Relationships Australia

The candor with which the author and other step-parents share their personal experience paints a realistic picture of the challenges and opportunities for growths that stepparenting brings.

In an easy to read style the author offers practical tips on untangling emotionally laden issues, finding ways to meet needs and making constructive moves towards a healthy future.

****************

Stepfamily Association of South Australia

Hell...p, I'm a stepmother is a book I would recommend to all step-parents and their partners. Whether you are new step-parent or have been one for many years, you will find this book invaluable.

Sonja Ridden leaves readers with no doubt that being a step-parent is no bed of roses, but that there are also rewards. There is an emphasis on commitment - not giving up! By sharing her experiences (and those of others) she will help you navigate the step-parenting journey.

Cyndi Kaplan-Freiman, author and artist. It's only when you become a step parent yourself and experience situations with which you struggle to cope that you realise the enormous difficulties step parenting can bring. Sonja Ridden's book provides you with step by step insight, instructions and guidance to help you deal more successfully with your role as a step parent. I can thoroughly recommend Sonja Ridden's book, which can save you considerable pain and heartbreak and enable you to (hopefully) enjoy your role as a step-parent.

Book Review by Relatewell (Family Relationships Institute)

Hell...p, I'm a Stepmother by Sonja Ridden published by ACER Press is an excellent and very readable book that will help step parents at any stage. It is also a must for those who are becoming involved in a partnership which will require one or both partners to learn to be step-parents

There are many strengths in this book. It emphasises that people do not become step parents. They grow into step parents by facing the complexities and challenges of a step family. Sonja Ridden uses her experiences both as a step parent and as a counsellor/psychotherapist to spell out the complexities and match them with practical strategies combined with valuable insights.

The author has adopted a multi faceted approach to step parenting which allows her to focus on specific target groups.

These include full time step parents, week-end step parents, previously single step mothers, step mothers who have already had children, step mothers who plan to have children of their own, previously single step fathers, custodial step fathers, to name a few. This ensures the book is practical and down to earth. It develops a variety of scenarios whether step children are young or adolescent, single sex or both sexes and whether partners have had previous experiences as parents or not.

The author does justice to the many varied and complex facets of step family life. A major focus is the gamut of feelings involved in step families.

This book reflects the best of John Ralston Saul's philosophy that to be fully human we need the qualities of imagination, intuition, common sense, ethics and reason. These qualities permeate every chapter whether its "before we take the big step" or during "the step family life cycle".

There are five qualities that characterise the author's approach. There is humour, compassion, emphasis on reflection and not taking oneself too seriously.

It is a practical, down to earth book, with each chapter summarised at the end with a list of hints. A key word throughout the book is possibilities. The author thus avoids the trap of providing recipes rather than leaving step parents to take in ideas, reflect and decide their own strategies in the light of their distinctive situation. Another key word is transition.

Every chapter emphasises communication between partners and the importance of nurturing the complex relationship system within the step family.

No one is left out. The child with special needs, the problem child, the other mother (father) are given special mention. There is nothing sexist about the book. Men and fathers are equally challenged and equally respected.

In summary, this is an excellent practical and comprehensive recourse for step parents with a sound philosophical and psychological underpinning.

Relatewell (Family Relationships Institute Inc.)

Book Review by Counselling Australia

Sonja Ridden’s own honest and realistic experience of stepmotherhood sets the tone for this excellent book. With the acknowledgement that around one third of today’s families are step-families she gives insight into the highs and lows of taking on such a relationship.

Each chapter deals with one of the many possibilities that may occur in the step-parenting role (there are chapters for Dad’s too) with headings such as “expectations”, “happiness is a choice”, “I’m a failure”, “grief”, “anger” “special needs or problem child step-parenting”, “the other mother/father”, “stress & depression” and “forgiveness”.

This book does not just outline real or potential problems, but offers solution choices in order that we parents (adults) take responsibility for our own behaviour within the stepfamily. Sonja also shares examples of other’s experiences learned from her role as a Counsellor – the end result giving reassurance that we are not alone in our own family situation.

Constant reminders of positives in sometimes difficult situations are scattered throughout the book. By no means a ‘bad news’ story, the book has been written with good doses of humour. As a resource for our clients. “Hell…p! I’m a Stepmother” provides an easy to read text with summarised hints at the end of each chapter – none of which are too long for the often exhausted, unappreciated, short of time step-parent to find time to read!

I particularly liked the sections for parents taking care of their own ‘couple’ relationship as each partner struggles to deal with his/her/their children. Sections on intimacy, communication, time out, conflict and support give real hope for each to work towards a loving and rewarding family experience and their own personal growth.

A quote which touched me deeply has been included by Sonja at the beginning and again at the end of her book

“When we long for a life without difficulties, remember that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure” (Peter Marshall)

What a comforting thought!

