Dear Stepparents: An Open Letter

I have always struggled with the definition of a stepparent. What does it truly mean to be someone’s stepparent! I did what all smart people do…I googled the definition of a stepparent and this is what I found. It’s pretty simple really, a stepparent is a spouse of someone’s parent. It is a person who steps in, at whatever capacity and joins in the task of forming a person.

Now that we have defined it, what is the role of a stepparent? What are you meant to do for a child that belongs to the person you love and someone else? Do you parent them? Do you love them? Do you punish them? Do you accept them? Do you antagonize them? Do you raise them as yours? What is proper protocol for such a role — the role of a filler?

It is a difficult role isn’t it? I imagine that most parents enter the new relationship, the one that makes the other person “a stepparent”, with said child already in the picture. You fall in love with someone who has a lot of baggage, literally and figuratively. Instead of this baggage being solely emotional, it is also physical — a whole living human being! A person they can never get rid of. A person they made with another person. This person is just there, not having asked to be brought into the world, but they are here now, with your person.

I was that person, brought in the world unplanned, by parents who had no desire of being married to each other. A bastard child, if you will, but a person none the less. I was raised by my maternal grandparents as their last born, which is cultural…