Abstract
<p>This book reimagines the stepmother, the expectations (stepmotherhoods) and practices (stepmotherings) of the position through, unusually, applying a feminist sociological imagination, drawing on 20 in-depth qualitative interviews with British women who were in the position of stepmother, but did not necessarily identify as such, and my own experiences of stepmothering. It examines the historical and legal trajectory of ‘step/family’, which resulted in a homogeneous (mis)understanding of the stepmother’s role where the reality of stepmothering does not bear much resemblance to the societal nor institutional image of the stepmother. Although, what, and how, the stepmothers ‘do’, is profoundly gendered, it is also inventively transgressive. The book illuminates a whole range of intricate and fulfilling ways of doing steprelationships with close and wider stepfamily members, young and old, without adhering to mothering scripts. Or by deploying unorthodox strategies, such as ceasing communication, to manage problematic steprelationships because all human relationships are complex and not always ‘successful’. The inclusion of the stepmothers’ perspectives on the ways in which multigenerational wider stepfamily members, biological and in-law, ‘do’ and ‘display’ stepfamilies and how important they are sheds light on the complexity and inventiveness of these practices as well as how the stepmothers understand them.</p>