This is Cynthia with Heart of the Matter Radio for women seeking the elegance of God's wisdom. The family is the first institution founded in the Bible, and God cares a lot about how marriages work and how children are raised. Unfortunately, there are times when death or divorce interrupts a merit. Step moms have a bad reputation.
After all, in the Cinderella story, she almost ruined everything. So, today we're going to ask the question, is it possible to be a good stepmother? And if so, how? How can you avoid problems?
Or is it possible to do that? Today, I have Laura Petherich. She has written a book called 101 Tips for the Smart Step Mom. Welcome, Laura.
Thank you. It's great to be with you. I noticed in your book that you said many stepmothers start saying things like, boy, we didn't know it was this complicated. Yes, that's accurate.
One of the most common things I hear, actually, is I had no idea it would be this complicated. I just assumed I was going to step into this. I have a desire to have a heart for these kids and to love on them and to be an assistance when they're growing up. And I love their father.
So, I thought this was going to be a breeze. Well, it turned out to be a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. And I know you said, and one thing I think that kind of helps answer that question, is that any time a marriage ends, whether it's death or divorce, that there is a loss for everybody. And so, that makes it more difficult for the stepmother to step in.
Can you elaborate on that a little? Sure. One of the reasons why stepfamilies are so complicated, and this is regardless as to whether it's been a divorce or a death. All stepfamilies are birthed on loss.
Some type of a loss has to have occurred for the stepfamily to form, for there to be a stepfamily. Either it was a broken relationship where there were children birthed into a relationship and they never married, or it's a divorce, or one of those spouses died, or maybe the former spouse died. So, all stepfamilies are birthed on some type of loss. And most people don't consider that, or occasionally don't want to hear that, because it makes it sound negative, it makes it sound bleak.
And the reason why it's so important to recognize it and admit it, is because you can't fix and change and tackle what you're unwilling to admit. So, it's so important to recognize stepfamilies are birthed on loss, and that's why they are complicated. So, if you come into this marriage with a child of your own, it's impossible to feel the same way about these stepchildren as you do your own children. That is extremely rare.
You will find occasionally a stepmom or a stepdad that will view exactly the same way about their stepchild as they do their own biological child. But I want to be very clear to say that that is extremely unusual, because in particular, most stepmoms feel very, very guilty that they don't feel the same way about a stepchild as they do their own child. This doesn't mean they don't love the child. It merely means that they love that child differently than the child that they either gave birth to or that they have even adopted.
So, it is very, very common that people think they're going to love stepchildren exactly the same way. But if we really think about it, that's extremely unrealistic. I mean, really, can you love someone else's child the same way you do the child that came out of your own body or that you chose to adopt? The chances of that are pretty slim.
So, for stepmoms everywhere, or for church leadership who are saying to a stepmom, you should be ashamed of yourself. You need to love this child exactly as you do your own. It's placing a mantle of shame and burden on a woman that is extremely unrealistic. You're going to love your own child differently.
That doesn't give a stepmom the right to be mean or cruel or abusive or neglectful to a stepchild. It doesn't mean she doesn't love her stepchild. It just means she normally loves them differently because they were birthed by another woman. And so, she has a different bond with the child than she does her own.
Okay, now that brings up another question. If you've got your kids, his kids, our kids, how can you try to be fair, regardless of how you feel toward all of them? Because it's real easy to bond with your own kids. Of course sometimes when they miss behavior badly, you even get frustrated with them.
But that whole issue of fairness, I've heard a lot said about that. Is there a problem with that for stepmom? Most of the families do deal with that, especially if you've got children on both sides. If both couples bring a child into the marriage from a previous relationship, that's why divorce is when the more children there are involved, the higher the rate of divorce.
If a remarriage occurs with two people who neither have children, that has the highest success rate. When one spouse brings children into the marriage, that increases the potential of divorce. When both bring children, that's the highest level of conflict. And part of it is for the reason exactly what you just described.
It's extremely difficult to do this thing that we call fair. When you're dealing with multiple homes, multiple people, multiple relationships here, to make everybody feel like everything is being done exactly the same, can become very confusing, especially if the stepchildren are only in the home one or two days a week, or one or two days a month, to have the children that are residing in the home, having the same chores, having the same activities. As you do a child that's only there once or twice a month, to think that's going to be exactly the same, that's pretty difficult to carry out. Now, you want to try to make that as even as possible, but it's also placing another burden that's almost impossible to carry out.
