Mildly Infuriating

Do a Google search for books for stepdads instead of books for stepmoms maybe you'll have better search results because I just did it and I found a bunch of books.

The vast majority of men would never touch a self-help book. It's simply a matter of sizing the potential audience. Writing a book that ends up unread makes no sense.

It is because men aren’t engaged in parenting nearly as much as anecdotes suggest. I used to work at a family court and like 19 out of 20 men never even bothered to appear in their custody cases. When you go on reddit it’s a huge vast sexist conspiracy against men but in real life they fail to do the absolute bare minimum.

There aren’t any books about it because you are the 1 out of 20 dude and a large percent of that cohort doesn't buy books.

There isn't near the kind of cultural narrative about stepfathers that there is about stepmothers, especially in media for kids. Kids absorb ideas from the fairy tales they see and hear. Stepmoms have to deal with tropes from "Cinderella" to "My Stepmom is An Alien". Kids will then carry those notions, amorphous and unexamined, into their new relationship. Kids usually don't have the capacity to recognize those kind of prejudices in themselves. So now the new stepmom has to deal with the kid's indignance at a fictional character. But aside from the Dursleys in Harry Potter, I'm hard pressed to recall a wicked stepfather.

Then there's the puritanical thread, and I'm a dude so I don't even know what else is lurking in our culture that wants to take a piece out of a stepmom for being the second lady in the family.

Not to reduce what a genuinely good dad has to do, step or otherwise. But if a dad manages to use words to explain something calmly, that's enough to get kudos from strangers on the street. I don't think the ladies have the benefit of the same uncomplicated expectations, so they need specialized guidance.

What exactly are you looking for in advice? How to deal with the ex and their branch? How to deal with specific behaviors from the kids? You'll probably do better to search at the level of those topics than the role of stepdad in general.

As a stepfather to 3 over 2 marriages, just treat them like people with respect and support them as much as possible. It can be hard, but try to give guidance without trying to impose authority. Love them.

I think you could probably take one of the better stepmom books and just read it. If it's good it'll have advice that works regardless of gender.

Best of luck on being a great dad. You got this.

Sounds like men don't want to write books about it (or otherwise feel disincentivized for doing so), so all you're seeing are female perspectives.

We had a baby recently and I tried to read a few books geared towards men to be better prepared.

The bar for men is very, very low. It’s a tripping hazard.

The guidance in all of them was a pathetic mix of “have you tried basic empathy?” and idiotic sports metaphors. It was baffling. Are most men actually like stupid sitcom dads from the 90s?

I'd suggest going for "How to talk so that kids will listen and listen so kids will talk" series. To be a good step-parent, you need to be a good parent.

What were your search terms? You want "blended families."

No 3 is an awesome title

I had 3 dads in my childhood and I turned out fine, broken but fine. My son never experienced what I had to go through. So I kinda learned how not to parent.

I think being patient, soft spoken when correcting, being structural, reliable and open on your own feelings towards anything and giving kids a choice in walking their own path in some extent...kids will do alright.

Probably something to do with AI