I didn't necessarily grow up with a stepmom or stepdad, but both of my parents divorced and remarried shortly after at 16. Once I met my stepdad, I immediately wanted to get to know him and have a relationship with him. Once I met my dad's wife (notice i don't call her my stepmom), I was happy for my dad but not interested in any sort of relationship with her because she was simply dad's wife.

I'm not sure why, but I just kind of was much more open to the idea of a stepdad. Dads are cool. They do fun stuff and help you with your car/moving/all sorts of things that dads do. Moms tend to be stricter and more bitchy. So I think the same applies to stepparents or potential stepparents, too - at least from society's standpoint so you go into it differently because of that.

I think that's why stepmoms often aren't liked by their stepkids whereas stepdads are often liked, if not loved, by their stepkids. It's something to do with society's expectations on each gender and society's views on each parent - i'm not really sure though. This is just what i've gathered so far. Stepdads don't really have to love you, they just have to have fun with you whereas stepmoms are expected to love you so they often don't and get uncomfortable or standoff-ish and the kids feel that.

But to answer your question, I'm not really sure what makes a good stepmom. I spend time with my stepdaughter, I plan her birthdays and holidays, I buy gifts when her school friends have parties, I redecorate her room and do all the clothes shopping, but I don't think anyone considers me a good stepmom because I don't love her like I would my own.

It sucks. I pay for her needs more than any of her bio parents and I do more/spent more time with her than any of her bio parents but I don't think that really matters because I simply don't love her like I would my own. I can't help but feel like if I was a stepdad, everyone would rave about how great I was because I was providing and hanging out with her. They wouldn't care so much that I didn't and never will fall head over heels in love with her.

I don't think a stepmom is considered "good" by others outside of steptalk/stepworld, even when they do everything they should, unless they are super loving and motherly.

Mine gave my late mother's jewellery to her daughter. She was a money grubber, but she predeceased my father, so I got the last laugh when he changed his will at the last minute and left nothing to the skids.

Good? I suppose she took care of Dad for years and they travelled all over the world spending his money. When we did visit, one of her adult kids was usually there too, staying in the guest room, so used to have to stay in a hotel while visiting my own family home! She was very judgmental of us, despite our being successful while her son was a drug addict, but that just made me see her as a jealous twat.

Oh, and the money my father had from my own maternal grandmother's estate. I didn't begrudge it to him, but I did resent that he spent so much on SM. And in the end HER adult kids tried to,sue Dad's estate for their "share". Ps. We won, they got zero. But it took three years to settle. Entitlement gone mad.

I had a SM due to my BM dying when I was a toddler, and I'm now a SM myself. I wish my SM was more "motherly" growing up - she could barely stand me being in the room. She favoured her kids over her skids (pretty natural really) and I don't have a close relationship with her now. I think she did more harm than good. When she's had a couple of wines we do get on really well - but that's not particularly healthy either.

Ironically I find I've ended up being similar to her as a SM - I'm not really interested in the skids and I know my life would be easier if they weren't around. I went into it with the best intentions, thinking I would grow to love them, but the ongoing (as in, 7 years) of legal BS has made it hard not to resent them. I feel guilty every day knowing that I don't feel motherly towards them.

I try to pretend but it's pretty hard - I think my temper is just that much shorter because I don't have that bio connection. I expect the skids will say the same thing when they're grown - that they wish I was more "motherly" towards them. It's bloody hard when you just don't feel it though.

I hit the trifecta when it comes to SMs.

My dad had three serious relationships after he and my mother divorced. I'll refer to them as SMs, even though he wasn't married to them all. One of them I hated, one I wished I could have known better, and the third started out pretty good but ended terribly.

The first SM made it clear from our first meeting that she didn't like having me around. First time I went to their apartment for a visit I was shy kid because it was strange being with my dad and another woman in "their" home. SM made a few terse comments to me and then stomped off to another room. My dad asked if I wanted something to eat and he asked if she could make something. After banging around she stomped back and tossed a plate down in front of me that literally looked like she had cleaned out the garbage disposal; it was a mixture of tuna fish, fruit cocktail, mixed canned vegetables and whatever other crap she could find. I was horrified and knew I could not eat one single bite. SM then started yelling about how , "She wanted something to eat, so get her to eat it!" I remember my dad actually trying to calm her down, and said if I wouldn't eat it, he would eat it so it wouldn't go to waste and then he choked it down.