If we think that stepkids that are only there occasionally are going to have exactly the same chores and the same responsibilities as a child that lives there every day. So, step-families are complicated because you do have to often have a different set of rules. This doesn't mean we should let the child, you know, when I can hear a step, I'm hearing you say this goal, you know, getting furious because she's saying, my husband doesn't make kids kids have any rules. It doesn't mean we should let the kids run crazy and do whatever they want.
I'm just saying that expecting a child that doesn't reside in the home for 30 days a month, to have exactly the same responses and chores and responsibilities as a child that's there every day, you're setting yourself up for failure and disappointment and frustration when we expect that. So, that means that that whole idea of Brady Bunch that used to be on TV where the father had three and the mother had three and they got married and they all live happily ever after that. That's kind of crazy. That is, that's a fairy tale.
It's a television show. Yeah, it's a fairy tale. But one that they have made. Well, that's true.
Well, I often felt like some of the TV families anyway were fairy tales because whenever they'd be a conflict, the mother would just sit down and talk to the kid and the kid would talk to the mom and then this made this warm glow that I'd walk off heavy. And I thought that doesn't happen very often in my house. Well, in particular in family, in the Brady Bunch, you never see the kids saying to their step-parent, you aren't my mother, you aren't my father. We never see them as the child torn between loyalty to their biological mother and Carol Brady.
Now, you know, it gives the illusion that both of those former spouses are deceased. Actually, the original script for the Brady Bunch had Carol Brady being divorced. But they were so afraid that it would be so controversial that they removed it and didn't have that as part of the storyline. But, you know, that goes to show how different we are in our society today, that they would be controversial.
But you don't ever see those children wanting to love their stepmother, but refusing to do it because their biological mother would be upset with them or mad at them. You never see the kids packing the clothes and moving from home to home. You never see the children going to a football game and their biological dad not showing up and then coming home crying. And then the stepdad had to deal with that.
You never see any of the realistic things that happen in the set-par So, and you're talking here about the children having loyalties to that biological parent. And it makes it sound like as you talk that what's happening is that they're almost afraid to love that step-parent, whether it's a mother or the father. Can you talk about that a little? Yeah, that's a common problem.
Many step kids, and this is young and old. Most people think this is only true if it's young children or adolescents, but this is true even if a parent remarries later in life, a senior remarries. Even if the mother is deceased, children will often feel a tremendous, disloyalty to a biological parent if they embrace a step-parent, if they like or love or involve a step-parent in their life. They feel it's being disloyal to their biological parent.
Now, this is exacerbated if the biological parent is toxic or unstable or manipulative or codependent, if the biological parent has issues themselves that they have not dealt with, if they are not a healthy parent, if they aren't parenting from a healthy place, the child will be more likely to feel that way because the burden is then placed on the child. An adult problem is being placed on a child to choose. You can either like your stepmother or you can love your mother, but you can't help both. So what the child will do is they'll drop a step-parent to embrace their biological parent in a heartbeat.
And that is true even if the parent is abusive or neglectful or beats them or abuses them in any way or is toxic, controlling, a bully, they will either there's a biological bond with your own parent that is fierce. And a child will drop a step-parent, you could be the mother Teresa of step-moms. And if that child views loving you as a threat to their relationship with their mother, or they feel their mother will be offended or hurt or angry that you embrace that step-mom, they will resist a step-mother at all costs. That is very interesting.
So how can we help a child like that? Because obviously you want him to learn healthy growing up patterns and communication patterns and so on. And if they don't accept you, how can you possibly do that? Well, you start first by recognizing a step-mom that it's not really doesn't have anything to do with you.
You recognize this is between the child and their mother. This really has nothing to do with me. If I am attempting to be the best, most godly step-mom I can be, and you know, I've been a step-mom 29 years, I did a lot of things wrong, I did some things right, but if I'm attempting to just really truly be a good step-mom, I have to accept the fact that I can't control what's going on between my step-child and their parent and their mother. So the first step for the step-parent is to take a step back and say, you know what, this really has nothing to do with me.
