Talk:stepmother

Adoptive/biological

I am not sure why the definition left out adopted parents so I added them. I also wonder if birth mothers should also be included. Since a birth mother might not need to adopt to be the legal mother. With all these complications wouldn't it be better just to say "mother" and "father" rather than listing types of mothers and fathers.

I understand your point, however could it not have been simplified by using only father and mother? - Amgine/^talk 04:08, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Isn't that what I just said?

Only Current Wife?

I have been trying to figure out if a stepmother needs to be your fathers current wife. Finally it occurred to search on expressions like "one of my stepmothers", as having more than one stepmother used in current tense implies either the bond of stepmother is not broken by breakage of the union with the father. Sure enough I found many examples. I am not quite sure the correct syntax to do the citations but here are just a few:

http://media.gfem.org/node/9920

http://books.google.ca/books?id=ltSXg-abnU4C&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=%22one+of+my+stepmothers%22&source=bl&ots=O6aDR41sbT&sig=R2CpFVVzcFoIfvvRDEMfCaqV9SM&hl=en&ei=xDqVSsTbI46iMdvH8PkH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#v=onepage&q=%22one%20of%20my%20stepmothers%22&f=false

http://absoluterobeo.com/stories/39index.shtml

However, taking the opposite perspective that only the father's current wife is the stepmother, one should find terms like ex-stepmother in common use. So I searched on uses of ex-stepmother, and sure enough that is also in fairly common use:

http://www.news-record.com/content/2009/08/17/article/mayfield_stepmother_arrested_for_trespassing

http://mominthecity.com/wp/2009/05/23/not-my-ex-step-mother%E2%80%99s-pledge/

My general conclusion is there are two distinct definitions of stepmother in use. One is that only the father's current wife is a stepmother. The other is that all the father's current wife's are stepmothers.