Stepmothers have always been witches. Long before the Brothers Grimm gave us Snow White’s usurping queen (and long before Gal Gadot’s toe-curling recent turn in the role), there was Medea, witch of classical myth. Medea is best remembered for killing her own children but, according to Ovid, she went on to acquire a stepson, the hero Theseus, and attempted to kill him too. (Poison, of course, and with an eye on his inheritance: Witchy stepmothering 101.)
Two millennia after Ovid, modern women still let our lives be limited by such stories. A new survey says that43% of single mothersare deterred from dating other parents by “negative stereotypes of stepmothers portrayed in popular culture”; 37% explicitly cite the fear that their partners’ children will view them as a “wicked stepmother”. One should approach such a survey with caution – it is commissioned by a dating app for parents – but these findings are mirrored in academic studies the world over. A 2018 survey from New Zealand found that stepmothers altered their behaviour, fearful of setting boundaries with their stepchildren, for fear of the “wicked stepmother” tag.
Not even royals are safe from this psychic shadow. When Prince Harry published his memoirSpare, he didn’t quite say, as tabloids claimed, that his father’s wife Camilla had proved a wicked stepmother. What he did say, talking of their first meeting, was: “I recall wondering, right before the tea, if she’d be mean to me. If she’d be like all the wicked stepmothers in storybooks. But she wasn’t.” Plenty of children share Harry’s naive preconceptions, particularly if they’ve grown up on Disney. A study from Anglia Ruskin University, published with last week’s dating survey, assessed 450 hours of classic TV and cinema to find that stepmothers are frequently depicted as “bossy”, “strict”, “neglectful”, “heartless” and “manipulative”.
Blended families are not new. For much of history, given high maternal mortality in childbirth, fathers married a second time in hope of finding a woman to saddle with their existing childcare. Nonetheless, even the most self-sacrificing stepmothers are easy to hate. Forget practical considerations, like the threat a stepmother poses to your inheritance. She’s sleeping with your father. Weird. No wonder stepmothers must be witches. Snow White’s shape-shifting stepmother reveals the classic dichotomy. Only a love potion could have cast a spell on the loins of your benighted Dad; you can see the hag beneath.
The good news for stepmothers is that we’re primed to hate our mothers just as much. When the Grimms codified Snow White, they introduced a stepmother to an oral tradition that usually featured a monstrous biological mother. In his 1976 treatise on fairytales,The Uses of Enchantment, the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim argued that the Grimms’ versions took off because their stepmother-heavy adaptations allowed children to physically “split” confused emotions about our biological mothers. Our innate love for a mother is expressed in the idealised, dead woman exemplified by Snow White’s late mother; our conflict with the real-life woman telling us to tidy our rooms by the “stepmother”.
Dead woman, good; live woman, bad. So if you’re a mother looking to date, don’t let fear of being a wicked stepmother hold you back. Your partner’s teens can’t hate you more than your own inevitably will.
Kate Maltby writes about theatre, politics and culture
Sign up toObserved
Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers
after newsletter promotion
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us atobserver.letters@observer.co.uk