Of all the sticky quandaries in the parenting world, divorce, especially when it comes with questions of custody, must be the stickiest, and it only gets stickier when a new spouse enters the picture. This week’s quandary comes from one such “new spouse” and stepparent. Four years (and two children) after her marriage, she’s not sure if she and her husband have done the right thing by letting her stepchildren spend every holiday with their mother.
When they divorced, Nina’s now-husband’s ex-wife made it a battle cry. “You will never,” she told him, “see them on a major holiday. Ever.” And for the past eight years, as Nina and her husband, met, married and had two children of Nina’s own, the ex-wife has made good on that promise.