This is between a child and their mother and I can't fix or control that. The only thing I can do is stay at the line of reconciliation, be available for my step-child, if and when at some point they decide they want to let me into their life. I stay available, I stay loving, I stay kind. It doesn't mean I can't guard my heart because it's hard to hug a porcupine.
You know, somebody who doesn't want you, but you stay at that line of, you know, God, teach me how to love this person who really is fearful of loving me in return, or who's resisting loving me in return. So you stay at that line, but you don't let it destroy you. You let the bullet from that just bounce off of you. If you were wearing a bulletproof vest, you know, when somebody shoots you and you have a bulletproof vest on, it still knocks you down.
It just doesn't kill you. It's the same thing. It still hurts in accepting that the fact that the step-child is the person who dictates how strong the relationship will be between step-child and step-parent. Now, with a step-mother, I can do things that will make the potential of me having a good relationship with my step-child better.
I can do loving things. I can do kind things. I can keep my mouth shut about their biological parents. I can do all kinds of things that will either build a bridge or can destroy the relationship.
But I can't force that child to accept me into their life. They are in the driver's seat of whether they'll let me be a part of their life or not. And accepting that goes a long way in becoming a contented step-up. That's a huge assignment.
It is. It's not for the faint of heart. Right. And do they ever come around sometimes when they're that anti?
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I hear story after story after story of kids who absolutely resisted a step-mom. They wanted nothing to do with them, gave her life pure misery.
But because she was willing to recognize this is just a hurting child. They are trying to attack me or even if they're grown, they're trying to attack me because I'm an easy target. I'm not part of their family. They don't care whether I stay or go.
As a matter of fact, many times they wish I would leave. I'm not a benefit in their life to them. I'm a threat. I took their parents away in their eyes.
The women that are able to hang in there through that and recognize this really isn't about me. When the child gets older, it is not uncommon. In particular, when they start having children of their own, it's not at all uncommon for them to come back and go, you know what? You were a great stepmother.
I treated you terribly. And you were a great stepmother to me. And I am so sorry for what I did to you. You don't have thoughts, especially the youngest ones.
He'll come back and say, we were little brats to you sometimes. And you were always kind to us. You loved us. His view was that I loved them like I loved my own.
And that was so wonderful to hear that. Now, you may go your lifetime and never hear that. So don't expect it. Just if God brings it, hallelujah.
But don't assume that they're going to get to that place because sometimes they don't. If they do great, if they don't, you have to accept that. I know in one place in your book, you commented that hurting people hurt others. And I thought that was very good.
Yes. It's a, you know, I was in divorce recovery ministry for 25 years first and then added to that family ministry to that. So I deal with a lot of hurting people, a lot of wounded, hurting people. And if we don't choose to get those wounds healed, if we don't choose to get either therapy or allow God to heal those wounds in our heart, whether they're things from childhood or adulthood, we then inflict that pain on other people.
Doesn't mean we go around punching or beating somebody. There's lots of ways to inflict pain on another person. I can do that by withholding my love, by being a bully, by being codependent. There's all kinds of ways that I, as a hurt person, can hurt others.
So if I choose not to get healed, and I deal with thousands of people that choose not to get better, I'm going to inflict that toxic poison on the people that are around me. And there's really not a whole lot they can do about it. Are they aware that they're doing this? Are they just living out their pain?
Yes. They're living out their pain. Sometimes they know they're doing it, but most would grandly profess that that's not what's causing it. When you try to say to them, you know, this is your own pain, your own childhood pain, your own, you know, how you were abused, how you were raised, what you've experienced.
It takes a very mature person to admit, you know what, I've got issues. And if I don't get these issues fixed, I'm going to just keep spreading the problem under other people. So it takes a very mature person to admit and to recognize. It takes a person who wants to stop blaming others and say, you know what, I'm going to take charge of my life.
I couldn't control what happened to me as a child, but I can control how it's acting out in my life now. But see, so many choose to stay a victim rather than become a victor. And that's just part of that is the society we live in, that we nurture entitlement, we nurture being a victim, we don't hold people accountable for their poor choices. Even in the church, we sweep it under the rug and we just tell them, you know, that it's loving to allow people to walk all over us and we don't teach them how to stop patterns of codependency and enabling and abuse.
