This Father’s Day, Let’s Hear It for the Stepfathers

Stepfathers are everywhere, but where’s their special section in the greeting card aisle?

In 2008, a study estimated that about 8.4 percent of U.S. married couples of childbearing age contained a stepfather; some estimates suggest the figure is closer to 20 percent, if you fold in couples that cohabitate but aren’t married. In the run-up to Father’s Day this year, I’m thinking a lot about how little air time stepfathers are given in the our annual compulsory displays of love and gratitude for all types of dads. What gives? Stepfathers have always been members of my family and our community. Honestly, I never thought twice about this social arrangement until, as an adult single parent, I brought a stepfather into the home my teen son and I shared…and well, indoor fireworks are an understatement.

Back up a sec—In my defense, I understand this stepfather salute is a too-little and possibly too-late honor for my own stepfather and my son’s stepfather figure (who isn’t actually married to me but is my domestic partner). However, I come by this wan praise honestly, having come of age in a time when stepfathers were basically ignored as having their own challenges and strengths. For example, growing up, the multiplex didn’t give me stepfathers in sweet family sitcoms and movies like Father of the Bride. No, they offered up The Stepfather, a horror film in which a psychopath romances single women with children, only to murder them when the perfect family image disappoints him. And frankly, my first stepfather, who was married to my mom and legally adopted me, turned out to be his own horror show until my mom and I drove away one day never to return.

My point here is—I didn’t grow up thinking too much of the institution of male stepparenting, and until my mom married a third and final time when I was in my teens, I didn’t have any male role model in the home. At the time she began getting serious with the man who is now my stepfather, I was a wary teenager that didn’t want anything to do with “mom’s boyfriend,” even though he took the time to tutor me in physics, toured prospective colleges with me and gave me his old car. I didn’t see then what I see now, that my working mom was tired, I was a teenage handful and this stepfather had a lot of kindness and smarts to share, but I was maybe too immature and traumatized to receive.

"As the adult, you kind of have to suck it up and absorb it…and also I knew I was in it for the long haul with you, so I was also with him...And I did have some limited success in trying to bribe my way into his heart with concert tickets and food"

My stepfather and I have a great relationship today—we have a two-person book club in which we make a monthly date to discuss chapters, and he’s shown me how investing can be a creative act. And, as he and my mom get older, I’m all up in their doctor appointments. In retrospect, I realize he cleverly wore me down with decades of patience and dependability, since I wasn’t convinced that a stepfather could possibly have any reason to make nice with someone else’s bio-kids. And in my petulant youth, I didn’t see how my initial rudeness—thawing to lukewarm greetings and perfunctory conversation as a young adult—could have been hurtful to him or to my mom. Until, of course, I got a taste of my own medicine.

File under “Paybacks are hell.” As a recent widow, I started dating C. My 13-year-old son really liked him, until my kid figured out C. and I were romantic. Then, my son was super angry at me and dismissive of him. One day, for example, my son breezed out of his room, glanced at my boyfriend and said, "Hello F---face." I was stunned into nervous laughter, while my boyfriend kept his cool, laughed briefly and replied with a cool hello. Then my son ignored and insulted C. for months, during which time he lambasted me, too, for being a bad mom to date so soon after his father had died, for choosing the wrong guy, for just being a disappointment overall. As a mom, this really hurt, but my boyfriend let my son’s rebellion roll off his back.

“He was a grief-addled kid, was processing his grief and his pain,” C. tells me now, “and I was a reasonable target for it. As the adult, you kind of have to suck it up and absorb it…and also I knew I was in it for the long haul with you, so I was also with him.” C. goes on to say that he thought that he and my son had things in common—both are rabid sports fans and contemporary music lovers—and that their mutual interests would give them something to bond over. Eventually. “And I did have some limited success in trying to bribe my way into his heart with concert tickets and food,” C. laughs.

But was any of that for sure going to work? No, it was not. There was a real period of touch-and-go there for a year when, as a mom, the pressure of my son’s anger and disobedience made me super worried and yes, tired like my own mom had been long ago. My boyfriend stuck with me, and with my son, even though we didn’t have a rule book for step-parenting. (Again, that seeming public health silence around stepdads!) I’ve since researched the topic, and found that family psychologists urge the following stepdads maneuvers:

• Be patient—it takes 2 to 5 years for blended families to adjust
• Keep your spousal relationship between Mom and stepdad strong—it’s a sense of security for the whole family system
• Parents need to really focus on the kids’ needs and practice active listening
• Practice shoulder-to-shoulder parenting (a therapy term for engaging in side-by-side activities with the stepkid to slowly build rapport)

All that tracks, and today, five years after our family’s rocky beginning, I’ll walk into the living room and see my son and C. cheering together watching the game on TV, or burbling stats at each other like two parakeets in a cage. The happiness I feel at the mutual respect between the two, and not incidentally, the friendship between mine and C.’s son who attends college across the country but visits a few times a year, is something I don’t take for granted.

This Father’s Day, and every day, I wish we could all acknowledge, appreciate and majorly amplify the big dad energy of stepfathers. (Maybe buy him a steak.) Stepdads are really sailing uncharted territories and should be celebrated maybe even more than biodads, who after all, have a genetic buy-in to stick around. Stepfathers are operating on faith and generosity, as well as a bit of optimism, which all families can use more of these days.

“It was like waiting out a thunder storm, when your son was younger. I didn’t feel disrespected because I was just the sounding board for his spew of feelings,” C. says now. “And like with a thunder storm, you just wait it out then go back outside and see if its calmed down.”