Today's Stepmother: Myths And Realities

Ebony, August, 1999

STEPHANIE STEVENS was not prepared for sudden motherhood. After college, she lived happily single for 10 years. Then she met and fell in love with a divorced financial analyst who is the father of two children. They married after a six-month courtship, and Stevens immediately was thrust into a world that was foreign to her. She moved from her city condo to a suburban home, and she immediately became stepmother to two unruly adolescents.

Though she still hopes to have children of her own, she is getting a fast and furious taste of motherhood. Despite the many hours each week she spends transporting and otherwise caring for the children, they don't hesitate to tell her, "You're not my mother!" Overall she feels unappreciated and deprived of the privacy and romance she had assumed would come with marriage. To top it off, she has to interact with the ex-wife, the children's mother, who does not mask her contempt for Stevens and her new marriage.

No woman dreams of becoming a stepmother, but that parental role is becoming a reality for an increasing number of women like Stevens. Rather than starting a family in the traditional way--having a baby of their own--many are immersed into motherhood the day they jump the broom--as stepmothers.

Because many women are marrying later, there is a good chance the husband will have children from an earlier marriage. There are 15 million stepmothers in the United States. With the escalating divorce rate and more than two-thirds of divorced or widowed individuals choosing to remarry, the number of families with either a stepmother or stepfather is rapidly increasing. Nearly 40 percent of all families today are stepfamilies.

In fact, more than half the Americans alive today have been, are now or eventually will be in one or more stepfamily situations during their lifetimes. One-third of all children today are expected to become stepchildren before they reach the age of 18. In addition, African-American children are more likely to live in stepfamilies. About 32 percent of Black children under age 18 who reside in married-couple families do so with a stepparent.

Among celebrities there are numerous well-known stepmoms, including Whitney Houston and Jada Pinkett Smith. Oprah Winfrey also is very close to the daughter of her longtime beau, Stedman Graham. In fact, Oprah spoke at his daughter's college graduation.

Loving and concerned celebrity stepmoms may help dispel the myth and perception that the stepmother is mean and evil, or that she is a home-wrecker. Stepmothers are portrayed negatively in fairy tales children learn before they start kindergarten, and that image is reinforced by portrayals of stepmothers in movies and books.

Contrary to the stereotype, today's stepmother most likely is a pleasant, caring woman who is making a valiant effort to fill this difficult role. Such is the case with Pilar Sanders, who recently married NFL superstar Deion Sanders in a storybook wedding in the Bahamas after a nine-month courtship. Pilar says she and Sanders' two children, Deiondra, 9, and Deion Jr., 5, hit if off from the beginning. "We have always had open conversations about their mother, and I don't try to take their mother's place," Pilar says. "And we don't even use the term `step.' I hate that word. The children and I don't introduce each other as `stepmom' or `stepchild.'"

Pilar goes on to say that she had no apprehension about being a stepmother. "But growing up I always said I would never marry a man who had a child," she reveals. "Later in life I realized that whole idea was unfair. After meeting Deion and establishing a relationship, I wanted to meet his children and be part of their lives."

Often the stepmother is a I working woman (such as Pilar, a model) whose life already is filled with the pressures of a career or job. In addition to getting adjusted to her new husband and the institution of marriage, she often has to deal with the stress of trying to relate to a child who is prejudiced against her by the birth mother. Adolescence and teen years are difficult times for parents and kids anyway. Tension is inevitable. "You have to learn how to traverse a minefield of emotions, yours, your husband's and the kids'," says therapist Sue Patton Thoele, author of The Courage To Be A Stepmom.

Sharon Cunningham of Tustin, Calif., has negotiated that minefield. Nine years ago she married her "childhood sweetheart," Zolton, and with that union came her husband's daughter, Brittany, now age 12. "Being a stepmother is challenging, to say the least," says Cunningham, who with her husband operates a workshop and a board-and-care home for the mentally disabled. "Just dealing with the mother, and trying to be a mother to my own three children and mother to Brittany when she is here is a challenge. Her mother has her rules, and we have our rules here, just trying to make those two meet has been a real challenge.

"Now that Brittany is going into adolescence, she wants the answer to a lot of questions, like what happened with her mom and dad, and how I played into that. Now she's asking me about sex, and oh, Lord, I don't want to step on her mother's toes on that subject. I'm trying to be peacemaker."