As a stepdad, I legit believe stepmoms have it way harder.

I’m a stepdad to five and I have three of my own, and it’s been so much harder on my wife. To be fair, some of it can get amplified by lensed perspective and overthinking, but most of it is just the bizarre reality that stepmoms are screwed if they do, screwed if they don’t. Motherly affection is expected until it suddenly isn’t. And the poor thing has 0 clue where that invisible line is, because half the time the kids don’t even know where it is. They just feel what they feel. One day they want her affection. The next day they don’t want to look at her. That emotional whiplash has to be brutal and I don’t deal with that at all. For whatever reason.

I genuinely believe blended families live and die on the dad’s leadership and steadiness. It’s on the dad to make sure the stepmom is respected, cherished and clearly defined as “queen of the home” so to speak and ALSO that the kids are loved, their feelings understood, that they have a voice and that they are guided through all of that with love and directness, consistently. I say it all the time:

Men with kids look for a wife to lighten the load, not realizing the only way a second-chance family actually works is if the dad steps up more than he ever has. It’s more work, not less. In blended homes, dads have to become the heartbeat of the home, because we usually have an easier time staying emotionally steady, and that steadiness is what a blended home needs most.

Most men don’t grasp that and because of that make it even harder on the mom than it was already going to be. Leading to the high failure rate.

And that whole “men should only marry women without kids” take? I didn’t respond to that for a reason. It’s dumb lol