I’m looking for some good reading on how to, eventually, best help be a step parent to my partner’s children and NEARLY ALL books are geared toward the woman’s perspective as though men don’t want to be a strong teacher and develop these kids into healthy adults. Ugh!
Thanks for listening to my rant.
Do a Google search for books for stepdads instead of books for stepmoms maybe you’ll have better search results because I just did it and I found a bunch of books.
That’s doesn’t work for Internet
outageoutrage* thoughWdym, once you fine the book you can download it, and if it’s in a blog format you an either copy the text or save the webpage.
Come on it’s 2024 it’s not like people don’t know how to use what q computer offers.
That was supposed to say Internet *outrage sorry it was a typo
The vast majority of men would never touch a self-help book. It’s simply a matter of sizing the potential audience. Writing a book that ends up unread makes no sense.
Depends on the genre.
BRB just off to write my bestseller Financial Secrets: How To Get Rich From Being A Stepdad
Hence the rant. It’s sad that men don’t seek to better themselves at the same rate.
Kudos to OP for looking to be the best step-dad he can be!
The books are probably ghost written or AI garbage anyway, so that doesn’t help.
There isn’t near the kind of cultural narrative about stepfathers that there is about stepmothers, especially in media for kids. Kids absorb ideas from the fairy tales they see and hear. Stepmoms have to deal with tropes from “Cinderella” to “My Stepmom is An Alien”. Kids will then carry those notions, amorphous and unexamined, into their new relationship. Kids usually don’t have the capacity to recognize those kind of prejudices in themselves. So now the new stepmom has to deal with the kid’s indignance at a fictional character. But aside from the Dursleys in Harry Potter, I’m hard pressed to recall a wicked stepfather.
Then there’s the puritanical thread, and I’m a dude so I don’t even know what else is lurking in our culture that wants to take a piece out of a stepmom for being the second lady in the family.
Not to reduce what a genuinely good dad has to do, step or otherwise. But if a dad manages to use words to explain something calmly, that’s enough to get kudos from strangers on the street. I don’t think the ladies have the benefit of the same uncomplicated expectations, so they need specialized guidance.
What exactly are you looking for in advice? How to deal with the ex and their branch? How to deal with specific behaviors from the kids? You’ll probably do better to search at the level of those topics than the role of stepdad in general.
As a stepfather to 3 over 2 marriages, just treat them like people with respect and support them as much as possible. It can be hard, but try to give guidance without trying to impose authority. Love them.
I think you could probably take one of the better stepmom books and just read it. If it’s good it’ll have advice that works regardless of gender.
Best of luck on being a great dad. You got this.
Well…. The sexism aside, the best advice I can give you is to forget about being a “step”-anything,
If they’re young enough, it’ll only ever matter if you let it, if they’re older, you need to build that relationship with care, kindness and patience. You can’t force them into it and if you try to force it… that almost never ends well.
If their bio-parent is in the picture; you might have to “share”, they may never fully open up, and that’s okay.
But Being a good parent has nothing to do with biology.
I’m going to be falling into a stepfather role this summer when my girlfriend and her daughter moves in. We’ve already kind of talked about marriage.
I’m nervous as all hell, but the girlfriend says I’m doing great so far. Her daughter loves me and I try to handle her by leading her rather than telling her. If she doesn’t want to take a nap, well then I guess it’s time for me to take a nap and she’ll follow. When she doesn’t want to go to bed, then I’ll play like I’m going to lay down and sleep in her bed and she’ll kick me out because it’s hers.
She’s a smart cookie, and I’m excited for it all. I’m excited to take her to extracurriculars and chaperone field trips. I’m scared shitless. But excited.
She’s a smart cookie, and I’m excited for it all. I’m excited to take her to extracurriculars and chaperone field trips. I’m scared shitless. But excited.
Welcome to parenting? hehe. you’re a parent. not a step-parent. That’s just an artificial distinction that reinforces distance. If you’re the one in her life, trying to be a good father to her, then you are her father. she might have another father… but you’re in her life. And for the record, more parents could follow your example.
also, parenting should be terrifying, so you’re in good company as far as that goes.
Thanks. I know it’ll a challenge. She’s five now, and will be six by the time she moves in. I’m super excited that I have a goddaughter who is a year and a half younger than her. I really want to build the relationship so that she has someone her age to grow up with and befriend.
I’m trying to give her every opportunity to experience everything. She recently visited my house for the first time (I’m in the Midwest and she and her mom are from California) and it was the first time she had been to a zoo and a children’s museum.
I want to give her every experience and opportunity I can.
That’s such a fun age! And they really start to develop their personalities, so you are getting on board at a great time. Just enjoy the time together, play games, and get your dad jokes ready and you’ll be golden! Congrats on the family!
But Being a good parent has nothing to do with biology
That part.
