Let me get this out of the way: I am not a mom.
Right now, I am not sure I want to be a mom.
Being a stepmom of two adult women (one is 19, second is 21) is hard enough. Thank-you-very-much.
But, unfortunately, by default of marrying a man with daughters, I have to take on some parenting duties.
Before you judge me, or tell me it's not my place to get involved with someone else's children, let me get this out of the way:
The moment a woman, or man, marries a man, or women, with children, you are involved.Period.
How involved you are depends on how involved you are within your relationship. In my case, we commingle pretty much everything, including my hobby turned business.
So needless to say I have an opinion, feedback and advice on how to best manage the very difficult role of raising two adult, independent and self sufficient women.
Most of the time, my thoughts, theories and suggestions are met with gasps that categorize me as the evil step monster.
"That's just mean," my husband told me when I suggested his daughters manage a monthly budget instead of using us as their never-ending cash cow.
Budgets, you see, are a foreign concept that never seemed to find a place in my husbands previous marriage.
That, coupled with a serious case of entitlement, guilt-driven decisions, and other very unhealthy child-rearing concepts that were focused on: "making sure you were friends with your kids," made me step into a role that I was better prepared than I thought: being a mother.
Unfortunately, living in an area where helicopter parenting is the new way to raise children (insert sarcastic grimace), my more "adult-like-way" of dealing with immature actions wasn't met with the raves, oh's and ah's I was hoping for.
Actually, more than once I got the "You don't know anything because you are not a mother."
What these people were actually telling me, is that "common sense when child-rearing only happens once you go through a merely biological culmination of human pregnancy." Or, what I told the nay-sayers with a sarcastic grin:
"Oh...so you mean to tell me that I don't know anything about children because I didn't pop-out a baby like you did?"According to them, the rest of us, AKA non birthing woman, couldn't possibly know anything about children because (insert sarcastic grimace), we didn't go through nine months of carrying a child "inside" our "loins" (yes, this is verbatim what a mother once told me).
I didn't, according to another, "stay up all night to breastfeed a child that wouldn't eat...and had a fever."
To them, and all the other biological mothers I say: you are right, I didn't go through the biological process of giving birth to a child.I never said I did.
But, not going through a pregnancy or labor doesn't mean I don't have common sense or have a limited understanding about children.
Especially not girls...because, heck, I am one.
See, those tricks my step daughters tried with my husband? I tried them too. But failed miserably when my father put his foot down.
That guilt my stepdaughter seems to bring-up every time a conversation inevitably goes to "how not involved my husband is"...yep, tried that one too. Father could care less.
Everything they tried, I tried.
Everything they want, I wanted.
Every word they uttered, I did too.
But I failed. Miserably.
I hated my mom, despised my father. And guess what? I turned out ok because my dad - and mother - had a lot of common sense.
The king of the castle was my father, the queen my mother. We were not princesses and my brothers were definitely not princes.There were only two rulers in that house: my parents.
Love, goes without saying, is a bedrock in being a great parent, but strong parenting skills will help develop and groom strong adults.
Why should I care?
I care about my stepdaughters as much as I care about other children, because they will be our future doctors, lawyers, teachers and (gasp) president.
How in the heck are these kids going to take care of their own, when we continuously have to watch over them?
Trust me - I am not alone in asking myself this question. One mother has written a book about mean parenting in the hopes that one day her children "won't need her anymore."
Amen.
Here's to moms, dad's and hopefully my husband, that will continuously evolve so that their children will grow-up to be the adults we all hope we will be proud to call our children.
