Stepmothers and Stepfathers: Do You Ever Feel Like an Evil Stepmother? Here’s How You Got There!

Years ago, I stumbled upon a website called Heartless Bitches.  It’s an irreverent, wild site where women just speak their minds.  I love it.  I must have been having a “moment” and was googling for stepmother solutions when I found this blog or rant on the site.  It has always stuck with me.  Tell me if I’m wrong, but can’t we all relate to all or part of this one!  By the way, it applies in reverse to stepfathers as well.  Please comment and let me know what you think about the guidelines for creating The Evil Stepmother.

And, We Wonder How We Got Here!
Image: www.annetaintor.com

How to Create an Evil Stepmother *Kind Permission Given by Heartless Bitches International

A Rant Written on the Heartless Bitches website in 2002

Divorced? Got Kids? Was your ex the one who primarily looked after the kids and now you are stuck with joint custody? Want to avoid all that hassle and responsibility? Want to look good but not have to do the real dirty work of being a parent?

The answer is right in front of you! Re-marry and set up your Spouse to be an Evil Stepmother™. The great thing about turning your spouse into an Evil Stepmother, is YOU don’t have all the dirty work of teaching your kids discipline. You can regress back to being an adult child again. SHE can parent you AND your kids. She can be the one In Charge! That way, you can ride on her coattails if things work out, secretly resent her if you don’t like her decisions, and avoid responsibility for any decisions that didn’t turn out. And the kids will hate HER and not you for any structure or discipline provided. You get to play the good guy!

Of course, the secret to creating an Evil Stepmother is to set her up to be the “Heavy”. Here is a step-by-step guide to ensure that your new spouse is put in the most difficult position possible. The great thing about this technique is that you can blame your ex-wife for why the kids hate the Stepmother even though YOU are the one who set your spouse up. After all, if the kids hate or disrespect their Stepmother it MUST be the influence of outsiders like their mother. It couldn’t have ANYTHING to do with YOU.

Some men hope that this approach will ensure that their children still continue to adore/love them because the aren’t seen to be the disciplinarian, however the downside to this approach is total loss of respect from the children as they approach adolescence. For spineless men still looking for a mother, this is a small price to pay. After all, having someone to mother YOU is more important than YOU developing a healthy relationship with your children, right?

The Evil Stepmother Plan

1. Plan to marry before your intended has even met your children. Choose someone who is rigid and inflexible. If she is an anal-retentive control freak, even better. It is preferable to choose someone who has never had children of her own and thinks she knows everything there is to know about parenting because then she will be less likely to question her actions or admit she might be wrong. This is very important for the setup. If she has children of her own, ensure that they come first and are treated differently/better than your kids.
2. Forget about “merging” parenting styles or compromising. Completely drop your parenting style and adopt HERS. Ensure that she is much more strict than you ever were so that the kids can be angry with HER for the sudden change in Status Quo. If anyone notices, make all kinds of justifications for your radical about-face – insist that the Stepmother is better at it than you. Acquiesce to her “superior” skills in dealing with YOUR children. It is really important in the early days to agree with everything she says, and lead her to believe that YOUR parenting style is the same as HERS.
3. Let the Stepmother assume the bulk of the “parenting” role. Encourage her to identify and “correct” perceived behavior problems in your children. Let her set standards and mete out punishments. If YOU have to hand out a punishment, let your kids subtly know that it was HER standards they failed to live up to. After all, YOU didn’t have those standards BEFORE she came along.
4. Let your spouse to be responsible for the bulk of the decision making in the household. Never let the children never see you making an individual decision when the Stepmother is around. Make it a point to check in with her on every decision – they have to see you are helplessly absorbed into the Borg collective so they can be angry at her and feel sorry for you at the same time for your loss of individuality.
5. While they see you operating as a single unit when the Step Mother is around, a big part of this setup is the double standard. It is crucial that you act and respond differently to your children and their friends when the Stepmother ISN’T around. Be more easy-going and relaxed. Don’t enforce the same “discipline” when she isn’t around.
6. Ignore any comments from friends or family that indicate that you might be setting up your spouse to be the heavy. Refuse to acknowledge that there might be better or other ways to deal with the children. Insist that your spouse is a *wonderful* parent and can do no wrong. Ensure that your children see this so they will realize that it is pointless to talk to you about discomfort they have in the new environment.
7. Encourage the Stepmother to lecture the children when she finds fault with them. Don’t intervene if she belabours a point endlessly. The more she harps on at them, the better it is for setting her up to be the bad guy, and the better it makes YOU look.
8. Say “yes” to your child’s request and then withdraw your approval in front of your child when your spouse disagrees. You can always justify your about-face by stating that the child did not provide you with enough information to make an accurate decision the first time. Abdicate all responsibility for having to determine the facts YOURSELF, or stick to the original decision. Remember – if you stuck to your decision and determined on your own some alternate consequence, THAT wouldn’t be setting the Stepmother up.

