Step up for stepdads on Father’s Day As we celebrate dads on June 21, bestselling author CATHERINE ISAAC, says don’t forget the important role step-parents play
IHOVERED at the gates of the zoo with all the usual first date nerves: swooping stomach, racing pulse, compulsion to check teeth for lettuce I hadn’t even eaten. But this wasn’t any first date. I was clutching the hands of my two young sons and the man on the other side of the gates was someone I’d already been seeing for many months.
I’d known from the start how much I liked him and hoped it had the potential to develop into something more meaningful.
The big question now was how my children, then aged six and two, would feel about him.
But I needn’t have worried. We had a day full of picnics, piggy backs and spring sunshine.
A day that set the tone for a relationship for which – a decade later and now that the man in question is my sons’ stepfather – I remain endlessly thankful.
Those of us with children from a previous relationship are conditioned to believe that introducing a new partner is inevitably fraught with difficulty.
Stepdads are often depicted as the source of resentment and even conflict, with the younger members of the family feeling threatened and confused. But my experience was the direct opposite.
For me, my children and scores of others, the step-parent in our lives is a wholly positive force – just as much the hero, friend and ally that a father who shares a child’s genes can be.
This is something to be saluted for a whole host of reasons, not least that becoming a stepdad is an in-at-the-deep-end scenario on day one.
While all parents have to reconcile themselves to the idea that certain indulgences are a thing of the past once the kids come along – last-minute mini breaks to Amsterdam, owning a cream carpet or swearing, for example – ordinarily there’s time to get used to it.
But few, previously childless stepdads, will forget the first time they’re asked by a small child to assist with bum-wiping duties.
Or their astonishment at how long a really determined child can stretch out NOT putting their shoes on in the morning, no matter how many times they’re asked.
The joys of sleepovers, Mr Tumble’s spotty bag, 5.30am starts on a Sunday and choosing a restaurant not on the basis of its gastronomic repute, but whether it takes Tesco Clubcard vouchers, are not changes that are introduced gradually, but overnight.
More seriously, catapulted into a family dynamic that has sometimes been established for years isn’t easy. Yet the men who are brilliant in this role don’t merely see the children as part of a package they bought into when they met their mother. They see them as a perk. An added bonus. The icing on the cake.
When a child is loved by their stepdad and the feeling is mutual, the result is a long list of reasons to say thanks at a time like Father’s Day.
This might be for the hours he spent learning to braid hair, or stand cheering at the sidelines of a rainy football pitch. It could be how he nurtured a child’s passion for Marvel comics, or the silly voices he made when reading bedtime stories.
Maybe it’s just that he’s the only grown-up in the household who let
Few, previously childless stepdads, will forget the first time they’re asked by a small child to assist with bum-wiping...
the kids play dodgems with a supermarket trolley.
Every family will have their list – and in most cases, it features more than just the fun stuff.
Being a great stepfather is about more than those walks in the park and involves all the challenges, heartaches and ups and downs of family life. That applies at every age, whether the tantrums are from the two-year-old in your household, or the teenager.
The poet Johann Schiller said: ‘It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.’ This is true even while recognising that many, if not most, stepfathers aren’t there to replace a biological parent, but merely offer a child something that is undeniably special: one more person who loves them.
Those of us who grew up in a traditional nuclear family and were lucky enough to enjoy a happy childhood will be celebrating our brilliant dads this weekend in the time-honoured way: with gifts of novelty socks, a bottle of something and a Father’s Day card featuring a golf club whether they’ve ever played the game or not.
But in our household and many others throughout the UK, we’ll also be saying thanks to stepdad too. Because when a child is loved, their definition of ‘family’ isn’t confined solely to the names on their birth certificate.