Being a blended family can be very, very hard on everyone. Sometimes the kids are nightmares, or the other parent is terrible, and sometimes… just sometimes, the trope of the “Evil Stepparent” rings a little too true.
Like in these stories from Reddit, in which people shared times their stepmothers or stepfathers made their lives hell. We rounded up a few of the tales set to rival any fairytale.
1. Grass clippings
[M]y father was engaged to a rich b*tch of a person. She made me dread visiting my dad on the weekends.
She once made me and my sister hand-pick the grass trimmings off the lawn because the lawnmower had a habit of leaking cut grass everywhere…
2. No vacation
My stepdad is pretty great, but every single summer he and my mom used to go on a vacation to the British Virgin Islands with his daughter and one of her friends or her boyfriend at the time, spending a week in the sun on the beach and boating. I was never invited – not even offered the chance to pay my way…
To be honest, at the time, I was an angsty annoying teenager who was very “leave me alone I want to live in my room” (but I would have loved going on vacation), so my mom didn’t mention it to him. He probably didn’t even think about it. But I’m still the tiniest bit salty about it…
3. Book burner
I had the classic evil stepparent growing up. My stepdad came into my life [when I was] age 10, and acted lovely toward me until he and my mum got married, then ignored me completely (literally didn’t speak a word to me) until my brother was born, and then it got massively worse.
I adore my little brother, and my stepdad’s views [of] me will never change that, but… once my brother was born, my stepdad basically decided I wasn’t worth having in the house.
He systematically set out to make my life hell. First, he stopped cooking for me, stating that I, at age 14, should buy and cook all my own food, but I wasn’t allowed to get a job until I was 17.
He started throwing my washing out of the washing machine on the floor while halfway through a cycle, then screamed at me for daring to use his washing machine, but told me I was to do all the washing for the whole family as a punishment…
He banned all my friends from the house and told me I couldn’t pursue higher studies (I wanted to do advanced classes in high school due to my high marks, but there were additional costs, and according to my stepdad I wasn’t worth the money).
One time he came into my bedroom while I was at school camp and started using my book collection to start the fireplace. By the time I got home two weeks later my entire collection had been burned by him…
4. No one loved you
To preface this, my dad and stepmother had been married for five years prior… and had been having issues in their marriage… When I was around age 11, my stepmother took me to get some ice cream while my dad was working. Right after she bought me my cone, we sat inside, and she said she wanted to talk.
She looked me coldly in the eyes and said, “I think it’s best if you live with your mom full time. No one in our house loves you, and your father and I think you are just a bastard child that sucks all of our money away. You stink, can’t do anything for yourself, and above all make your dad always come to your rescue. You are a pathetic waste of life and ruining the love between your father and I.”
And as soon as she said that she walked to her car and left. Needless to say, as an 11-year-old I began to just cry my eyes out…
5. Canceled birthday
My stepmum canceled all of my family dinners for my 21st birthday. [She] didn’t even wish me a happy birthday on the day.
A month later when it was her birthday, I didn’t acknowledge it. She asked what was up, and I told her why. Her words were, “Get over it; it’s just a day.”
My reply was, “Well, I couldn’t give a sh*t that you’re turning 52; you look 60 anyway.”
6. Blowing smoke
Not evil, just [a jerk]. He used to blow cigar smoke in my face one summer while I was sleeping.
[He also] sold my Nintendo system my mom scraped the money together to get me after my dad left us, [and] would deliberately goad me to anger because he thought it was funny…
7. Car thief
I could write an entire novel on this…
Stepmom No. 1: My dad married [her] when I was in high school. I had only met her once before. The day of their wedding, she demanded that he stop paying child support to my mom. He had to give her a copy of the court documents showing it was a court order.
Then, even though she had no driver’s license, she demanded that she have a car. Guess who was driving my dad’s second car? Me. So then I had no car…
Stepmom No. 2 is only 32. I’m 27. So yeah…
8. Dollhouse
I used to have this beautiful handmade dollhouse that my dad made. It was huge, and had to be moved through the window because it was too big to fit through the doorframe. My mom put little carpet squares and curtains in the rooms. It was filled with doll furniture, and I would use it all the time with my Barbies.
When my mom remarried, my stepdad eventually sold it or gave it away (I’m still not sure) when I was at my grandma’s house for the weekend.
I love my stepdad now, but I seriously hated him for the longest time because of that when I was younger.
9. Rationed food
My sister and I didn’t really get along with my stepfather. He knew what he was getting into marrying a woman with teenage twins, but he always made sure we knew his real daughter (six years younger) was the princess. I could go on, but one thing that stands out to me is one time when he wanted to teach two 14-year-olds about money.
He’d take us to a supermarket, give us 5 pounds each, and tell us to buy enough food for a week, including lunches. (We weren’t allowed school lunch money because school food was crap, apparently.)…
My sister and I ended up putting our fivers together every week and buying tons of sausage rolls to live off. He would then get himself and my mother an Indian takeout once we were back home from shopping. I cannot remember how long this lasted, at least a month I think, but it felt like years. He never taught his real daughter this way.