It is because men aren’t engaged in parenting nearly as much as anecdotes suggest. I used to work at a family court and like 19 out of 20 men never even bothered to appear in their custody cases. When you go on reddit it’s a huge vast sexist conspiracy against men but in real life they fail to do the absolute bare minimum.
There aren’t any books about it because you are the 1 out of 20 dude and a large percent of that cohort doesn’t buy books.
That’s a pretty big bias. Healthy, functioning families rarely need to go to family court.
It’s pretty standard in divorces to agree custody as part of the divorce, most custody cases are just “This is what we’ve decided to do”, “cool, here’s a paper that says that”.
“All of these disgusting men use anecdotal evidence to claim they aren’t deadbeat scum. To prove it, here’s my anecdotal evidence!”
If you’ve been alive for more than 30 seconds, it’s not just anecdotal. But to appease the challenge, anyways: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-269.pdf There’s a massive imbalance between custodial fathers and custodial mothers. Even worse is the imbalance in child support negligence.
Can we please just admit that there are normal biological/social/economic/perceived/identity differences between men and women? That’s not to say all of those differences are good or desirable, or that they are without variation, but can we at least recognize the state of our world without shunning those with different viewpoints?
These are US based and based on separated parents.
It is a pretty broad statement to make and then defend with bullshit family court experiences as if that is a fair representation of real life.
I work at a father son activity centre, you would be shocked at how few women I see spending time with their own children!
I work at a father son activity centre…
That’s great!
…you would be shocked at how few women I see spending time with their own children!
I’m not at all shocked. Selfish behavior isn’t exclusive to men. Women are also deeply flawed humans.
These are US based and based on separated parents.
I provided non-anecdotal evidence, and you shit on it? What are your priorities?
Selectively observing statistics doesn’t give a good representation of real life, but shitting on other people for selectively observing statistics doesn’t help, either.
“Every woman I meet is crazy” says person who works at a women’s mental hospital.
The other half, is that women are far more likely to buy self improvement books than men.
Between the two, why would anyone write a book for a demographic that doesn’t care about the topic and rarely buys books?
Though, I did buy a book on ADHD to prepare for my stepson. So maybe I’m an exception. 🤷🏻♂️
If I could sell a book to 1/20th of the step fathers in the USA I’d be rich.
Perhaps the situation you described with all the shitty men is making the courts harder for the good men. Those two facts go hand in hand. It’s hard not to develop a bias when seeing consistent patterns, but the courts should do everything they can to overcome that bias no matter how naturally it formed.
A good man doing things right should not be punished for the behavior of all the bad men. Even if the bias makes sense in terms of how it formed, it’s not only to indulge that bias in courtroom proceedings.
I’m curious to know how many of those men wanted kids?
We all know that men don’t have a say in whether a pregnancy will continue, so I can see at least one explanation that could easily account for the tension in those families, and the observation you’ve had.
Also keeping mind that this was in family court, not the average family.
I know some spectacular fathers who put in way more effort then their wives. Don’t throw all men under a bus.
Even if that insane statistic you pulled out of your ass is accurate. You’re still telling millions of hard working dads to get fucked lmao. You are absolutely delusional mate.
We had a baby recently and I tried to read a few books geared towards men to be better prepared.
The bar for men is very, very low. It’s a tripping hazard.
The guidance in all of them was a pathetic mix of “have you tried basic empathy?” and idiotic sports metaphors. It was baffling. Are most men actually like stupid sitcom dads from the 90s?
Yes! I got pregnant and the online advice for me was a million pages long of avoid this, do that, research everything, do 20 hours a day worth of stuff, but get enough sleep! Don’t stress or it will hurt the baby!
The online advice for him literally introduced empathy as if it were a concept he had never heard of before. The bar is below the floor. We just had him research as if he was going to be a mom.
Seriously, baby/pregnancy/parenting books for men are extremely difficult to find.
I think 90s sitcom dads is a bar most men won’t reach.
Unfortunately, the bar really is pretty low. Even most modern men who would consider themselves to be feminists(/consider woman to be equals) don’t do their fair share of household work, let alone parenting. It’s really ingrained in the culture.
Sounds like men don’t want to write books about it (or otherwise feel disincentivized for doing so), so all you’re seeing are female perspectives.
I’d suggest going for “How to talk so that kids will listen and listen so kids will talk” series. To be a good step-parent, you need to be a good parent.
I’ll save you $10. This book says to stay calm, and use humor, and repeats that 582 times.
What were your search terms? You want “blended families.”
No 3 is an awesome title
I had 3 dads in my childhood and I turned out fine, broken but fine. My son never experienced what I had to go through. So I kinda learned how not to parent.
I think being patient, soft spoken when correcting, being structural, reliable and open on your own feelings towards anything and giving kids a choice in walking their own path in some extent…kids will do alright.
“Broken but fine” is not fine.
Exactly.
Probably something to do with AI
“Everything I dislike is AI”. All of these books came out well over a decade ago
I don’t know how long you’ve been on the internet but bots have been writing books for at least a decade.
