You Can’t Buy Your Way Into Being My Mom” — 5 Years Later, My Stepson Called with Life-Changing News
I married David five years before his teenage son, Josh, came to live with us.
From day one, Josh made it clear: I wasn’t his mother, and I never would be.
He mocked everything about me—my cooking, my music, even the way I spoke.
I put my heart into building a connection, but he gave nothing in return.
By his senior year of high school, college was approaching, and money was tight.
I had an inheritance that could have covered his tuition, so I offered—purely out of support, with no expectations.
He looked me straight in the eye and said, “You can’t buy your way into being my mom.” David sided with him. That day, I stopped trying.
Five years passed.
Then, out of nowhere, Josh called—not to reconnect, but to ask for money for his destination wedding.
I wasn’t even invited.
“If you care about this family, you’ll help,” he said. David chimed in: “This is your opportunity to make things right.” Fix what, exactly? Being treated like an outsider for years?
I agreed to meet for dinner.
They proudly shared plans for a $75,000 dream wedding.
I stepped away briefly, then came back with a folder: inside was a check—and a contract.
Josh would have to start calling me Mom, include me in family events, and treat me as more than just a bank account. He signed it.
I smiled, then threw the whole thing into the fireplace.
“Guess I could buy my way in after all,” I said.
Then I handed David an envelope—divorce papers.
I refuse to stay in a family that only sees me as a source of money.
According to the Office for National Statistics, 42% of UK marriages end in divorce and 34% of marriages are expected to end in divorce by the 20th year – meaning that thousands of us become the children of divorced parents each year.
This high divorce rate means that many of us also have step-parents, our divorced parents either choosing to marry again or take up long-term partners.
The experience of a parental breakup can vary wildly from the horrific – Sarah, 23 – “My parents’ divorce was so acrimonious, that my Dad kidnapped us and took us to another country when we were teenagers, just to spite my Mum” to the harmonious James, 19 – “My Dad was best man for my new Mum’s new husband. They all go on holiday together and my Mum is godmother to my stepsister.”
But the representation of step-parents in literature, film and popular culture is rarely positive. One of the first really negative archetypes children experience in literature is the wicked stepmother in fairy tales. The most famous examples are in Cinderella, Snow White and Hansel and Gretel. In these stories, the stepmother, so consumed by jealousy of the father’s natural progeny with the (pure and usually dead) natural mother, either utilises the kids as underpaid and overworked staff or attempts to murder them. Disney has reinforced this stereotype so successfully that the title ‘stepmother’, for children at least, mostly invokes images of witches, long black cloaks and dark spells.
Step-parents in more recent popular culture haven’t fared much better. From the paedophilic kidnapper of a stepfather Humbert Humbert in Lolita, the fascist dictator stepfather in Pan’s Labyrinth, to the rubbish stepfather (compared to Liam Neeson) in Taken. Most recently, the evil stereotype resurfaced in the form of Olivia Coleman’s deliciously evil turn as the greedy, grasping, bitchy stepmum in BBC series Fleabag – our love of hating on the step-parent remains strong.