And so, you know, that perpetuates the problem. So it's the brave, victorious person who chooses to become mature and not let their past determine their future. Right, it sounds like you're saying that if we could educate people before they get into this mess too and not hurt their children and so on, that it might help. But still, if you've got that hurting person out there, it's going to take something to make them realize what's happening to their soul is hurting other people.
And I have no idea how to do that. Yeah, that's true. And part of that is the Holy Spirit's job, part of that is not, you know, anyone else's job, part of it is just becoming humble enough to say, I've got a problem. And I speak a thousand of single parenting events and inevitably I'll meet all kinds of single parents and say, oh, I love my kids.
I love my kids. I die for my kids. But you see, they're asking the wrong question. The question is not will I die for my kids.
The question is will I live for my kids? Will I become a healthy, stable, godly, single parent before I get remarried? And most are not willing to do that? I guess I should say many, maybe not most.
Many are unwilling to become satisfied, content, and healed as a single parent. Before they bring those children into a new marriage because they view the new marriage as the answer to their problems. They don't understand that it's only going to create bigger problems. They see the new marriage as solving their loneliness, solving that their kid doesn't have a daddy.
That is not what the child needs. The child needs for that parent to become stable, emotionally strong, confident, and secure, healed from their own wounds before they move into a second marriage. But you see, I travel all over and speak to people before they get remarried, and most do not want to hear that. They view the remarriage as the answer.
So once they're into the remarriage and they go, okay, this didn't work. This didn't do what I thought it was going to do. As a matter of effect, my kids are struggling more now in the remarriage than they were when I was a single parent. What have I done?
So that's often the wake-up call that gets them to one of my events. I leave Step Mom Retreats all over the country and we're praying outside the U.S. and they come to the retreat and they go, okay, I wasn't willing to listen before. Teach me.
Teach me how to survive in the second marriage so I don't drag my kids through another divorce. That is intense because you're saying that people don't even recognize what the problem is. They just want that marriage because they're raw now and they think that that will fix it. And I have to place some blame where it belongs and they've found the church because often a church communicates that you don't have value here unless you are married.
And I can hear church leadership everywhere going, oh no, we accept all people. But for that pastor, I ask them to take a look at their budget and their calendar and take a look at how many events and how much money you are spending on training and teaching single parents to become content. And if you will take a serious look at that in your church, what you are communicating is we spend all kinds of money on marriage retreats, on marriage events, but we do very little to train singles and single parents, how to become stable and godly and healthy before they get married or remarried. And so we've made an idol out of marriage in the church and we push people who have no business into getting married or remarried into a marriage because that's the only way they'll fit in.
Well, exactly. For the most part, things are intended to be for couples and for the couple's kids and all that. So how would you structure that? How would your church do that?
So it's a balanced program. There are tons of single parenting materials out there, how great, godly single parenting materials that the church can implement that would begin to prepare my co-author of the smarts that I'm Ron Deal. He has a book out called Dating in the Single Parent. Even if you just did something like that to teach single parents how to date before they get remarried, it would be eye opening for these couples.
But you see single parenting comes, if you're going to start leading single parenting classes in the church, it comes with a lot of baggage. It comes with children who are troubled. It comes with kids who need divorce recovery classes. It comes with a lot of stuff that the church is neither equipped or prepared to implement.
And so it's easier to do marriage classes. So the first thing would be for the church to admit, okay, we are ill equipped to do this. We need to consult some people who understand how to do it. Bring them on board, give some conferences or whatever in here so that we're learning how to minister.
Do you know that singles make up 52% of the US population? Single parenting has increased something like 800% in the last 30 years. And yet you would never know that by looking at the church because we offer very little. So apparently in the arena, I'm not trying to throw the church under the bus.
I'm saying if the church is serious about strengthening marriages, we must begin by ministering to these people who are coming into a moment. Either a remarriage or a marriage with children already. That's a huge area and I can see that the real problem. It is.
And part of it is sometimes pastors are just, they just don't know. They don't know what they don't know. Part of it is no, they can learn that in seminary. They weren't in a step family themselves.
