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I feel that today with mixed families being so common, it has become encouraged for children to be selfish dictators. They are now the ones to tell adults what they want and how it’s going to be. They are allowed to use a failed relationship to their gain. “I’m your child so your cease to live and have needs if they are not going to be shared between both bio parents.”
I am both a step parent and the product of a divorced parents and mixed family. I too have a step mother. I was 13 when my parents divorced and 14 when my stepmother showed up. I lived with only my father, my 3 other siblings lived with only my mother. I became indignant when my dad told me he was dating a woman. I had been pre programmed by too many bad lifetime and Disney movies and I automatically set out to destroy this woman. Why did I? Because I was a child and I didn’t know better? Yes partly. But also because my parents never taught me otherwise. They accepted the guilt of their divorce and chained themselves to the crucifix and I gladly hammered in the nails. I was going to be the moral champion and if my father wasn’t happy with my mother than he would not be allowed to be happy with anyone else. I was tuaght to be a jealous woman my whole life, and that I was right for it.
Then one day as I was gloating of my righteousness to a friend. About what I would do and how I would never accept another woman as my mother and how my father would dump her if I wanted him too because he knew he was wrong. And my father did feel terrible. And my friend who I will remember forever, for she changed my life completely with her few words. She turned to me with furled brow and said “Your father wants to love someone and be loved, the same as you. Just because he is a parent doesn’t mean he doesn’t want sex and love and companionship. He would never tell you never to love or date or get married one day.” And that was the day I put down the hammer and chisel and walked away. My father married again. And she made him happy. And that made me happy.
Children have been pioneered as the victims in divorce, by our own voices. It is their right, no; it is their duty to live up to that role. And as parents we have laid down, without a fight and taken our punishment as the criminals. This message is projected in every sitcom, cartoon, film, and theatrical performance of our day. And believe it or not, teaching our children to revel in being a victim is no help to them.
As a step-parent I find this to be truer than ever. My husband feels that it is the parents duty to sacrifice their happiness for the child. And we all become actors in the who can feel the worst to make the child happy performance. Don’t get me wrong I believe you have to sacrifice for your children. But an unhappy parent is not better than a happy parent that has remarried. Also, it teaches the child that happiness can be delivered from the pain of others.
And parents you accept this! You tell you child that the people who live around him live for them and not with them. You give them the power of gluttony, and sloth, and jealousy and you allow it as a right. That the only purpose of you parents is for you to give them. Give me! Give me! Mine! All I think, all I know, is that it is our jobs as parents to teach children. With that I say teach them to love. Teach them that when they are a victim not to sit and wallow and cast judgment, but to have compassion. Teach them some compassion. Teach them how to give, not only how to take. Teach them how to be happy for others when others have found happiness and not to think about what they themselves have lost. Teach them how to be reverent and do not reward them when they are sanctimonious. Teach them consideration, not selfishness. Teach them how to be happy. Let yourself be happy.
(February 2008) (
