| stepfathers |
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| wicked stepfathers You’re 4 years old. It’s bedtime. Mom opens up your favourite book of fairy tales. She reads, “Once there was a poor girl who lived with her mother and a wicked stepfather …” Hang on a minute! Aint our job tough enough without this? Folklore all over the world has been giving stepfathers a bad rap for centuries. If stories are our way of dealing with our fears, we might get an insight into these fears by looking at how stepfathers are portrayed in our fictions. The European fairytale, The Bear and the Blindfold, features an over critical stepfather who wants the stepchild dead or gone. He favours his biological kid over stepdaughter. Stepfather gets his just desserts when the biological kid and stepfather dies. The stepchild and her mum live happily ever after. In another European fairytale,The Flying Turnips, another over-critical stepfather sees his stepdaughter’s worth only in her work. She is given impossible tasks and is over-disciplined when she cannot complete them. The stepfather shatters her beliefs in magic. He gets just deserts when her magic stick beats him to death. A Native American tale, Mooin - the Bear's Child, a jealous spiteful stepfather who felt threatened by the mother’s love for his stepchild. In a Buddhist story, Poor Sopaka is called a “a nuisance, a good-for-nothing but I cannot do anything to him because his mother loves him so much”. The stepfather tricks him into going for a friendly walk through the cemetery. The wicked stepdad ties him to the rotting bodies where he is later rescued by Buddha. What can we see in these stories? We have stepfathers who are threatened by the mother’s bond to the child. Stepchildren who are over-disciplined and over-criticised. A child’s belief’s are shattered. Even when a stepfather seems like he’s trying to be nice to the child, it’s only a trick. Finally we have stepfathers who deserve nothing less than capital punishment for these crimes. These stepfather myths are not dead. You’ll find them alive and kicking on TV and in the movies (checkout the successful horror movie series, The Stepfather – parts 1 to 3). This is a reality for many stepchildren. This is how they may be seeing you right now. Your mission is to work against all this. You must do everything in your power to tread carefully with discipline and criticism. You must resign to the fact that the bond between the mother and her child is stronger than her bond with you. The child’s trust will take a long time to win – never give up. |