I agree that our attitudes toward our skids do come from a feeling of rejection...For me my skid came into the picture after I met my dh...and was thrown at me because his bm was done. I was very young and emotionally immature. I didn't feel as though I ever had a choice as to whether or not I wanted to care for him FT and I was surprised and ashamed that I didn't love or even like this super cute kid that everyone else seemed enamored with.

I haven't posted here in quite a while. I have a 15 yo ss who has been living with us full time for 10 years. Just this past week my DH (after much pressure from yours truly) finally filled out the paper work to go after his ex for CS. She owes between 15-20 k. Yeah, she paid us the full amount of court ordered support the first week...that was it. And she got away with it for all these years (I guess you could say he let her). In the meantime, I had taken on a part time job in addition to my full time job, to make ends meet.

I've been reading a lot of your posts, and it seems that for most of you, your husbands (or wives, sorry gents) were married to your stepkid's mother. My husband was never married to my ss's mother they dated for like three months. Apparently that was long enough to create a lifetime of stress. Sometimes it really bothers me that he was so stupid to get her pregnant, esp. because they weren't married, and she has a very bad reputation for promiscuity. I guess for me in some ways my situtation is easier because they don't have that much history together.