I recently started a thread asking about how to deal with my father on issues regarding my stepmother, and got some very useful advice. I am proud to say that I took this advice and have no regrets.
I have a related question now, not directly about me, but this time, my brother. My brother absolutely hates my stepmother, and every issue I mentioned earlier, he has several-fold. I have told him some of the wise things dopers told me – including that our stepmother is an in-law, and that my brother should tolerate and respect her (at the very least), just as he does my wife. Familial duty, respecting family member’s choices, and so on. The thing is, he counters that our stepmother is not an in-law, and that our father was meant only to have one wife, i.e. our mother.
So although I am pretty secure in my feelings toward my father and stepmother, and I also recognize there is probably no changing my brother’s attitude, he has raised an interesting moral question: should a step-parent have the same status as an in-law?
Not quite what you were asking, but my wifes mother is re-married to a man who is not her (my wifes) father. While he is not mrsItekis father, he is still my father-in-law imho.
Technically a step-parent and an in-law are very different creatures. Furthermore, a step-parent is something you get regardless of how you feel on the matter – you don’t need to be asked. Whereas an in-law, you ultimately choose to accept in some way because you marry their child. If the in-law were really that odious, you could just walk away altogether.
That said, while your brother never got a chance to veto your step-mom, it’s not really any of his damn business who your father marries. He’s entitled to his own happiness, and if your brother doesn’t like it, that’s his tough luck. There’s nothing worse than a child who withholds their affection from a parent because of that parent’s romantic relationships – it’s little different from disowning a child because you don’t like her boyfriend.
Cliffy, I get what you are saying, and I feel that way myself. But I gather that my brother’s perspective is that it is the normal state of things (and therefore respectable) for a child to have a boyfirend/girlfriend/spouse, but that it is not normal or respectable for a parent to remarry. Thus, it is not his duty to welcome or respect my stepmother.
This is all very sad, for not only is my brother alienating our stepmother, he is making life very difficult for my father, who is now effectively having to decide between his wife and his son. Not to mention he is pissing me off royally!
For someone who spouts about respectability, he is showing his father precious little respect.
Your brother might want to ponder his own future. Bereavement or divorce would quite easily visit him in the future. Who can tell?
If and when that happens, would he be happy to spend the rest of his days alone?
Would that be preferable to having a whiny son moan on about respect while showing him none?
Technically, a step-relation isn’t the same as an inlaw. Inlaws are the relatives of one’s spouse, or the spouses of one’s siblings or children. Steps should be treated at least as well as inlaws, as they have at least as close a kinship, usually closer. By marriage, these people have become members of your immediate family. You don’t have to like them, any more than you have to like your blood relations, but you do have a moral obligation to be nice to them.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to just consider them all family, without all the qualifiers. If my father didn’t consider steps and halfs and other relatives by marriage his family, he wouldn’t HAVE any family but Mom, my brother, and me. And frankly, I don’t have the time or inclination to go around talking about my dad’s step-sister through his second stepmother’s kids. They’re my cousins, end of discussion. Same for Grandpa’s third wife–she’s my grandma and always has been, even though they were only married a couple of years before he died and she’s been remarried for nearly fifteen years. Her husband is part of the family, too.
Maybe your father wasn’t meant to have a second wife, but so what? I’m pretty sure my brother wasn’t meant to marry an evil, manipulative, whorish harpy, but that didn’t give me any excuse to treat her with anything but civility and respect. (It did give me an excuse to do a happy dance after they signed the divorce papers, though.) To do anything less would have been assholishly rude, and would have hurt somebody I cared about.
All your brother’s excuses for his behavior are just that–excuses he uses to rationalize how he treats the woman your father loves, and how he hurts his dad in the process. I think, at the root of it, he’s never gotten over the fact that your parents aren’t together and never will be again. He’d probably hate Mother Theresa if she were alive and married to your dad.