She is also a mother

Raising a child to be a responsible adult is a huge achievement. Raising someone else’s child is an even greater, more remarkable achievement. And that’s what a step mother does, asserts Dr Geeta Maheshwari.

From the time of Cinderella and Snow White, the stepmother has always got the worst end of the deal. She is wicked until proven otherwise, and one lifetime is not enough for her to do so. But now we are in the twenty-first century, where increasing rates of divorce and remarriage has swelled her number and drastically changed her function.

None of you reading this will ever want your sister/daughter to become a stepmother because you know it is an uphill battle. It is assumed that step-families are only about kids. Because she married a man with kids, she married the kids, the ex-wife and the extended family. She better not complain.

But if it is only about the kids, why did the biological mother leave? Couldn’t she have stayed back for the sake of her kids? In case the birth mother is no more, why did her husband remarry? Should he not have remained single and cared for his kids? And if it is really about the kids, then how are we helping them by casting the stepmother as the villain? Aren’t we are traumatising them further?

We sympathise with the man and his children because they have experienced the loss of a family. We sympathise with the ex-wife and the extended family because they are only trying to protect the kids. Then we dump all those emotions onto the stepmother and expect her to happily deal with it.

We monitor her every move, and just in case, she fails to match up to our absurd expectations of her, we dole out negative labels to her. We don’t bother to spare a thought for her sacrifices because we don’t think she makes any. We continue to have a lopsided, unfavourable view of her – the wicked woman who has come in the place of the mother and is not to be trusted. 

We conveniently forget this woman’s sacrifice. She steps in and adopts a fractured family, puts her needs and wants last, loves and cares for children who are not her own, bends over backwards to build a loving home. Yet we choose to put her down, only because she is not ‘the mother’. We expect her to do everything a mother does, without the perks of being a mother. She has duties and responsibilities, sans the rights and the glory. We allow the children to vent about their stepmothers. In fact, we even support their venting and expect the woman to shower unconditional love on her step children.  

If we were to post a job vacancy ad for the role of a stepmother, it would read something like this: Woman needed to take care of a man and his kids from previous marriage, for the sole purpose of relieving him of all duties that are not fun. Experience in all household departments – cooking, cleaning, tutoring, laundry, driving – is mandatory. She must be willing to work long hours, over many years, with no pay and little gratitude. She should know when to keep her mouth shut and have no expectations whatsoever. She must never forget that she will be first in the firing line when her husband’s kids are looking for someone to blame. Her husband may not support her and the step kids’ biological mother may make her life a living hell.

So, you celebrated Mother’s Day a fortnight ago. Everyone worked overtime to make it special for ‘the mother’ and rightly so. Motherhood is a celebration and we must not miss any opportunity to let our mothers know how much they mean to us. But what about stepmothers? How many of us know or care to know that the Sunday after Mother’s Day is Stepmother’s Day? Is she going to get freebies and discounts at restaurants, jewellery stores and beauty parlours just like the mother got? 

No longer can we afford to treat her like a discounted member on the fringe of family life. This woman was not born with the word “wicked” stamped on her forehead as a form of her karma. We have made her wicked (thanks to the fairy tales, motion pictures and television serials), and now it is our duty to project her in good light.

This is a huge task and needs to be accomplished in baby steps. Let’s start by acknowledging her contribution to the family. She is not less than the mother. She is so much more. Raising a child to be a responsible adult is a huge achievement. Raising someone else’s child is an even greater, more remarkable achievement. And that’s what a step mother does.

Let’s promise not to tell children centuries-old, prejudicial, fairy tales that have no relevance in today’s society.
 Let’s give these extraordinary women their place in the sun.
(The writer is a practicing psychiatrist, author and a stepmother)