Mom, Mommy, Momma, even Mother, it’s a title we’ve earned and we are not gonna share it with anyone! That’s not entirely true, when I was still married Hailey’s friends called me Mom and she called their mothers Mom, it wasn’t a big deal. After you have kids you kind of lose your identity anyway and the only thing you respond to outside of work is Mom.
Then you get divorced and it’s a whole different ballgame. Your days are filled with stress, wondering if you are doing this right, if you are building the kind of relationship with your children that they need so they always know you are there for them. And the flip side of that, are you being too lenient that they don’t respect you and won’t follow the rules of your family?
Then your ex husband gets married and here is this new….person in your childs life. What do they call her? For that matter, what do you call her? My ex husbands….. new thing?
This is where things can get a little sticky. I truly believe that the more people who love your children, the better off they are, they will be happier and better adjusted. If this new wife is the result of a long relationship, both with the ex husband and the children, and she really loves your children and wants what’s best for them, I think she deserves something besides, Hey you!
So what is it? Are you going to share Mom with her? Most of us would say no, we do not want to share that with anyone, but sometimes it happens. I have two step fathers, my birth father was killed when I was a toddler so calling someone else Daddy was not a big deal.
My mother remarried the first time and I got a new Daddy. This was great, and then they divorced. My stepfather still loved us, he took us for visitations, even after he remarried, he still treated us like his own. Then Mom remarried again, and my stepfather loved me. He became my Daddy. I still call both of my stepfathers Daddy. The first is Daddy David and the last is just Daddy, he has been there through everything.
I know that is a different scenario because my father wasn’t here at all, but the fact remains, these men loved me like their own and deserve some measure of respect.
We need a language for stepparents. Everyone else in our childs life has a name, why shouldn’t step parents. Especially when many second marriages last much longer than the ones that produced the children.
What would you want your child to call a stepparent?