A few weeks ago, I crossed a milestone in stepmom-hood. My stepdaughter introduced me as her stepmom to her friends when I picked them up to go to the movies. Always before I had heard her say, “this is my dad’s wife,” not “this is my stepmom.” I felt like I belonged.

I earned the title stepmom by not being a mom. I got it by being myself. My stepkids already have a great mom and a great dad. I’m their bonus cheerleader. I go to swim meets, volunteer at fundraising carnivals, and drive the carpool. I make sure they have clean clothes to wear, cough syrup when they’re sick and plenty of pepperoni pizza when their friends sleep over.

And there are a lot of things a stepmom is not. I’m not a stepwitch and I don’t have warts on my nose. I don’t lock the kids in their rooms or make them scrub the floors with toothbrushes. And while we’re setting the record straight, let me add that anybody who thinks I married my husband for his money is truly insane.

If anything, it’s me who’s a little crazy. When people ask about my life and I say I’ve been married for a year to the most wonderful man on earth and have three teenaged stepchildren, they look at me like I’m nuts or like I deserve a pity party. Admittedly, I have to deal with my husband’s ex-wife, teenage mood swings, in-laws who adore the ex, and schedules that are so zany they can fizz out a palm pilot.

It’s not easy, but there are a lot of people doing this! One in three Americans today live in a stepfamily, and more than half of Americans will be part of a stepfamily at some point in their lives, according to the Stepfamily Association of America.

Seventy-five percent of divorced persons will eventually remarry and 65% of remarriages involve children. Rather than giving up on the American family, millions of people are re-forging family bonds. Although stepfamilies differ from nuclear families, they can support solid marriages and nurture children into healthy adulthood.

In spite of their presence all around us, stepfamilies remain one of the most misunderstood and maligned family institutions. Fairy tales showcase stepparents as evil hyenas out to snatch parental affection and the family jewels away and on TV re-runs the sappily-blended Brady Bunch glosses over the real challenges faced by stepfamilies.

Sadly, there’s little support to be found for stepfamilies. On a daily basis, conservative commentators, politicians and preachers lament the divorce crisis and the demise of the 1950s nuclear family. Their caustic words alienate stepfamilies from the mainstream of American life and leave them pigeon-holed as an abnormal deviation of what it means to be a “real” family.

But that’s about to change. Advocates founded National Stepfamily Day on September 16 in 1997 to celebrate stepfamilies and will mark the occasion with picnics around the nation on

Saturday, September 13. The event website is www.happystepfamilyday.org, because being in a stepfamily can be something to be happy about.

That’s right, a stepfamily can be a good thing. It’s time to shred the fairy tales and throw out your copy of Cinderella. No one is going to wave a magic wand and send us all back to the nuclear 1950s. Stepfamilies are part of the American landscape and we are here to stay. I’m proud to be a stepmom, warts and all.

Dawn Miller writes a column on life in blended families at thestepfamilylife.com. 
Visit Dawn's blog for a daily dose of life in the blender.
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