Evil Step-Mothers

Hollywood has rediscovered fairy tales. While I’m excited to see Once Upon a Time and Grimm, I can’t help but think about how fairy tales treat families. Ever notice how fathers are generally absent, leaving the children behind in the wilderness, or, worse, present but under the influence of an evil step-mother?

Now, I know that in the realm of archetypes and psychology (and, frankly, natural instinct) the evil step-mother type makes sense. Mothers are instinctively going to be more protective of their biological offspring. But as the “nuclear family” is continually redefined, I’d like to think that we’ve actually outgrown some childhood stories.

Then my step-daughters hide a basket of laundry in their closet rather than finish the chore or admit that they didn’t finish the chore.

Yes, on occasion I’ve been the evil step-mother. Following the hidden laundry basket incident, I aired our dirty laundry on Facebook (the pun just could not be ignored). I wanted all their family members to know how irresponsible they had been.

Did it get the laundry done? Nope. It didn’t even motivate them to finish their laundry the next weekend.

Did it make me feel better? I have to be honest; it did a little.

I keep thinking that if they were my children they would have been more responsible, but that is a fallacy. My boys have to be told to do a task multiple times before it actually gets done. Truth be told, they are more likely to talk back or question my instructions than Hubs'.

The problem with being a step-parent is finding the discipline boundaries. I can joke around with my step-children; when I’m treating them like my students our relationship is great. Thanks to me the girls love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I even have one considering my alma mater for college (Augustana).

But I can’t undo the lessons of their real mother or father. Their cleaning habits will never be the same as mine, and they are accustomed to no one following up to see if they have done their chores.

All of this makes me respect my sons’ step-mother even more. Her parenting style is about as far from mine as Rush Limbaugh is from Bill Mahr, but she is consistent in how she parents all her kids. She was a single parent of one before marrying my ex, and, for reasons I won’t go into, could never have more children. My boys, she told me, are her “bonus children”; she’s told them the same thing. At all their events, she is taking pictures and preparing their scrapbooks.

(We won’t talk about my photo-taking lapses or lack of interest in scrapbooks; I’m happy to share that parenting duty with someone else.)

So maybe Snow White’s step-mother was tired of Snow White borrowing her cosmetics and hair products. And maybe Cinderella’s step-mother had washed one too many loads of laundry. Sadly, they both missed out on the blessing of “bonus children.” Which makes me believe maybe we can learn something from the old fairy tales after all.