I love pastors. My husband's a pastor. So I'm not throwing pastors under the bus. I'm trying to scream from the people of the church.
With these people are desperate for Christ and they are willing to come to the church if we will minister to them. And that's why I'm trying so hard to get this word out to the step moms in particular. Any woman dating, engaged or married to a man with children. I am desperately trying to minister to that woman because what I discovered is if you can minister to the step mom, she goes home changed.
Her husband sees the change. He then goes, okay, I don't know what happened to you, but I am thrilled, excited, tell me what happened. And he will then start coming to the church or coming to the place where she found help. And so it saves the marriage.
Right. Right. Because remarriages have a very high divorce rate. Yeah, I've heard that.
I've heard that. I know in your book you talked about dealing with that biological motive that's causing problems and you commented to the stepmother. You can't fix her. Can you comment on that just a little?
Yes. And working in divorce recovery along with that family ministry, I know that there are going to be women hearing this. They were the woman who was lost. They're the mother whose husband walked out, left the marriage.
She's hurt. She's wounded and she feels betrayed. And now husband has gone off and he's married another woman. And she's saying, how dare you talk about me that way?
I'm the victim here. And so I totally get that. I have my first husband left me for another woman. I totally get what that betrayal feels like.
What I'm saying, however, is if you desire to have healthy children, it's time to stop living in that my husband betrayed me or admit the part of the marriage you played that caused the marriage to break down and say, okay, I can't fix that. But I'm going to learn how to co-parent with my former spouse, with my ex-husband and his new wife so that my children don't feel like they are living in a constant tug of war. And so it's the stepmom who's dealing with a biological mom, a birth mom, the first wife, the former wife who does not want her in the picture, views her as a threat, views her as trying to steal her children or whatever the thinking is there. How does a stepmom deal with a former spouse who is attempting to destroy her stepfamily?
And that's really what those chapters are for or about. And so in both books, both stepmom books, I try to explain the things you can control, the things you can't control, how to co-parent, the things that stepmom sometimes do, even unknowingly, that throw gasoline on the flame for the ex-wife and how to stop doing some of the things that are making the situation worse. And so it's a very difficult circumstance. I'm not saying a stepmom can become best friends with a former wife, but she needs to at least pursue peace with that woman when it all passable.
The stuff you're saying is just making my heart bleed because I see the kids caught in the middle and parents battling over them and are just trying to get past their own pain so they're not really as focused on the kids as they need to be. And it just breaks my heart. Yeah, it is. It is heartbreaking.
This is why God says he hates divorce. Exactly. It's not because he hates people. It's not because he hates divorced people.
It's so often we in the church, we want to just preach God hates divorce. We don't want to go to the deeper issue. It breaks his heart. It's breaking your heart and breaks my heart.
Imagine how it's breaking God's heart to see people so hurting and wounded. And that's why anybody who may be listening to this who's thinking of walking out of your marriage just because you're not happy anymore, believe me. You've got bigger challenges to face down the road. If at all possible, work on the marriage that you're in.
Now that doesn't mean you should ignore or tolerate abuse or addiction or adultery. Don't hear what I'm not saying. Those issues need to be tackled and addressed. Who I'm trying to speak to is the person who's thinking of jumping out of their marriage just because they're not happy anymore because they think the grass will be greener.
It really comes with tremendous complexities. Think through that and don't ignore the red flags before getting out of your current marriage. Absolutely. God intended marriage to last a lifetime and our sin, our choices, hurt not only us but other people.
That's right. And in divorce, it's important to know here because I could see the woman sitting out there like I was who didn't want to be divorced, who hates divorce. But it takes two people to get married, but it only takes one to get divorced. So you may be ending up in a divorce that you had no desire or part in playing.
So I don't want to be throwing everybody who's divorced into the same basket because there are many, many people. As a matter of fact, the majority of people who come to my divorce recovery or read my divorce recovery book, they did not want to be divorced. And it wasn't their choice. Or they had to get divorced to protect themselves from either addiction, abuse or adultery.
I had a friend who was dating a man who was divorced and I think he had a child and the girl was witnessing all the stuff that was going on with a mother and so on. And I said, well, just be aware that should you marry him, you'll be part of all of that mess. And I think I scared her. Good.
