Top Tips for Step-Parents

The Wicked Stepmother is a regular trope in fairytales—and Disney cartoons—from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty. Fortunately, she and her male equivalent are far less common in real life. In reality, most step-parents actively want to be part of their step-children’s lives, and build good relationships with them.

However, life doesn’t always go as planned, and step-parenting certainly isn’t easy, any more than it is easy to create a blended family. Many step-parents have significant amounts of trouble being accepted by their partner’s children. This page provides some tips for step-parents to help them in their role, and to give them the best chance of a happy marriage with the parent of their step-children.

What is a Step-Parent?

A step-parent is the spouse of a child’s birth parent, who is not that child’s birth parent themselves. In other words, it is a child’s parent’s new partner—but only after marriage.

Before getting married, you are simply ‘the parent’s partner’.

Even after marriage, you have to recognise that you are only ever going to be in a supporting role.

To provide an analogy, the only Oscar you can possibly be in line for is ‘Best Supporting Actor/Actress’. Your spouse, and their children, are the main characters, and their relationship is the key one.

This surfaces two of the key errors that step-parents and future step-parents make:

1. They see themselves as competing with the children for their partner’s attention and love.

   They may try to come ‘first’ in the relationship with their partner, pushing out the children, or demand that their partner chooses between them and the children. This is a serious error. If you ever ask your spouse to choose between you and their children, you will lose. The children are your spouse’s responsibility, and they should rightly put them first.

   You are not in competition. You are in a supporting role, supporting your partner’s parenting. Accept it, or find a new partner without children.

2. They try to step into a more ‘parental’ role before that role is available.

   This is often the first mistake that many future step-parents make: they try to step up before the family—and particularly the children—are ready for them to do so.

   Most step-children do not want or need ‘another mum/dad’.

   They already have one, or had one if their other parent is dead. Your partner is their primary parent while they are with you both.

   You are at best—and this pays repeating—a supporting player.

   Indeed, it is wise NOT to try to take on too much responsibility. It is not up to you to do school runs or nursery pick-ups: that is your partner’s responsibility. You should not be attending parents’ evenings routinely, because you are not a parent. You should only attend school events if the children ask you to be there. You should also not be discussing the children or their issues with your partner’s ex.

   All these are your partner’s role, because they are the children’s parent.

   Consider yourself like an extra aunt or uncle: you get to do the fun stuff, you help to keep the children safe, you might occasionally be asked to babysit in the absence of a parent, you may well feed them, if you happen to be cooking that evening.

   However, you are not, and should not be acting like, a parent.

   You don’t get to set the rules, especially in the absence of their parent—although you can enforce rules that have already been set and agreed.

What, then, can step-parents do to try to give themselves the best chance of success in this challenging role?

Here are some top tips from experts and step-parents themselves.

Top Tips for Successful Step-Parenting

1. Plan ahead and take your time

   If there is one tip that stands head and shoulders above all others, it is the importance of giving things time.

   First, don’t rush into any relationship, especially if you have experienced a divorce or break-up yourself. Rebound relationships are never going to be the answer. Second, take your time in the relationship: don’t rush towards marriage or living together. Make sure that the relationship is right for you (both) before getting the children involved.

   Finally, give the children time to get used to you, and the idea of you (and your children, if you have any) becoming part of their family. If you have children, they will also need time to get used to the idea of a step-parent and step-siblings.

   Children don’t really like change, and they certainly don’t like uncertainty or feeling out of control.

   You need to respect that, and make sure that they don’t feel rushed. As far as possible, give them a chance to provide input into family plans, especially about where and how you are going to live.

2. Follow the children’s lead

   Step-parent/child relationships need to be child-led.

   Let them ‘set the pace’ for how fast the relationship moves. Some children will be happier to engage with you than others. Older children may never really want to engage with you at all—and that needs to be fine too.

   You can’t force a relationship, and you certainly can’t force affection or love.

   That said, you can—and should—insist on respectful relationships all round, in both directions. That is only reasonable.

