情感閱讀:當後媽的日子

Something is going on in the stepmothering camp. Call it an uprising, or a rebranding.[1] There was the story about the woman in Australia who went to court to prevent her daughter calling her stepmother "Mummy D". It was a small item in the news—one of those designed to make you marvel at the pettiness of divorced couples[2]—but look closely and there is something else going on here. A mother battling to maintain her unique status. A stepmother who imagines she is no different to a birth mother, and wants to rewrite history with her centre stage in the family portrait[3].

I am a stepmother. I'm not crazy about the term—the step part makes it sound cold and hard, not to mention all the negative baggage that goes with it—but it serves a useful purpose, which is to clarify exactly where I stand in relation to my stepchildren, and they to me.[4] I am not my stepchildren's mother. I did not give birth to them. I had not even met them until they were in their teens. Those are the plain facts and they are the sort of facts you mess with at your peril[5]. What I am is a full-time parent—someone who fulfils a motherly role in their lives on a daily basis. I am the one who bandages the cuts, buys the spot cream, answers the homework questions, takes them clothes shopping, gets their hair cut, and nags them to shower.[6] I've done my share of delousing and standing on the touchline in the rain, separating fights, clearing up sick and talking through various problems, from oblivious girls to trunk rash.[7] It's me who gets the phone call after the exam. Me who sobs at airports when they disappear on gap years[8] and me who worries when they aren't home on time. Still, I'm not their mother. I am something important, but significantly different. I am their stepmother.

The trouble is, there's a new generation of stepmothers who want to compete for pole position[9], instead of accepting that they have something unique to offer. It's the philosophy of the "me" generation taken to its logical conclusion—because I'm worth it and I do the work of a mother (even if it's every other weekend), I deserve to be called a mother. Ladies, really, this is madness. There are so many advantages to being a stepmother as opposed to a real mother.

For a start, if you make any sort of effort, you are regarded as a heroic, selfless figure, whereas real mothers are simply expected to get on with it. Stepmothers can forget the sports kit, turn up late for the parents' meeting, shrink the blazer,[10] burn the birthday cake, and the world thinks she's doing a fantastic job ("They're not even hers"). Strangers are always congratulating me for what I have "taken on[11]" (particularly when they hear I don't have children of my own). Divorced dads offer their condolences and mutter guiltily that being a stepmother is "the most thankless task in the world".[12] What is more, we stepmothers can moan, and ask for help, and admit we're not sure we're getting it right without seeming unnatural or disloyal. It’s a win-win situation and it works both ways.

Because I am not their real mother, my stepchildren can pick and mix[13]. On days when I manage to stay the right side of cool (if I've bumped into Lily Allen in a shop, or bought them an item of clothing that is not, for once, "gay"), then I am their stepmother, loud and proud.[14] On days when I am a total embarrassment (conferring with shop assistants, dancing in the kitchen, ogling footballers and getting their names wrong),[15] they are free to say, or just to think, "She's not my mother." How liberating[16] is that?

And because I am not their mother, they find it easier to talk to me about subjects that are traditionally agony[17] for mothers and children to discuss—namely sex, their ambitions (or lack of them), clothes, drugs, disloyal friends. I can see them as the age they are, not—as mothers inevitably do—as babies. Every exchange with a real mother is loaded with expectation and the potential for hurt, but stepmothers aren't plugged into their stepchildren's nervous systems, so they are cushioned from the worst agonies.[18] (When one of my stepchildren goes to the dark side, I do not think: "Oh God, that's because I didn't potty train you early enough/didn't breastfeed for long enough/took that stressful job in my second trimester.")[19] And if one of them wants a piercing[20], I can discuss it objectively without a voice in my head screaming, "But you're my baby!"

So much for the pros[21] of this special relationship. There are downsides, too. I get tired of round-the-clock giving (more tired than a regular mother, because I haven't had the practice), but at the same time I feel sad when they thank me for small kindness that children should take for granted. It seems a shame that they are appalled[22] at the thought of being caught naked by me (or worse, me by them), though I guess that, past a certain age, that's normal. And I am sometimes brought up sharp by the yawning gap between their life experience and mine.[23] I am not part of my stepchildren's history—they are a gang[24] with their father and I am, if not the outsider, then the new member of the band. Our house is full of photographs of their lives before I came along, holidays I never went on, houses I never lived in, plus a couple of our wedding day, with all of us in a line, squinting[25] into the camera. But you know what—that's exactly as it should be. We're not rewriting history, we're making it—and we're doing a pretty good job so far.Vocabulary

1. uprising: 起義，暴動；rebrand: 重新命名。

2. marvel at: 對……驚奇；pettiness: 氣量小，偏狹。

3. family portrait: 全家福照片。

4. baggage:〈喻〉包袱（指因過時而成爲負擔的信仰、習俗等）；clarify: 澄清。

5. at one’s peril: 由某人自擔風險。

6. bandage: v. 用繃帶包紮；spot cream: 祛斑霜；nag: 嘮叨，催促。

7. delouse: 驅除蝨子；touchline: （足球場的）邊線；clear up：照顧（病人）至其痊癒；oblivious: 健忘的；trunk rash: 身上發疹子。

8. gap year: 空檔年，指西方國家的青年在升學或畢業之後工作之前，通常花一年時間做一次長途旅行或參加志願者工作及短期零工，以積累社會經驗。

9. pole position: 跑道內圈，此處形容新一代繼母想要與生母爭奪在孩子心中的地位。

10. kit: 成套裝備；shrink: 使縮小，此處指“使縮水”；blazer: 寬鬆運動外衣。

11. take on: 承擔。

12. condolence: 同情；mutter: 低語，小聲抱怨；thankless: 不討好的。

13. pick and mix: 把不同類的事混雜在一起，此處指孩子們根據繼母所做的事來決定對繼母的態度。

14. bump into: 偶然遇見；Lily Allen: 英國熱門女歌手。

15. confer with: 與……商談，此處指討價還價；ogle: 盯視。

16. liberating: 解放的，自由的。

17. agony: 極大的痛苦。

18. plug into: 接入；cushion: v. 緩和……的衝擊。

19. potty train: 訓練（小孩）上廁所；breastfeed: 母乳餵養；trimester: （一年三學期制的）學期，一般爲三個月。

20. piercing: 穿孔，打洞。

21. pro: 贊成的理由。

22. appalled: 驚訝的。

23. bring up: 叱責，此處形容被殘酷的現實刺激；sharp: 尖刻地；yawning gap: 巨大的差異。

24. gang: 一幫，一夥。

25. squint: 斜着眼睛看。