How to fall into step
Tips on holding it together when you’re the new mom in the family
IN 1996, at the age of 31, Laurie Marchel couldn’t wait to marry a man with two young children. They were adorable toddlers — 3 ½-year-old fraternal twins — and Marchel was eager to prove she wasn’t anything like the archetypal wicked stepmother.
“I thought [being in a blended family] would be easy,” Marchel, now in her 50s, tells The Post. “The children were young, I didn’t have any of my own, I wanted to be involved — how hard could it be?” Cue the laugh track. As the finance-industry-veteranturned-author discovered, hitching her cart to a divorced dad meant hauling through life with his baggage. And now that her stepchildren are independent 25-year-olds, Marchel is finally ready to unload in a new book called “The Stepmoms’ Club: How To Be a Stepmom Without Losing Your Money, Your Mind and Your Marriage” (Sourcebooks, out Tuesday).
“When you marry a man with kids, you don’t realize you’re marrying into his ex’s family, too,” says Marchel, who wrote the book under a pseudonym but has since decided to go public with her identity.
For her, it meant seeing her husband’s ex up to five times a week at the kids’ various activities and struggling to stay civil when the woman was often late for pickups and drop-offs.
Like any good mama, Marchel bit her lip and saved the gripes for her girlfriends: a group of five other St. Louis stepmoms who constituted her book’s titular club. They met frequently over coffee, cocktails and mani/pedis to commiserate with each other about disrespectful stepkids and the impossible “bio moms” who seemed determined to upend routines and ruin relationships. r Marchel — who now also has one college-age biological daughter — hopes the anecdotese and advice will be useful to those going through what she did. “I want to help other stepmothers,” m she says. With 1,300 new American stepfamiliess forming every day d (according to StepFamily.org), il she certainly has a growing growin audience. Here, she shares her tips.
Ask to see his paperwork
From the divorce decree to the custody agreement, your guy’s legal documents are the road map to your new life. Ask to take a peek as soon as things get serious and try to imagine life in the passenger seat. “Get all your WTF moments out in one fell swoop,” Marchel writes.
Do the math
Find out exactly how much he’s obligated to pay in alimony and child support and then (deep breath) make peace with it. “Accept that the amount is court-ordered . . . and move the heck on,” Marchel says.
Establish house rules
If the kids are allowed unlimited junk food and screen time with their mother — so be it. But be clear and consistent about the rules at your house, Marchel says, and “they’ll adjust to the back and forth routine of two homes, and even appreciate knowing what’s expected of them.”
Don’t trash the ex
Even if their “bio mom” is borderline psychotic, she’s still the mother of your husband’s kids. Therefore, there’s no excuse for bashing her in front of them. “Negativity on your part will always come back and kick you in the teeth,” Marchel warns.
Learn to disengage
As a stepmom, there will inevitably be moments when you wish you had more parental control. Marchel recommends embracing your supporting role and perfecting her favorite mantra: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”