3. Be mindful of traditions, but try to create new ones

   All families have treasured traditions, and you need to be mindful of those in your partner’s family.

   Your step-children will not like any attempt to reduce or remove rituals that they enjoy and value. However, especially if you also have children of your own, you too will have treasured traditions and rituals—and your children will not want to see these downplayed.

   The key for step-parents and blended families is to try to create new rituals and traditions together.

   Both families can keep the old ones, provided they are not incompatible—but you can also create new rituals together that will be specific to your new blended family.

4. Find the right role in your step-children’s lives

   As we said before, most children do not need a new mum or dad.

   Most step-parents therefore do not have a clear parental role to step into—and should not start from that premise. They need to make clear that they are not trying to replace the children’s birth parents in any way—and that the children understand this.

   Instead, they need to find the right role in their step-children’s lives.

   For many children, this is simply another ‘trusted adult’, a bit like an extra aunt or uncle. This is probably the best position to aim towards, especially early on. Plenty of children are likely to want very little relationship with their step-parent at first. However, they may come to value them in time, especially if the step-parent shows that they value having the children around and enjoy their company when it is offered.

   Whatever role that you identify, remember that it will take time to develop it. Your step-children will also need time to accept you in that role.

5. Communicate openly with your spouse and step-children

   Open communication is essential, both with your spouse and your step-children.

   With your spouse, you need to be able to discuss and agree your expectations of your role, and of each other. You also need to be able to talk about and agree family rules, and communicate about parenting decisions.

   It is helpful to discuss decisions with the children, and allow them a chance to have some input, as this helps them to feel more in control of the situation.

   This means that you need the skills to listen to everyone’s points of view, and then communicate your own, clearly, effectively and assertively if necessary.

   For more, you may like to visit our Communication Skills pages, as well as our pages on Assertiveness.

6. Be fair to all the children, and treat them equally

   It is essential that you treat all the children in a blended family fairly and equitably.

   This is not as simple as ‘don’t favour your own children’. Indeed, many step-parents are so conscious of avoiding treating their own children more favourably that they end up favouring their step-children.

   Set ‘family rules’ and make sure that everyone abides by them, including you.

   That said, it is important to make sure that part of the rules is that each child gets time with their own parent alone. This can be a challenge in any family, never mind a blended one. However, it will pay off hugely over time, because the children will not feel that they have to compete for their parent’s time or energy, knowing that they have a dedicated slot periodically.

7. Don’t try to compete for your partner’s attention and love

   You won’t win. It’s not worth it. And anyway, it’s not—or shouldn’t be—a competition. Love is not a finite resource, and you, as an adult, should know that.

   Having said that, though, the two of you do need to take time to work on your marriage together. You both need to be committed to the relationship, as well as the children—and that means time together, without children, as well as time with the children as a family.

   Date nights are a bit of a cliché in relationships, but it may be worth making sure that you set time aside for the two of you. Remember that you haven’t had time to establish your relationship before children came along, and you need to invest in it at least a little.

8. Never criticise your step-children’s birth parents

   Neither of them. Not your spouse, and not their ex-partner.

   Don’t even agree with your step-child if they criticise their parent. They are allowed to criticise someone they love, but the moment you get involved, you are effectively asking them to side with you against their parent. That forces them to choose between you—and they are always going to choose their parent.

   Don’t make them do that.

9. Find a safe space to unload

   Experts advise that you find yourself a ‘safe space’ to unload about your partner, step-children, and any other family issues.

   This might be a friend or relative, or it might be an internet forum designed for step-parents. It really doesn’t matter as long as you have someone that you can talk to when things get too much—which will almost certainly happen sooner or later.

Conclusion

If there is one way to make sure that you won’t be disappointed, it is to lower your expectations of step-family relationships. Life is not perfect, and creating a blended family is always going to have its challenges.

Be realistic about what is possible and likely, and don’t approach step-parenting with ‘rose-tinted spectacles’.

This will give you the best chance of success.