Children from step-families are likely to leave home earlier, at around 16 or 17, a recent Scottish survey revealed. With stepfathers outnumbering step mothers seven to one, the most common problem is discipline, with the men relying on an archetypal masculine role within the family. And this does not work. Many have little or no experience of children, and nowhere to go for information or support. And then there are the most shocking figures of all, such as the fact that a step-parent is 100 times more likely than a birth parent to lethally batter their stepchild.
Stepmothers have their own problems.
Bruno Bettelheim, a psychoanalyst, suggests the usefulness of the wicked stepmother myth in fairy tales is that it can help young children separate the good, kind mother from the scary, cross mother until a later stage when they are emotionally able to integrate these conflicting aspects and emotions. For the children involved, the cost of a parent's remarriage may be high. Children suffer anxiety and loss. The parent's time, attention and love must now be shared, so the step-parent is usually an unwelcome intruder. In the period since their parents' separation, children may have been confidants to their single parents or played other adult roles in the home.