Children rarely get to choose their stepparents.
A friend of mine, a woman of fifty, after a horrendous divorce, is asking her twenty and twenty-two-year-old adult children to do just this. With them she is compiling a list of desired attributes for her next partner, their stepfather-to-be. The kids are with her every step of the way and having lots of say. I wonder how it will turn out. They are certainly deepening and broadening the scope of power for stepchildren.
Being a stepchild is often fraught with much unpleasantness as the fairy tales point out. During your middle age, you may confront the reality of your stepparent in new ways that will surprise you.
Mike and Natalie are a middle-aged couple I know. In their twenties, each of their parents divorced and each remarried. They found themselves with four stepparents, all of them strangers. Over the years they found ways to interact with them that were more or less successful. When their parents hit their eighties, illnesses began to show up. Natalie’s mom was sinking into late-stage cancer. Mike’s dad was showing signs of dementia. Rather than each navigating these health challenges with their other biological parent, they were now faced with the task of sorting these issues with a stepparent.
In both cases this was not easy. Mike’s stepmom was experiencing a lot of denial. She was only a few years older than Mike, her stepson. She couldn’t believe that the dementia was real and something she needed to deal with. Natalie’s stepdad did not want help and was insisting on controlling the flow of information coming from the medical professionals. He did not know how things worked in his wife’s family. He had never been a live-in stepdad.
In both cases, the stepparent relationship was not secure enough. It did not come with the sanctity of a blood bond. Inheritance rights had not been openly discussed. Medical etiquette shut out the birth children. The healthy stepparent has the legal right to make the decisions in the event of illness, and is the one the doctors talk to unless more inclusive arrangements have been made by the family and are insisted upon in dealing with the medical professionals. The ill parent will most often defer to the wishes of their spouse, upon whose care they are dependent.
Natalie’s stepdad had three children of his own. He did not want them involved at all in the care of his wife or in his care. He wanted to protect his own kids and, without consultation, wanted to keep Natalie out of her mother’s care as well. Mike was at a loss as how to communicate with his stepmom. He had never liked her and now felt obligated to have a relationship with her. He felt terribly uncomfortable and disloyal to his real mom.
All of this was going on while Natalie and Mike were at the height of their careers and finding themselves grieving the loss of their kids, who were going off to university. Mike and Natalie were sandwiched tightly between the changing and complicated needs of parents and stepparents and those of their own kids. Any hope of time for them to play just kept vanishing into a longed-for future.
In the western world, some version of this story is becoming more and more common. While it is often difficult for families that are intact (i.e. with no divorce), it is even more challenging for couples where divorce has led to remarriage and new partners. The high divorce-rate of the 1970s and 1980s (https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/09/millennials-divorce-baby-boomers/571282/) and the resulting remarriages created an abundance of new couples that are now entering the last stage of life. The end is in sight. Frequently this means serious illness. There is no primer for them or their stepchildren. This totally new aspect of the fallout from divorce demands study and preparation. It is right now exploding in North America.
Frequently, couples like Mike and Natalie’s parents and stepparents have not made plans. Sometimes they have not made wills because it is a great deal more difficult to make wills when there are stepchildren and stepgrandchildren. Maybe one side has two children and the other four. Perhaps these two sets of children barely know each other. Maybe one side brought in a lot more money and property than the other side. Then, sometimes when wills are made, important details are not shared with all the heirs because they might be contentious. There could well be a period when the stepparent is the survivor and therefore able to use the collective resources and even change their final destination. Intact couples are more likely to be clear with their offspring about their wishes regarding serious illness and end of life issues. At the very least, they are more likely to be equally committed to the children they have together. At times, even this can be fractious in an intact family. Thus it is easy to see how challenges can increase in a stepfamily.
Meanwhile, the now fifty-year-old kids, like Mike and Natalie and their stepsiblings, are trying to navigate their parents’ illness and care. They may love their parent dearly but what exactly is their power to influence and/or direct? How do they engage meaningfully with their stepparents? Substantial wealth and property increase the difficulties. It may be necessary to sort out differences in provincial and federal law where that is applicable. I found, for example, that my children from Ontario could not sell my house in British Columbia without special papers being signed by them while in BC. What if children give a lot of care and it goes unacknowledged once their parent dies? Do they trust or hire a lawyer? My legal friends suggest the second route; it being better to be safe than sorry.
This unexplored territory is the fallout from divorces that happened decades ago. Many of these concerns also apply where the spouse in an intact family has died, the surviving parent remarried and there is now a very new stepparent. There are few guidelines that prepare one for the eruption of these particular conflicts.
So here are some suggestions that I am creating for Mike and Natalie’s parents and others like them.
