The Qualities and Challenges of Step-Motherhood

The Qualities and Challenges of Step-Motherhood

Recently, we examined the effects of broken marriages on kids. Today’s main discussion is a kind of follow-up to that topic which focused on the sufferings of children from broken homes in the hands of their step-mothers. I consider it necessary for women or ladies to know that step-motherhood is a big challenge, a God-given assignment, as it were, to take care of children whose mothers are not there to perform their motherly role to their kids. The biological mothers could have died or been separated or divorced from their husbands, leaving the kids in the custody of their fathers. Women who subsequently marry such men become step-mothers to the children, and rather than maltreat those kids, they ought to love and care for them as they would their own children.

Step-motherhood requires altruism, tolerance, compassion, understanding and above all, the ability to love someone else’s children as one’s own. It, therefore, goes without saying that not every woman can be a (good) step-mother. Many women simply cannot stand other people’s children in their matrimonial homes, especially when those kids are their husbands’ children. They see them as children who will share the family’s fortune with their own kids, thereby depriving their biological children of their birthrights. Some step-mothers also believe that it is a waste of time, energy and resources to love and care for their step-children, because no matter what they do for such children, their loyalty will still be to their biological mothers. So, they become hostile to the kids without giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Step-children deserve to be loved and cared for like any other children. It is not their fault that their parents are separated or divorced, or that their mothers are dead. So, it is not fair to make them suffer in their homes over what they know nothing about.

Women who know that their hearts are not large enough to accommodate other people’s offspring should have no business being step-mothers. Someone who cannot share what she has with others is simply not cut out for step-motherhood. So, she should not go into a relationship that would demand of her to give the love that she does not have.

A prospective step-mother must genuinely have compassion for her future step-children and want to be there for them to provide the motherly care that they are deprived of, and not to pretend to love the children and then make about-face after marrying their father. Rather than maltreating innocent children, women who know that they cannot cope with other people’s children should not plunge into marriages with men who already have kids. It takes the grace of God to love another person’s children like one’s own. Those who know that they do not possess that grace are, therefore, advised to distance themselves from step-motherhood, to save the children from agony and frustration.

By Nike Oluwole.