Never saw that SM again. But my sister did and SM sent her back home with a large bag of SM's old underwear, girdles and other frayed clothing, telling my sister, "Here's some things you girls may get some use out of." It was a clear middle-finger to not only us, but my mother. My dad broke it off with her not long after that.

SM2 was a very friendly, warm-hearted woman who I truly believe loved my dad. She was a free spirit with lots of energy, and could get my dad to do things like have a picnic in the back yard with us. My dad laughed alot when he was with her, and you could tell he was smitten. I liked her as soon as I met her; and my sister HATED her. I think SM2 is probably a lot like many of us here on STalk. She went into a relationship loving a man, and doing her very best to be open and develop relationships with us, too. My sister would have none of it - she was so jealous of SM2 that she turned into the proverbial mini-wife drama queen SD that so many of us have had experience with. She eventually gave my dad an ultimatum that it was either SM2 or her. Because of this, I believe SM2 decided she didn't want to cause that kind of damage, nor be damaged herself, and she ended it with my dad.

It's been more than 40 years since then, and I will still think of SM2 from time to time and wonder what happened to her.

SM3 seemed to check off all the right boxes. She seemed normal enough, friendly enough and we all got along well (we were adults by then). We all went to the wedding and their was no drama. My dad and SM3 retired and moved away so we didn't see much of her. I planned to take a vacation and visit, and when discussing it with my dad my SM3 suddenly got on the phone and started yelling about how their home wasn't a hotel and how dare I plan a trip there! I was stunned - it was so unlike her and way out of character. Long story short, it turned out she was a SERIOUS alcoholic (my dad rarely drank at all) and she was very adept at hiding it. That one ended too, and she caused my dad lots of headaches during the divorce. The ink was barely dry on the finalized divorce when he became terminally ill and died not long after.

So long intro to your question as to what makes a good SM? There is no set criteria. It depends on the people, the time and the circumstances.

I do know that when I met SO and his kids, I tried to remember all the things that I did and didn't like about these three women. I did my level best to not be overbearing, nor cold. I tried to make sure they all had "alone" time while still being inclusive/inviting. I never said a bad word about BM to them, ever. I tried to be accessible if they wanted to talk, but not intrusive.

None of that mattered because I have no relationship with either skid. They were PASd so that their own father is meaningless to them - therefore I certainly never stood a chance.

I am a COD. Both of my parents remarried and I have excellent relationships with both of my Steps. My dad has passed, but I am still close with my SM. She even comes to family gatherings when possible. I consider her to be a bonus mom.

I believe (wholeheartedly) that the Bio-parents set the tone for the SP/SK relationship. It's about boundaries, manners, and respect. Period. I grew up with 4 parents, and my behavior was molded by each of them, individually AND collectively. That's not to say there were never issues, but the adults carried the burden and worked hard to keep things running smoothly. There was/is mutual respect between all of them.

Having said all of the above, I have been told (by some on this site) that my experiences are some sort of 'quasi kumbay' -esque. I don't really mind other peoples narratives, as there will always be successes and failures in this life. It doesn't change MY personal experiences or diminish them in any way.

Both of my SP's are warm, caring, and open minded. They have excellent communicative skills and are very honest when offering opinions or advice.

I had a stepdad and step mom.

Step mom- my dad was in and out of my early life due to mental things and a resulting addiction to zanex. Sometime around 6 i think he did get married to a woman who had 3 kids of her own a set of twins and an older girl. Before he was married my little sister and i NEVER had overnight visits with him because he alwayd just rented a room or crashed a couch.

Anyway, it was not a good arrangement. I was a brat and didnt get why i had to go spend a weekend sleeping on the floor when i had a bed. I actually remember being very pissed about it because we slept on the floor of her daughters room. I remember getting upset because i was served pizza with milk and to my 6yo brain that was the most ridiculous thing.

The final visit, my dad was building a porch and i was n inside with sm and my sister. Her kids were not there. Sm curled my sisters hair, she was around 1. I then rememeber sm asking me how i liked it and i said she looked like miss piggy. Idk what happened next but sm was chasing me with a curling iron because i didnt want my hair curled and then me running down the street yelling to call my mom because i was on my way home in foot.

