot disappoint. It helps the child if they are allowed to talk about their mum or dad, if the photographs stay on the wall, and if the new adult is able to say: “Tell me something about her.”

How parents remain a team after separating is the subject of Co-parenting after separation: how to stay a team when you are no longer a couple; there is also a short description of the concept in the knowledge base under Co-parenting.

The feelings nobody warns you about

This is the part that is talked about least. A new partner may feel things around the child that seem unacceptable to them. Jealousy, when their partner gives the whole evening to a daughter. Resentment, because the holiday is planned around a third person’s schedule. Relief when the children leave for the other parent’s, and guilt straight after it. The realisation that they do not love their partner’s child the way they expected to, and the fear that this says something about them.

It doesn’t. Love for a child you neither gave birth to nor accompanied from the start is not a duty and cannot be forced; sometimes it comes after years, sometimes it doesn’t. The duty is something else: respect, fairness, reliability. A child does not need the new adult to love them. They need to be safe around that adult, to be treated fairly, and for nobody to take their parent away.

These feelings become a problem when they have nowhere to go. It is hard for the new partner to tell the parent, because it sounds like an attack on the child; hard to tell friends, because “you knew what you were getting into”. So the feelings tend to build up and come out as coldness, or as an outburst over something trivial. It helps if the couple agree that the new partner may say how things are for them without the parent hearing it as an accusation against the child, and that the parent may say what it is like to be in the middle without the partner hearing it as rejection.

An exercise: the job description

This exercise is for both adults together. Set aside half an hour when the child is not at home.

1. Each of you, separately, finishes three sentences on paper. The new partner: “To your child I would like to be …”, “My job with them is …”, “What is not my job is …”. The parent writes the same sentences about the partner: “I would like you to be … to my child”, and so on.
2. Read your sheets aloud to each other, without comments or corrections. Just listen for where the two descriptions match and where they don’t.
3. Pick one difference and talk about it. Not all of them; one.
4. Agree on no more than three house rules that the new partner may look after when the parent is out, and on the sentence they will use to do it (“The agreement is that …”). Everything else stays with the parent.
5. The parent tells the child the rules themselves, with the partner present. After a month, sit down again and review what is holding and what needs to change.

If the sentences for step four are a hard nut to crack, the knowledge base has a set of sentences for setting boundaries that you can adapt.

Where this guidance does not apply

“Discipline stays with the parent, the new partner builds the relationship” is a good starting point, not a law.

It does not apply in the same way when the child is very young and the other parent is barely part of their life. A child who acquired a stepmother or stepfather at the age of two will, after years of living together, often experience that person as a parent in everything but name, and keeping an artificial distance there would do more harm than good. The measure is the child, not the rule.

It does not apply to adult children. There is no discipline there at all; what remains is the question of whether two adults linked by a third can respect each other. An expectation of closeness is even less justified here.

It does not solve a situation in which the parent does not take on the discipline. If the parent sets no rules and at the same time allows the new partner no say, that is not a question about the role of a stepmother or stepfather but a question for the couple, and that is where it needs to be taken.

And it does not apply where safety is concerned. If a child is in danger, every adult in the house acts at once, regardless of whose child it is. The reverse holds too: if a child is afraid of the new partner, or the partner is rough, humiliating or violent towards them, that is not a parenting style. The parent has a duty to protect the child. In Slovenia, help is available from the social work centre, the SOS helpline for women and children who are victims of violence on 080 11 55 and the police on 113, and children and young people can themselves call the TOM helpline on 116 111.

When a couple keep circling the same argument about the children and cannot find a way out, it makes sense to look for help. As a therapist in training under supervision in marriage and family therapy, I work with couples and families in person in Ljubljana, in English as well as Slovenian. In relational family therapy, the approach I am training in, we are also interested in what such arguments awaken in the adult: a person whom a child’s “you’re not my dad” cuts too deeply has often been made to feel surplus somewhere before.

What to remember

• There is no social script for the role of stepmother or stepfather, so the adults have to write one themselves, and out loud.
• The new partner is not a replacement parent. What works is the role of an adult who cares and competes with nobody.
• Relationship first, rules second. In the early years discipline stays with the parent; the new partner looks after agreements on the parent’s behalf.
• The new partner’s standing is set by the parent: by authorising them in front of the child and by not overruling them in front of the child.
• The child’s other parent remains the child’s parent. The parents make the arrangements, and the other parent is spoken of with respect in front of the child.