Post 10: Stepfathers

When the word stepparents is brought up, what traits come in to your mind? One of the most popular stepparent is the wicked stepmother in Cinderella, especially the 1950 animated movie 'Cinderella' made by Disney. Stepparents may not always be the original or biological parent to the child and are often viewed as inferior or as a villain.

Stepfathers are usually not often viewed as nice due to conflicting backgrounds of the child and parent. There are other challenges for a stepparent to face when confronting their new children as written in Raising a stepchild by Raising Children Network. These conflicts written down are: confronting myths, getting along with each other, living day by day, handling extra stress, and maintaining discipline. Given also in the article are ways to help improve the tense situation at home.

Adjusting to a new family will be hard unless a friendly environment is developed by the parents and children. Even with the solutions evenly distributed with the parents, the father-figure, the stepfather is still best to give discipline,comfort and understanding when the child has done wrong or is in trouble for whatever reason.

One article,"What We Know About the Role of the Stepparent" by Kay Pasley, David Dollahite, and Marilyn Ihinger-Tallman , supports that stepparents should create a friendly and warm atmosphere before attempting to create a disciplinarian model in the home. "Findings also indicate that conflict between stepparents and stepchildren commonly occurs when stepfathers supported their spouse's attempts to enforce rules..." 

The article also states that authoritative parenting was effective on stepfather-stepson relationship, but no parenting behavior was effective for stepfather-stepdaughter relationships. My assumption would be for the daughter's past and hurt feelings or possibly due to prejudice assumption on stepparents would hinder the affection or discipline being carried by the stepfather. My inexperience advice would be for the stepdaughter to give their stepfather a chance and let go of the prejudice assumption of stepparents.