Right. Part of my goal, I'm doing pre-marriage coaching. I do life coaching for couples, pre-marriage. I've had two couples that called out the wedding.
It's probably not a great advertisement for wooing couples, but they needed to call out the wedding because they were not prepared for the complexities that were coming. And see, we lull ourselves into believing that, oh, we're in love. This is a second chance at love for me. I'm going to be happy.
That means my kids will be happy. And we ignore the warning signs and the red flags. We think once we get married, those things will go away. When in fact, even kids that were for the remarriage often turn against the remarriage once the wedding vows happen.
We've gotten the feeling in our society that how you feel is more important than anything else. You hear people say, follow your heart. Well, there's times that following your heart can't be dangerous because our heart is sinful. And if we don't think things through and look at facts, we can get ourselves in a lot of messes if we follow our heart.
That is so true. And even if it isn't a heart that's acting in sin, it could just be a heart, a wounded heart who can't see clearly. You see, my past clouded my ability to see clearly and my wounds and the trauma I suffered as a child clouded my ability to reason properly and to think clearly. I had no idea what a healthy marriage looked like because I had never seen one growing up.
And so often we act out of our naivete of not knowing this is complicated. I need to tackle this. And even hearing this show, there are numerous people who say, oh, she's so negative. Oh, she's not being positive.
She's nothing that Christ can heal all wounds. It doesn't mean that I don't believe that. I'm a stepmom of 29 years. I grew up having two stepmothers.
So I totally get the whole picture. I was a stepchild. I'm now a stepmom. I'm not negative.
I'm realistic. I am saying there are ways you can thrive and grow and succeed as a stepmom. But you don't do that by burying your head in the sand and pretending these complexities don't exist. Absolutely.
You're giving facts and you're showing the problems that they need to figure out how to handle. So I think you are giving hope. Well, that's my desire. You know, sometimes people say, oh, you're just too negative.
Now that normally comes from people who don't understand anything about stepmoms. Stepmoms have say to me, pre-treats, sister. Keep going. Tell everybody.
Yeah. They normally don't say that because they're living it and they feel like nobody understands. For example, I'm planning at the stepmom retreat. I'm planning right now in the event coordinator at the retreat center.
She was giving me all sorts of suggestions for what these women could do. And I had to keep emailing her back and saying, you don't understand. This is completely different than any other women's retreat you are doing. These women are in pain.
They're not going to come in a van full of women. Oh, goodie. Let's go to the stepmom retreat. They're coming in shame.
They're coming in fear. They're coming alone. This is their lifeline hoping. Maybe this woman can give me some suggestions on how to stop hating my stepkids.
I'm embarrassed to admit that to anybody. I can't tell anybody how I really feel. If my husband knew how much I couldn't say on his gift, he'd be furious. He might leave me.
But the reality is they make my life miserable. I know they're just kids. I feel badly for them. I can't help how I feel.
Somebody helped me. I had to explain to her what works at other women's retreats will not work at this event. We have uniquely formulated these so that we're helping this woman that comes in limping and she goes home dancing. Her circumstance changed because we've helped her see it through a different lens.
Let's put them in touch with you. How can they find you, Laura? That would be wonderful. My website is thesmartsetmom.com.
Okay. Where can they find you writing? My books are right on my website. They're also available anywhere books are sold with major publishers.
My first book, When I Do Becomes, I Don't, which is a divorce recovery guy for people who are separated and divorced. It's a frequently asked question book for anybody navigating that journey. I do include a chapter on people who are getting divorced in a second marriage. That is for anybody navigating that painful journey.
Then I have two set-mom books. The smart set-mom and 101 tips for the smart set-mom. Those books can be purchased anywhere. My website, online, a local bookstore, they can be purchased anywhere.
Laura, I want to thank you for this time. Thank you for reaching out to these hurting moms. This is just really great. I appreciate you and appreciate all your hard work.
I appreciate you having a heart for step-mom because there are many Christians that don't want to discuss this subject. It's so sad to me. I am grateful beyond words that you would be willing to reach out to this hurting group of women. I'm delighted.
Thank you for coming. Thank you. God bless you. God bless your ministry.