10. Silence
My stepdad was a weird man. He would be great sometimes, then suddenly change. If I did something wrong he would not speak to me for months. I would have to know exactly what I did wrong and when, then apologize for it. He could go for months without talking to me.
He would also get mad at me and stop talking to me when he had a fight with my mum. He changed a lot for bad the last years.
I lived with my family until I moved out at 15. My mum says he’s changed and he’s good now, but [to be honest] I don’t believe it at all.
11. Ignored the kids
My evil stepmom came into my life when I was an adult, but still managed to do damage.
My mom [passed] at age 50. Dad was 52. He married his second wife two years later (I refuse to refer to her as “stepmother”). She’s divorced with two children a few years younger than me and my sisters.
They’ve been married for 20 years and she has slowly but surely been extracting my dad from me and my sisters. They live within driving distance, but [we’re] lucky if we see them once a year.
She has done the following:
• When my son was 4 she didn’t set a place for him at Thanksgiving. She said, “I figured he could eat before or after.”
• She read [my son] the riot act every time we entered their home on not touching ANYTHING…
• When my nieces were little, they were terrified of dogs. But she wouldn’t put her huge dogs outside or in another room when they came to visit. So the girls spent the entire visit on the laps of adults.
• She never even held either of my children, even though she was married to my dad before they were born. I thought she wasn’t into babies – fine. But then HER grandchildren were born – never put them down. [She] was the epitome of the loving grandma with them IN FRONT of my kids.
• [She] never once offered to babysit under any circumstances. My in-laws live in another country, sisters in another state – so yeah, I could have used that help. Especially since when I was growing up I regularly stayed with my dad’s parents… Once her grandkids came along, they watched them ONCE A WEEK, plus weekends, “so that those tired parents can get a break.”
• The only photos she has in frames: their dog and her grandchildren. I stopped giving her annual school photos of my kids when I found out she was throwing the old ones away.
• They’ve taken her family to Hawaii and Disneyland more than once. Me – nothing.
• I haven’t spent a Father’s Day with my dad since she came on the scene. One year I found out they hadn’t made plans for Thanksgiving, and I was hosting. But my dad said, “Oh no, we just want to stay home this year…”
• A few years ago they moved to be closer to her sons (of course). It’s now a two-hour drive to me – a drive they do regularly to see their dentist, my uncle, and their various rental properties (but not me). However, on the day of my daughter’s graduation, they gave up en route because “the traffic is too bad.” We’re not talking a 5-mile backup… it was a little slow on a weekday afternoon due to road maintenance for a few miles. They still had 90 minutes to cover 60 highway miles to attend a two-hour ceremony and have cake with us afterward. But no… they decided to turn around and drive an hour back home…
12. Yikes
She took my Gameboy Color along with my Pokémon game, pawned it, then used the money to buy some crack.
13. Mean emails
One of the worst was probably when she used to send me terrible things about how much of a failure I was, wished I wasn’t around, etc., from my father’s email as my father.
I only caught on when she accidentally spelled my name wrong, so I called my father about it saying how he couldn’t even remember how to spell his first child’s name…
14. Answer the phone
Mine is pretty benign, but my stepdad was of the opinion that children in the household were to answer a ringing phone at all times. I had my own line in my bedroom. This meant that if I was in my bedroom and the main house line rang, I’d have to run downstairs to answer in the kitchen before the machine picked up.
It would, inevitably, be for my stepdad, since I had my own line in my room. I’d inform him it was for him, and he would pick up the call – on the phone we had sitting next to the couch he was on. The one that was perfectly capable of answering the call in the first place. Whyyyyyyyyy?
15. Grounded when stepbrother was grounded
Whenever my stepbrother did something stupid and got grounded, for some stupid reason I was also grounded even though I was a pretty good kid.
I missed out on so many outings with friends as a kid because my dumb… stepbrother was always getting in trouble.
16. Locked up
My mom and dad got divorced when I was 16 for the third time, and I decided for the first time I wanted to live with my dad instead. I moved in with him and his girlfriend, and lots of little things happened…
But the real trouble started when she refused to leave tissue in the bathroom, and kept the toothpaste, deodorant, and tissue locked in their bedroom. The room had the type of lock that required a key on it…
17. No Disney
When I was 8, my stepmom took all of my stepsiblings to Disneyland, but I was not invited.
18. Wedge
[My] stepmom drove a wedge between my dad and [me]. I haven’t spoken to him in probably six years. When I used to call, she’d pick up most of the time and tell me he was busy and she’d tell him to call me back. I confronted him about it when I spoke to him years later. He said she never told him I called, and he figured that I never called, so why should he?
When I used to see him, he always treated my stepbrother better than me, and if I wanted to go off to have a day with my dad, my stepmom would b*tch and say that if I went, my stepbrother had to go too…
The last conversation I had with my step mom, the first thing out of her mouth was, “So you’re turning 18 soon, huh? Guess that means your dad doesn’t have to pay child support anymore.”