The fight against biased parenting

Reading through some national dailies   last week, a story caught my attention. The story reported that a couple had a misunderstanding regarding one of their kids. Apparently the four-year-old at the center of the misunderstanding is a step son to the husband. His wife has four kids from her previous marriage which the husband automatically inherited when he married her.
The report had it that the husband and supposed step father of the four year old spanked the child for misbehaving, which is normal with every parent, but the wife took it in bad faith and picked   a quarrel with her husband. She accused him of bias in the upbringing of the children. She accused the man of giving preferential treatment to his own children and always maltreating his step children.
The quarrel resulted in fisticuff which landed the wife in the hospital nursing a deep cut as a result of a knife stab she got during the scuffle. The husband denied stabbing, saying instead she fell unto it when he was peeling yam in the kitchen. He says he constant nagging and refusing to let matters go led her to falling on the kitchen knife.
Well as a woman and a mother I found this really strange and weird. Why would any woman in her right thinking senses fight her husband for trying to discipline the children? I don’t live with them to know if her claim of bias towards his step children is true or not. But in my own understanding, a man who would be biased towards your step kids would not even accept one not to talk of four kids after he has married you. An average African man would suggest the kids go back to their father or his relatives.
Ultimately, step-parenting is all about giving in one direction and receiving from another, because this is not the social norm. It takes a while to appreciate that a step-family works in quite a different way from other families. Most people mistake step parenting to automatically meaning a continuation of a normal family life.
Mrs. Jamila Ahmed an educationist says “unless we get our heads around the particular challenges that confront us, step-parents do not have a chance of success if we continue the way things are going. Is she saying   the man has no right to caution or   discipline   the kids when they go wrong? She should be happy that the man is trying to play a father figure in the life of her children. Most men wouldn’t really care about their wives’ kids from a previous marriage. This one that cares, you are busy quarrelling him. If at the end of the day, he decides not to cater for the step kids anymore, who would you blame? She should have really thought about the whole thing before letting emotions take over her. If there were issues she wasn’t comfortable with, she should have discussed it with her husband instead of engaging him in a fight.”
“With her action she would make the man feel he is competing with his step children for her attention. She should be able to give her husband space to love and deal with the children the way a father would. She shouldn’t   give room to show difference between the children. What is she trying to prove by fighting the man?” asks Mr. Abel Adeiza, a civil servant.
 Marriage counselor Pastor Mrs. Chika Emmanuel   sees the whole scenario as one that needs caution, warning that if not well handled, it can be at the detriment of the wife. “My advice to the woman is that she should give her husband free hand. To be sincere, the woman is not being fair to the man. How many African men would take in a child from a previous marriage not to talk of four children? She is forgetting that she needs this man in her life more than ever now or is she ready to move out with six kids to another man’s house? Moreover, how many husbands’ houses would she move to? If it is her friends who are deceiving her, she should better think twice before she goofs. It is more difficult for men to train children. So should appreciate the man that   is doing all he can to put the kids on the right track.
“A man is surely needed in the house and she should not stand in between him and his responsibilities. On the other hand, the man could also be advised not to discipline the kids when in an angry mood. The wife should be like an intermediately between her husband and her kids and should not take sides with any of them against the other when they are wrong. If she continues to nag anytime the man cautions his step kids, then she is sewing a seed of hatred in the kids against their step father.”
Step-children don’t take an instant likeness to their step parents neither are they biologically programmed to love the step parent. Nevertheless, it is an onus on the biological parents of the kids to ensure that there is mutual understanding between the kids and her/his partner and not to aggravate the hatred that is likely to brew between them.
Not all step parents are evil or uncaring. In many cases, it is easy to see the step dad really cares. These are good people, and they accept their spouse’s kids as theirs. Others are hateful, controlling, and ugly in the truest sense of the word.
A step dad in the family certainly deserves to know what is going on in the household, and he has a right to speak up when things are wrong. Life is too short to live with revulsion, fear, gloom  and an unstable home/marriage. Stop the problem before the tyrant, otherwise known as the over protective mum, causes irreparable damage to the lives of the kids.