1. Face the music; death is coming for you both.
We live in a culture in which it is prevalent to deny death and its coming arrival for us all. Medical breakthroughs have extended life expectancy. We are just going to keep living longer and while we may slow down, we are just fine, independent and in control. Humour often disguises the reality of aging. We can make jokes about increased life expectancy. Maybe we don’t need to think about this until we are 115! This is not a charitable position.
The first step is to move through denial. Admit to each other that this is serious business. Know that it is even more formidable if you are a stepparent.
2. Make a will
When I was in my fifties, I met a couple with several stepchildren. They came into my practice as a marriage and family therapist because they wanted to be proactive in arranging their affairs. They could not decide how to make a will. They had gone through three family lawyers. The last one sent them to me. The challenge had driven them to the doors of divorce. This made no sense because they loved each other deeply, but they could not make the will that they knew they needed to make. One of the children was a multi-needs child. It took time and we got it sorted; they made a will and they stayed married.
We often learn from our clients, and I learned from them. I knew I needed to get this done as well. Look around for examples, because they help you learn.
3. Share your will with your children.
Please don’t leave them in suspense. Your children most likely care for you and want to be included. Surprises can lead to generations of fracture in the family. Hold transparency in high regard.
Susan, a friend, was absolutely sure than when her mother passed, she would inherit a piece of land that she had enjoyed as a child. It did not happen. Her stepfather sold it and the rancor that ensued ruptured the wider family, with no resolution in sight. The next generation is inheriting the animosity.
4. Prepare: Sort out your end of life preferences and make them known.
Maybe we are blessed, we think, and die immediately. We get spared the onerous decisions. And yet, the left-behinds are anything but freed. Emily Dickinson wrote: “The Bustle in a House,
The Morning after Death
Is the solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth”
We often miss the word “industry.” It is a monumental amount of emotional and physical work to manage the aftermath of a sudden death or of the arrival of a serious and chronic illness. With no preparation, which too often is the case, the load is even more unmanageable.
Isn’t it selfish to think, at age eighty, that you ought to be freed from the preparation for end times? Is this not even more true when you are not an intact couple or are a single person with heirs? In these cases, your children may be left caring for a parent that is not their own, or navigating delicate terrain with stepsiblings that they hardly know.
Not preparing leaves the heirs with such a burden. Think how many times such people have said they will not be a burden to their children only to become one. They leave their children with houses to declutter, sheds to dissemble, intricate negotiations with a stepparent to navigate, perhaps an undiscussed MAiD desire (Medical Assistance in Dying plan available in Canada and other countries), real estate assets to sell, their own grief to process, and ultimately an urn full of ashes stored in a closet for want of a better place; all, while they are usually at the height of their careers. What could be more selfish or thoughtless toward their beloved children?
I have been asking my middle-aged friends for their opinions about my thesis that people my age are remarkably selfish. To a person they have all sighed with relief and told me about just how selfish they find their parents! It behooves all of us to do better.
5. Seek Resources
Dr. Atul Gawande wrote Being Mortal, a book where he lays out the imperative for children and their parents to have regular end of life discussions that are frank and, in their frankness, kind. He promotes an “elder-rearing” program. Gawande is addressing health issues. My quite direct daughter told me to read this book! I did, and nothing has been the same inside me since. The book is an excellent first step in preparation for being mortal.
In addition to the conversations that Dr Gawande promotes, there need to be conversations that explore how these difficult matters are going to be managed with stepparents. If you are getting stuck, it is a time to consider employing a relationship professional to guide you.
How is management of the aging process and possible assistance to be fairly shared? This is a difficult conversation for siblings in an intact family to have with each other. It is vastly more challenging for siblings and stepsiblings to discuss what they regard as appropriate care and how they are going to share in providing it. For example, families need help to discuss gender issues when it comes to care. Up until now it has been mostly women who have done this care. I was blessed and my elder brother did this for our parents. I have never thought it was a job for women only. Such conversations that are held within the safety of a professional’s guidance allow for tough questions to be addressed as they emerge.
A couple I know, who are in their seventies, just employed such a professional, a family therapist, when they no longer had the skills to deal with a parent in her nineties. Promises to care within the family had been sincerely made long ago and yet naively created. Cultural expectations were at play. Slowly all the players were heard and decisions made that respected the wishes of all of them. It took outside help and a willingness of all parties to open their minds and deal with inner conflicts of heart. Old promises were respectfully released. Difficult decisions were eased.
And my next essay on retirement homes, coming in March, may just be the resource number 6!
Death and illness are real. After the age of eighty, news of our fragility arrives every day when an email is opened, an obituary read or a telephone call received. Someone we know has fallen from health. Those children who endured a divorce in their late teens or older, and are now in their fifties, may have eight elders in their circle of care; parents and stepparents all. Our children will burn out unless we oldsters prepare