Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do - Softcover

Martin Ph.D., Wednesday

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1517071380 ISBN 13: 9781517071387

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015

Synopsis

Half of all women in the United States will live with or marry a man with children. And what woman with stepchildren has not—in order to defuse the often overwhelming challenges and anxieties she experiences—referred to herself as a “stepmonster”? What Hope Edelman’s book has done for motherless daughters, Wednesday Martin’s empowering and original Stepmonster does for stepmothers: unlocks the emotional mysteries of why they think and feel and act the way they do. Martin draws on her own experience as a stepmother, interviews many stepmothers and stepchildren, and gathers insights from literature, psychology, and evolutionary biology to reveal the little-understood realities of this demanding role. Stepmonster illuminates the harrowing process of becoming a stepmother, exposes the myths and realities of being married to a man with children, counteracts the prevailing notion that stepmothers are solely responsible for the problems they encounter, identifies the five “step-dilemmas” that create conflict, and considers the emotional and social challenges men with children face when they remarry. Stepmonster also sheds light on the history of stepmothering and the previously overlooked legacy of women with stepchildren everywhere. Finally, in an unexpected twist, Martin shows why the myth of the Wicked Stepmother is at once an elaborate cultural fiction and our single best tool for understanding who real stepmothers are and how they feel.

About this title

About the Author

Wednesday Martin, PhD, has worked as a writer and social researcher for over two decades. The author of Stepmonster and the instant #1 New York Times bestseller Primates of Park Avenue, she has appeared as a step/parenting expert on CNN, NPR, BBC, Today, and GMA and has written for the New York Times and Psychology Today.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

One day we are real, normal people, living alongside everyone else in the regular world, in normal time. Then we marry a man with children and somehow we become something utterly different from what we had believed ourselves to be. When we become a stepmother--even if defining ourselves by this role is the furthest thing from our minds, even if we have kids of our own and are loving mothers, even if his kids are grown...we are likely to find ourselves wrenched from whatever identity we inhabited, and forced into another way of being seen entirely. ...Why have the specific, shared experiences of women with stephchildren been largely ignored by feminists, sociologists, and even some of the very authors who write about stepmothers and stepmothering?...Disliking stepmothers is easy; suspecting them is more or less automatic. Caring about stepmothers, expressing concern about what they're going through, considering their reality at any length, requires a leap of faith.

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1517071380
• ISBN 13: 9781517071387
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 350