I remember my dad catching me and sitting in their kitchen while he kept saying well i dont know what to do she doesnt want to be here and i could hear my mom yelling "beat her little ass, she knows better then to run away" . Ultimately she came and got me and busted my butt for being a brat but took me home. I never went back and my sister only went 1 more visit before visits ended. My mom says i only went for maybe 5 visits total.

I am pretty sure that my dad handled things or was supposed to due to the christmas presents that year he got me a corded phone and rollerblades. Not sure why i got a corded phone but it seems like a woman wouldn't pick a corded phone for a 6yo. Lmao.

That was the last time i had overnight visits with my dad. Ten years later he died and in those 10 years we saw him only a handful of times due to hospitalizations and homelessness. It is very sad for me as a parent to have barely known my dad.

I adored my step mother. I adored my Dad and so I adored her because of our shared love of him. I was separated from my Dad when I was 7. I only saw him for a couple of hours, once a month and my heart broke every time he left me. He remarried when I was 13. Initially my dreams of a reunion were shattered but I quickly collaborated with my Step-mum and she would tell me Dad's likes and dislikes, stuff I didn't know because we didn't live together.

As soon as I turned 16 I used to visit them and we grew really close. They are both dead now and I'd give the world to see them again and spend time with them. Some step parenting advice would be useful too.

My older brother wasn't as accepting. He refused to call her by her married name - our name. However, he was by her side when Dad died. He got there in the end. I wrote her eulogy when she died. I referred to her as the ultimate 'wicked' stepmother using the urban dictionary definition of wicked.

Why was she so amazing? Apart from loving the man I adored, she was a friend to me. She never tried to parent me but was great company, telling me all about her life, her love, work, hair and make up. Perhaps she was more of a sister. I don't know. I only know that I loved her.

My mother had an affair with a "friend" of hers who knew my dad and who used to babysit me all the time. I was 11 and suspected something, but my mom always denied it. So did the "friend." Then my parents got a divorce, and my mother decided to move us in with her "friend." Then I found out she was 7 months pregnant with his kid which meant she cheated on my dad. When I found this out I pitched a huge fit and told my mother I would not live with liars and would make her life a living hell until she sent me back to my dad's. My siblings stayed with my mom, her affair partner, and my new half brother. They amended the paperwork, and I stayed with my dad. I completely refused to have a relationship with my SF after this due to the circumstances. He would try to bribe me and I would just make fun of him for being Chinese. It drove a wedge between my little sister and I because she took his gifts, and they were things I really wanted, like a cell phone. I barely talked to my mom even with EOW visitation until they divorced, I was pretty mad and didn't want much to do with her. I had no relationship with my SF at all. (At least not after I found out they an affair, I liked him well enough before that.)

My dad remarried to a woman who moved up from Florida to be with him. She tried to be nice to me, but I honestly got the feeling she didn't know what to do with me. My SM was a neat freak, and was very particular about the way things had to be in the house. I always felt like part of the problem was that she was infertile but had desperately wanted children, and she had miscarried a daughter that would have been my age when she was younger. I think she viewed me as her second chance at the daughter she had wanted, but I didn't behave the way her daughter would have. My stepmother was always very girly and very social, and I was a tomboy who liked to keep to myself, and I was a complete slob. To make matters worse she didn't want to live in the house I grew up in with my parents, and insisted on moving us two and a half hours away to some suburbs in the middle of nowhere (where she lived when she was a kid) away from my friends when I grew up in Brooklyn and was used to everything being walking distance. I was completely miserable about the move and knew it was because of SM.

My entire life was basically stripped away from me and I found myself trapped in this mansion on a hill with only my SM for company because my dad still worked in our old neighborhood now with a 5 hour daily commute, and he was gone from 5am until 10pm 6 days a week. I had warts on my feet and couldn't walk but my SM wouldn't take me to the doctor and my dad had no time. It was snowing and I had no winter jacket but SM wouldn't take me shopping and dad had no time. I would go around messing the house up being a teenager and ignoring everyone and she would go around pitching fits. Soon she started drinking very heavily and I spent my days actively avoiding her while she stumbled around the house screaming and throwing dishes. The few hours I saw my dad they shouted at each other constantly and I used to put my ear up to the AC vent in my room so I could hear them. It was literally always about me, how I hadn't said hi to my stepmother when I came home from school, or how I hadn't washed my own dishes after dinner, or how she asked how my day was and I said "fine" and went up to my room and how rude of me it was. How she did and she did and she did everything for me and my dad and I didn't appreciate her. This would usually go on until my dad started complaining of chest pains and ask her to call an ambulance. This was a weekly occurrence.

