Orphaned by Lousy Fathering

Here's another example of why parents of minor children should not bring new honeys into the life of their child until the children is grown. SILENT TEEN IN NORTH CAROLINA wrote in to Dear Abby:

I am a 14-year-old girl living with my grandmother. My mom died when I was 7 and my father is now remarried.

Ouch. She loses her mother and then her father takes up with someone else.

He and my stepmom have two children together.

You know where that leaves her!

My problem is my stepmother and I don't get along. I try to be friendly, but she hardly speaks to me or my grandmother. I understand that some people are quiet by nature and I am one of them, but my grandmother and I agree that her behavior is rude -- especially because we have done nothing to provoke it.

How can people do this to the children they've already made? Look, I’m as horny as the next guy – maybe even more so. But c'mon - you gotta put the kid you already have before sex with a new woman and making more kids. Having children is volutary, and leaving decisions about God out of it, the biggest decision a person can make in their life is to have children. It changes everything. Even a marriage you can end with divorce, but you can't take back being a mother or father, if only biologically and morally. You don't make a baby, keep that baby, and then do this kind of crap to your baby.

I sometimes get the feeling my stepmother doesn't want me to see my father.

She may not. She sees you as competition to her children, and you are also a reminder that her husband used to be married to someone else and had sex with another woman. Some women can’t handle that.

Every time he comes to visit at my grandmother's she calls, and then he has to leave.

No, he chooses to leave. He chooses to leave so he will continue to get sex, have access to his other children, and not have to pay alimony.

My grandmother and I love their two children and they have come to recognize us. However, we don't get to see them very often. I believe my stepmother may be the reason for this as well.

Your father accommodates it.

What can we do to improve the situation?

Not much. When you do have contact with your half siblings, be nice to them. If you have any other relatives you can spend time with, cozy up to them. At least you and your grandmother have each other.

Dear Abby agrees that there is nothing she can do and that the father has responsibility.

Your father married a woman who appears to be possessive, insecure and unable to empathize with anyone she can't control. You are a reminder that your father had a wife and a life before she came into it, and she views that as a threat.

Yup.

Your father could straighten her out -- but it appears she holds the power in their relationship.

Of course she has the power. That the reality of the law, courts, and culture. The only time a married father has the power in a marriage is when the wife lets him have the power, or he doesn't care if she takes his kids and earnings away.

Recently we were gleefully informed that my sister-in-law(my wife's sister)'s husband's sister is now planning to remarry. She has two young sons and neither one of them gets along with her hubby-to-be, and the bride to be tells us they plan on trying for a child together immediately. Maybe they'll beat the odds and it won't be a train wreck. But my wife and I are cringing. The difference for the letter-writer is that she doesn’t have to live with the stepmother, while these boys will be living with the stepfather.