Like a Stepchild

by Diane Saarinen
This past December, well into the holidaze season, my husband and I received tickets to Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline playing at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center here in New York. It is a play of “strange chance,” a romance, and, ultimately, a kind of screwball tragicomedy. Phylicia Rashad rules as a queen and – what else – a wicked stepmother. She is even outfitted in “wicked-looked headgear,” according to a New York Times reviewer, just in case anyone misses this characterization. From Cinderella, who toils away while her stepsisters plan what they will wear to the ball, to the German fairy tale where a poorly-treated stepdaughter serendipitously meets Mother Holle at the bottom of a well, and even to Bob Dylan who complained that “you treat me like a stepchild,” stepmothers have gotten a bad rap. As a stepmother myself, I say “Enough with the stereotypes already. We’ve had enough!”
My stepson Steven (not his real name, as I’ll give him some privacy here) came into my life ten years ago when he was 13. My husband and I had started dating earlier that year; I had heard all about Steven. But it wasn’t until the Christmas holidays that I met him because he lived in Florida with his mother while we lived in New York. Was I nervous meeting him? Not really. And I don’t think he was that nervous, either. Maybe we just knew on some level that we were going to be, well, family.
Even though I don’t have biological children, I somehow missed the Baby Gene. You know, the one that caused some friends of mine to, in their mid-thirties, take the plunge and have children they weren’t necessarily financially prepared for or that the foundations of their relationships didn’t quite support. I thought it was great that my future husband had a son. I felt this was a way that I could be a parent without being, you know, a parent. Maybe I’m just aware of my limitations, but I never felt that motherhood was really a doable option for me.
I once had lunch with a literary agent and, after we had exhausted all my ideas for books, our conversation turned to men. She said, with a great deal of finality, “I will not date a man who has children.” I was surprised at this. I also noted that she was whittling down her chances as well – wasn’t finding a man around her own age, in his 40s or 50s, without children a relatively rare occurrence?
For the record, I love my stepson. I never felt I had to play mom or buy his affection or play any particular role other than myself in relating to him. I hope he sees me as someone older than he is who is helpful, someone who doesn’t particularly care if he remembers me on Mother’s Day because I am not his mother. His mother has done a perfectly good job of raising him into a responsible adult. And though you can’t say his mother and I are friendly, we are not un-friendly. The truth is, she refuses to call my husband on our phone at home and will only call him on the cell phone. I just chalk this up to her issues and not mine, and think of the many potential arguments that this has allowed us to sidestep.
Steven’s relatives must buy into the wicked stepmother bit because, when they meet me, they like to tell me how well Steven speaks of me. Of course he does! I can truthfully say I have never behaved “wickedly” towards him. And Steven continues to live his life in a way that makes me proud to be his stepmother. Could it really be any other way?
Diane Saarinen has written for numerous publications including Women’s eNews Daily and Quiet Mountain: New Feminist Essays.

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