Finally, Sonja gives information on services and other useful reading to support people in this situation. I highly recommend this book to step-parents and Counsellors working with sep-parent clients. By far the most practical and useful information on the subject that I have read.

Book review by Jill Elvy-Powell – (Counsellor in private practice) and published in “Counselling Australia” – Spring Edition Vol 2/no 3 Journal of Australian Counselling Associations

Book Review by Margaret Moran – Coordinator of Parenting Programs, Centacare, QLD, Australia as published in the Australian Journal of Guidance & Counselling – Volume 12 Number 1, 2002

The book contains 22 topics and each is quite complete. The author includes the stories of many step-parents as well as her own experiences. These stories are invaluable in helping to “normalise” the difficulties of stepparenting. The inclusion of a “hints list” at the end of each chapter enables the reader to reflect, in a concrete way, on his or her behaviour and possibilities for change. This is very useful to help make personal links.

Of particular interest is the chapter on Grief. The author’s comment that “after all, stepfamily live comes about as a result of loss” is indeed challenging and encourages the reader to acknowledge their loss, and allows themselves to begin to grieve appropriately.

The inclusion of a list of “helpful services” and “useful reading” demonstrates the practical nature of this book. I would recommend “Hell…p! I’m a stepmother” as a valuable resource for stepparents, professional educators and Counsellors who work with this ever-increasing special population. I believe the material it contains can be useful to enhance and supplement existing programs.

Book Review excerpts – CAPA

The title says it all. This directly written book pulls no punches – to be a stepmother is to confront the elemental emotions.  It’s hard not to warm to an approach which so normalises the frequent desperation of what the role demands. While still in her twenties, Sonja Ridden became the stepmother of the two young sons of her new husband, before going on to have two boys of her ‘own’. She is quite upfront about the cauldron of feelings she experienced – ‘I deeply empathises with the ‘wicked stepmother’ in the story of Hansel and Gretel, convince that life without my stepchildren would be all that I desired’ (p.62).

Ridden is equally affirming of the many unexpected riches of step-parenting (elusive as they may so often seem!) She aims to provide a ‘roadmap’ to what is invariably extremely rocky terrain, and openness regarding the toll the journey can take is part of the manual. But her candour regarding the ‘costs’ of being a stepmother is consistently leavened by the empathy she conveys, and by the many practical hints she provides for lightening the load.

The format of the book facilitates the diversity of topics she considers…. Each chapter begins with a brief personal commentary, ends with a block of highlights ‘Hints’, and contains quotations from some of the author’s many clients (who generously gave permission for their input to be included).  There is a ‘Helpful Services’ section at the end of the book, which features a range of groups, organisations and websites…

“Hell…p!, I’m a stepmother” addresses some extremely challenging material, as well as providing a range of practical suggestions. The chapter on ’anger’ in particular (and not coincidentally, since the author is so refreshingly honest about ‘taboo’ emotions) seemed to me to be exceptionally good. Ridden’s provision of questions to assist recognition of anger is likely to be very helpful. As her book contends (and as Oaklander’s work on child therapy also testifies) expression of anger in children are often the cover for the primary feeling. It is another strength of Ridden’s account that she shows the applicability of this point to adults as well.

Here is where the seeming simplicity of her approach belies the more challenging point - while intellectually the stepmother may not need to be reminded that her ‘instant’ children are not necessarily rejecting HER, it would be exceedingly hard to feel this in the moment, particularly when her adult ambivalence and defence mechanism surrounding anger are ignited. Feelings of anger towards the biological mother of the children (who, in Ridden’s case, ‘disappeared’ and didn’t resurface for fourteen years!) are another pertinent instance of where the ‘pointer’ provided could be very valuable. Says on the clients quoted, ‘Forget the wicked stepmother, it’s the mother that is the wicked on in our case and it makes me so mad, I want scratch her eyes out!’ (p. 117)

Though primarily directed to the stepmother (and as Ridden conveys, a powerful gender politics is operative in the very word!) another strength of her book is that she does not neglect the often beleaguered stepfather, who, like his new spouse, is wrestling with the pull of his own internal dynamics. To the extent that acknowledging unwelcome feelings – and particularly the primary ones – is the first step to addressing their potentially problematic power, Ridden’s constant normalising of the vortex of emotion ALL members of stepfamilies face is a valuable service in itself.

‘Hell…p!, I’m a stepmother” unequivocally illustrates the author’s contention that ‘step mothering is no Sunday picnic’ (p. 16). But in sketching the outlines of a more sanity-inducing approach to it, Ridden amply illustrates as well the depth and richness of so challenging an experience.

Pam Stavropoulos
As printed in the CACA’s Newsletter – August 2002
CAPA  is the Counsellors & Psychotherapist Association of New South Wales