This is a really great set-up because the Stepmother can be the convenient scapegoat: YOU don’t have to take REAL responsibility for your decisions, and THEY get to see that she was the cause of your reversal.

9. NEVER let your children see YOU rescind a decision that the Step Mother made, despite the fact that she rescinds YOUR decisions. Remember, it’s much harder to set her up to be the bad guy if you are taking equal responsibility.
10. Ensure that the Stepmother is the heavy and the disciplinarian when chores are to be done – ask the children if the job meets your SPOUSE’s standards. For example, after cleaning a room, ask, “Would [insert Step Mother’s name here] be happy with the job you did?” Let the children know that the standards in the household are HERS.
11. Force your children to participate in “family” activities with your spouse even if they protest that they don’t want to participate. This is especially good for building resentment in older children. This can be an even more powerful setup if they see YOU being pressured by the Step Mother into participating in activities you don’t really want to do.
12. Task your children with household chores that YOU or your ex-wife used to do. Make sure that neither you nor your spouse actually participates WITH your children on large chores like cleaning the yard or the garage. Ensure that the children rarely see the Stepmother pick up a vacuum, wash a dish, clean a floor, or wipe down a wall. After all, that’s what children are for, right?
13. Encourage the Stepmother to have a hobby like a garden and then task the children with weeding and maintaining it to her standards.
14. Embarrass your children by calling them home from their friends because they did not complete trivial tasks. Ensure that these tasks were things that you never noticed or made a big deal about BEFORE the Stepmother came into the picture.
15. When your spouse is not around, completely ignore your children’s table manners. When she is present, say nothing when the Stepmother continually criticizes table manners and boisterous behaviors that you used to ignore. For added effect, chime in with her and start criticizing those table manners yourself.
16. NEVER indicate to the children that the Stepmother may have made a mistake, never contradict her in front of the children (even if she contradicts YOU in order to rescind a request of theirs that you granted). After all, SHE is perfect and your children are flawed.
17. Pretend that your kids aren’t intelligent enough to notice the change in your behavior and attitudes since the Stepmother appeared on the picture. Denial is your sword of justification. Repeat this mantra: Any resentment or negative attitudes they have is because of their MOTHER brainwashing them. Insist that it couldn’t have ANYTHING to do with you or the Stepmother. Convince yourself that your children are incapable of seeing your complete reversal of behavior for what it is – that any resentment they have MUST be misplaced or instilled in them by someone else. This leads into the next step…
18. If your children try to talk to you about not liking the Stepmother or the new rules, insist that they must be brainwashed by their mother, and that their perceptions are flawed. Discount and invalidate their feelings. Justify the Stepmother’s actions at all costs. Discourage your children from saying anything negative about the environment or their new Stepmother. Be sure to tell the Stepmother about ANY conversations you have with the children so that the kids know that you won’t keep their confidence. Use this tactic to let your kids know that your relationship with their Stepmother is more important and deserving of privacy/confidentiality than your relationship with THEM.
19. Encourage the Stepmother to take up a hobby that one or more of your children has been interested and participating in for years. Be sure to buy all the equipment SHE needs for this hobby, despite the fact that you did not buy similar equipment for your children. This ploy has a triple-whammy effect: She is now set up to be in competition with the kids; they see that in your eyes, SHE is more deserving; and that HER interest in the hobby is more important to you than theirs.
20. Be sure to tell the Stepmother and other people how you believe the Stepmother is a better parent than the children’s biological mother. Criticize and compare the children’s biological mother to the Step Mother. Ensure that the children have an opportunity to overhear these conversations so that the children experience even more emotional conflict and the Stepmother is further set up for resentment. This kills two birds with one stone – you can have an evil ex-wife to blame AND an evil Stepmother.
21. And for the icing on the cake, have another child (or two) with the Step Mother. Ensure that the new children are treated differently from your children. Never say anything to your spouse about the difference in treatment between the children. As the new love children get older, be sure to remind the your kids of all the wonderful things their baby brother/sister does and how remarkable they are. For extra burn-in points, compare all the things the new children are doing that YOUR kids didn’t do at that age.

And there you have it! A certified plan for ensuring that your kids have a parent and disciplinarian in the house that they hate, and it’s not YOU. If things go wrong with the kids, you can ultimately blame someone else, and if things go ok, you can suck up the credit and claim your children’s successes were all part of YOUR hard work. Parenting is SO much easier when you can find someone else to do all the dirty work for you!