The stepmother begins as an outsider. How much of an outsider you will be as a stepmother depends on your ability to manage yourself in tough situations. First note, that how much of an outsider you become is not up to the child’s response to you. The child has a certain investment in your staying the outsider. He or she has already lost much of his or her time and attention from Dad. You can expect great resistance to losing any more.

Thus, you are in the position, again, of doing the planning and being the one to keep automatic responses in check. The most common response resulting in the stepmother ending up further and further on the outside occurs when the stepmother makes a move to correct the child’s behavior. Does this mean you are never to correct behavior? Of course not. You are parent and part of the family forever.

The extreme outsider position occurs when the stepmother becomes the chief-in-charge of correcting. Usually, the father and the stepmother, in the beginning, are not too distant from each other in their view on behavior. However, the father is feeling guilty and anxious about his child in the new family he created. The father is willing to overlook behavior thinking the child will improve with time.

The child, also feeling pangs of discomfort, is likely to push the limits of behavior as a way to be ‘known’ in the family. Attention, even negative attention, from Dad can enable the child to feel closer and a part of things.

Where does this leave you, the stepmother? Pulling your hair out, for sure. This is the moment when many a stepmother falls into the tempting trap of taking charge of behavior the child and the father do not want to confront. Let’s say you step into the role of ‘shaping up’ behavior. Your husband, at first, will likely support your efforts to improve the family atmosphere. Before long, however, with the child resisting and you becoming more negative about the child, the father is likely to begin defending the child.

Once the father’s automatic response to your frustrations with the child becomes defensive, you’ll likely feel like it’s ‘two against one’. This position is very lonely and can easily dominate your thinking and even dominate the conversations you and your husband share.

There is a way out, but not an easy way. You can restore the evenness in the threesome by firing yourself from the job of behavior ‘shaper’. Forget generalities such as, “If we don’t fix this now, she’ll end up in jail,” or other standard worries you have about how the child will turn out. The child will turn out the way she turns out. Make your relationship more important than managing behavior.