This isn’t a question about the strict definition of ‘stepfather’ or ‘stepmother,’ but more of an opinion about the usage:
Bob has a kid or two. Mom is long gone (dead or divorced).
Bob marries Nancy, who becomes the stepmother.
Bob dies, and Nancy remarries.
Would the children still refer to her as “stepmother?”
It depends. What’s your opinion?
Yes, she is still their stepmother because she isn’t their real mother. Unless they hate her guts, in which case Bob’s death changes her to “That evil bitch that killed Dad and married the poolboy.”
Am I missing something? If the biological mother isn’t in the picture, I’d expect the kids to have called Nancy “Mom.”
If the kids are living with her when this happens, then probably. If they’ve grown up and moved out, maybe not.
It would depend on whether they referred to her has their stepmother when Dad was still living.
A lot of times, when the kids are adults (or nearly so) when Bob and Nancy get married, the kids will simply refer to Nancy as “Dad’s wife”, since there’s no longer a need to fill any kind of a parental role at that point.
If the kids were younger when Bob and Nancy married, much of it would depend upon their relationship with Nancy. I still have former stepkids who call me Mom years after their dad and I went our seperate ways. They likely will, even after their dad passes.
My dad’s parents both had children from their first marriages when they married. When they married their kids were around eight, ten, three and four. Then, about a year later they had dad, and a couple of years later my youngest aunt. My grandmother died a year before I was born, but my uncles (the three and four year olds at the time of the wedding) still referred to my grandfather as their stepfather for the rest of his life. Even though he had very little to do with any of the six kids after wife #2 died…possible because he married #3 a few months later and found her more interesting than his grown children.
My grandmother died young, and grandpa re-married four years after. He had two teenage kids and one young daughter (my aunt). They were married for almost 40 years, until he died. Forty years is a long time. Heck, she’s even friends with the first wive’s family!
She’s my grandmother, as I never met the other one. That she has now even remarried makes no difference to me (and to most of the family). My dad and uncle still visit and go out with her, since they still consider her their stepmom/maternal figure.
This is an… odd POV. Maybe if the children were very young and didn’t remember their mother well, or if they ended up especially close to the step-mother, but its a long way from being universal.
In my case: my parents split up when I was 26, my father remarried when I was 29. I refere to his wife as either “my father’s wife” or by her first name. I haven’t really used step-mother since I feel that’s more for someone who is involved in parenting non-adult offspring. However, we get on well and I would likely remain in some kind of contact with her if my dad died.
Actually, I think that gets to the heart of the question.
If my father in law - who remarried when my husband was an adult - dies, my husbands stepmother will become “someone we send a Christmas card to and invite to the kids weddings.” If she remarries, her husband will be “a guy my husband’s stepmother is married to.”
My dad’s father left when he was young - so his mother’s second husband became Dad (legal adoption). My mother’s mother died when there were still kids in the house, and her stepmother was more of a mother to her little brother and sister than her mother was ever capable of being.
i.e. its a timing thing as well as an emotional closeness thing. Not something for which there is a pat answer.
It’s definitely not universal but I don’t think it’s odd either. My mom and her sisters were 4, 6 and 7 when their dad died and their mom remarried. My grandfather has been my mom’s step-dad for 51 years. They call him “Daddy Joe” to his face which I guess is what they learned when they were little girls, but in all my years I’ve never heard her introduce him to anyone as anything but her dad.
Maybe when they were teenagers he was still a step-father but by the time I was born, when my mom was 30, he’d been her dad for 24 years and was solidly dad.
Of course, my grandmother is still alive and they’re still married but if she died first my mom’s relationship with her step-dad wouldn’t suddenly change after a half century. I mean, I know you covered ‘very young’ as a possibility, but my mom could have been a teenager and after 50 years I’m sure he’d inevitably be ‘her dad’.
My family is all weird and stuff. My grandmother and grandfather (mom’s side) got divorced and remarried long before I was born. My mom always referred to her father as “daddy” (she’s Oklahoman) and her stepfather as Bill. After her mother died, she still visited with Bill several times a week and they clearly thought of each other as father and child.
Additionally, my older brothers are actually just half-brothers. We share our mother but have different fathers. However, my mom and dad got married when my brothers were very young and they have always referred to my dad as their dad, despite still being in contact with their father. Then, when my parents divorced, it was my mom who moved out - with MY dad raising my brothers despite no longer being married to their mother. They still talk all the time and we consider each other family in every way.
And finally, both of my parents remarried when I was 13 years old. I have never thought of either of them as anything other than a step parent. In fact, when I was a teenager and my name was in our small town paper for making the deans list, I always secretly bristled a little when it listed me as the “son of Mr. dad and Mrs. stepmom LastName.”
Most of this isn’t particularly relevant but I felt like sharing my “cool story, bro” moment.
I was at a large family gathering recently and this was one of the familial situations. Bio mom died at age 39. Dad remarries sometime after that, and dies 17 years later after the bio mom, so there’s an lower limit on the youngest child.
Stepmom then remarries, and she lives another 25 years. I’m guessing that since the kids from the first marriage came that they must have maintained some kind of contact. And I just wondered if they still referred to her as their stepmother during those years.
IMO, she’s still their stepmother. They could have more than one stepmother but then she’d probably be referred to as “Dad’s second wife”.
I am the second wife of a man whose first wife died. His son, my stepson, never referred to me as “mom” and frankly it would have ooged me out if he did. He had a mom. I’m the stepmom. It’s not a second class citizenship to me, it’s just what it is.
I’m sorry, I didn’t express myself very clearly. I don’t think its odd for anyone to call a step-parent mum/mom or dad if that feels right to them. I do think it’s odd that someone one would expect that to be the case just because the original mother or father has died.
Who says you can’t choose your relatives?
Your parent’s spouse is your step-parent if a) your parent is alive, or b) you like the spouse. That’s basic respect and good manners.
I will always be my step-child’s parent, and will expect to be referred to as such.
Unless he really pisses me off.
Better expressed, I understand your POV better now. IIRC, my dad and uncle don’t call their stepmom “mom”, but they call her “granny” sometimes, since all the grandkids call her that. That said, they otherwise treat her as their maternal figure, whom they need even if they’re both over 60.