She would do things for me, and then go absolutely insane when she didn't get the reaction she wanted. Like one year for my birthday she gave me some jewelry that belonged to her grandmother. I was a tomboy and didn't wear jewelry. I thanked her and told her that I probably wouldn't wear it much because the ring didn't fit and it wasn't my style. She went insane over that. Or when I turned 13 she planned my bat mitzvah. She did, my dad didn't have the time. I mean of course he never told me he didn't have the time and I wouldn't even have had a party if SM hadn't done it. But she invited 100 of her friends and I was only allowed to invite 20 of mine because it was too expensive. I got sick that day, (food poisoning from something I ate the day before) and spent most of it in the bathroom throwing up and she got extremely angry that I barely attended "HER" party. She got angrier when she didn't get any kind of effusive display of thanks from me for having organized it, even though my dad dedicated a song to her for planning it. She yelled about that for YEARS. She was still yelling about it when they divorced 8 years later.

Eventually she "disengaged" meaning she refused to answer me when I spoke to her and refused to acknowledge my existence at all. She cordoned off 70% of the house and half the backyard as "HER SPACE" and I was only allowed in my bedroom, my bathroom, and the kitchen and swimming pool (with permission.) My dad kind of let her do what she wanted and eventually they just stopped feeding me. Meals were planned as if I didn't exist. She put an alarm on the fridge and would come scream at me whenever she heard the door open. I was grounded for a week once for stealing a roll from the kitchen because she did the grocery shopping and I couldn't have "HER" food. When I took change out of the penny jar to buy food at school I was screamed at for being a thief. When my siblings came on the weekends and they would go out as a family I wasn't invited. Eventually I wasn't even allowed in her car anymore because "I was gong to infect the leather by touching it." When I tried to come home after my first semester of college my stepmother moved all my stuff out to the curb for trash pickup saying she "wasn't going to have me depreciating the value of her property with my filth anymore." My dad then told me I couldn't come back to the house until I apologized to her, even though he couldn't tell me for what because he wasn't even sure what I'd done.

So I've lived on my own since I was 18, but that didn't stop them from divorcing two years later and citing "my existence" as the official reason for the divorce. I stayed in contact with her afterwards because she did kinda raise me, but she cut off contact with me about four years ago (when I was 29) because I forgot to wish her a happy birthday.

So I guess I didn't have a great relationship with my SM, but the jury is really still out on whose fault it was. I sound like the nightmare stepchildren I hear described on this forum but honestly I was just being a sloppy teenager who was pretty antisocial and never really told my own parents I loved them unless they made me. I had nothing against my SM, but I never really understood that she wanted us to be a family. I think she got crazier and crazier because I didn't seem to love her, and at the same time I didn't seem to love her because its really hard to love people who more or less force your father to neglect you while throwing dishes and screaming like lunatics. I mean, she was always mad at me and treating me pretty horribly, how was I supposed to love her? And nobody ever really explained to me how she was feeling. I mean, I understand it now, mostly from reading this forum, the whole being unappreciated thing but at 12 how was I supposed to know what was expected of me? I mean, I was a unique situation. I seriously believe that if my dad sat me down and said "SM wants to be your new mom or be like your mom to you and I want us all to be a family" I would have just played along,(even though they tell you that you're never supposed to do that as a stepparent) but nobody really explained to me that was what they wanted from me. I didn't know what they wanted from me. I just tried to go about my existence while everybody just acted nuts and argued around me all the time while I wondered how a child could possibly be responsible for making grownups act so crazy and what I was doing wrong.

When I was 23 I got a replacement SF, who didn't really even seem to want to meet me and refused to move in with my mom because my siblings hadn't moved out yet, they lived separately. And when I was 25 I got a replacement SM, who threw out any stuff I still had at my dad's house and has said maybe 20 words to me in the last 8 years. I don't really know anything about either of them and it seems they'd prefer it that way.