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Show Kathleen Norris Says: Tie Husband Who Was Too Obedient Bell Syndicate WNU Service.) Jack loves to take her places, to his golf club, to movies, to lunch downtown, down-town, and she flatters him by referring everything to "Daddy." I feel neglected and lonely. STEPPARENTS Stepmothers and stepfathers Always Al-ways find themselves in a difficult situation. This usually arises from the inability of the child and stepparent step-parent to adapt themselves to one another. An anxious mother of a 17-year-old girl here confronts Kathleen Norris with a problem that is just the opposite: her second sec-ond husband is loo affectionate to his pretty stepdaughter. Miss Norris Nor-ris says that time offers the best cure for this problem. By KATHLEEN NORRIS A STEPMOTHER almost alwayshas a trying time of it, and in these days of easy divorces the world is full of stepmothers. What makes the situation especially trying for them is that in the beginning everything every-thing sounds so pleasant and simple. Sam has two darling children, and Sally adores them already. The little girl is shy, and naturally talks a good deal about her mother, but the boy is a perfect darling. dar-ling. After Sam and Sally are married she means to make much of Sam's children. Anyway, Any-way, says Sally, joyously flustered with wedding plans, they'll be with their mother a lot of the time. Sam feels at the moment that Sally is such a wonderful girl that she can't help winning the children's hearts. They'll adore her. So Sam gets his divorce, and it is settled that Bruce and Betsey are to stay with their mother 10 months of a year, spending two months with Dad and the new stepmother. That being legally arranged, and financially finan-cially arranged, what more is there to worry about? Trifles Threaten Later. Well, nothing, at the moment. But within a few months the worries arise, and these trifles that seemed so unimportant on the wedding day, women who see to it that the children chil-dren and the new husband are brought to know and understand and like each other. Beatrice, for example, is a case in point. Nine years ago she divorced di-vorced her husband, and gave a small girl of eight a new father. For a while there was nothing they could do with little Alice. She hated everything about the change, and wept continuously for her own Daddy, Dad-dy, and her own house, and the old school and the old friends. Even a baby brother didn't comfort com-fort Alice, and for a while Jack, the stepfather, detested the child, and was glad when she went off to visit her own father and her grandmother. grand-mother. But today the situation is different. differ-ent. Beatrice, the mother, has two small boys to keep her busy. She has no maid, and for some seven years, she writes, she has never slept through a night undisturbed, or been in bed later than six o'clock in the morning. Stepfather's Attitude Changes. Alice, the once unmanageable little daughter, is now a lovely sev- arise later to threaten the safety of many a second marriage. For one thing, the mother of Bruce and Betsey has every reason in the world for making trouble, if she can. She makes it hard for the children to pay those promised visits to their father's house. She talks of him slightingly, or perhaps with bitter scorn, before his children, and leads them to believe that Sally is the adventuress who came into a happy home and robbed them of their father. Possibly it wasn't a happy home at all. Possibly Alma was the one who wrecked it, who wanted the divorce, di-vorce, who made no effort to hold Sam or Sam's affection. But all that is forgotten once Sam has started off upon a fresh marital hazard with Sally. enteen; her stepfather adores her, and she idolizes him. The mother writes anxiously that she is idle, out of school, and mad for dances and evening parties, and that Jack indulges in-dulges her ridiculously. Beatrice uses the rickety family car, when Jack doesn't need it, but Alice has been promised a new car on her eighteenth birthday. Jack loves to take her places, to his golf club, to movies, to lunch downtown, and she flatters him by referring everything to "Daddy." He says no man is good enough for his girl, and Alice says she never will find a man as perfect as Daddy. "I ought to be glad, I suppose," writes Beatrice. "But I fee! neglected neglect-ed and lonely much of the time, sweet as my little boys' company is. The actual situation is that my Children Sense Trouble. The children feel the trouble in the air, and they are not natural nor reasonable with their stepmother. stepmoth-er. Sally, on her side, is young, she has had no experience with children, chil-dren, and very shortly she comes to see that it is wiser to leave them most of the time with their mother. This makes Sam restless. He loves his boy and his small girl, and wants them to enjoy his new home and his new felicity with him. He becomes unnatural, too, so there are four of them; all uncomfortable; all placed in a false position. A man cannot divorce their mother, moth-er, marry another woman, and remain re-main toward his children in the same position that he had when he was a part of their home and their background; the person they took for granted as Dad, who wanted them to be on time for breakfast and gave them movie money. A woman cannot take her children away from their father, and put another an-other man in that father's place, and combine with her new bridal happiness and her absorption in her new mate her motherly attitude as well. There Are Exceptions. These things simply don't mix, and the woman who tries to reconcile recon-cile them merely wrecks her own nerves and those of everyone around her. Of course there are exceptions. There are wise, simple, self-effacing husband is taking a younger and prettier woman about, and although both Alice and Jack are conscientious conscien-tious people, far above any suspicion, suspi-cion, it makes me feel as if my life somehow were unbalanced. U I suggest that Alice stay with the boys and Jack take me to a movie, he will do it amiably, but always with an effort, always with an air of marking time. And often, when we are alone together, he is thinking of Alice, I know, for he will break out with some reference to her, or some quotation from her, as if she were the most amusing and lovable creature crea-ture in the world. Stepmother Neglected Now. "Well, she IS amusing and beautiful beau-tiful and lovable, too, there is not a mean bone in her body. But after all, it wasn't Alice with whom Jack fell so desperately in love, 10 years ago; it wasn't for Alice's sake that I divorced her father and was persuaded per-suaded into a second marriage. Nobody No-body could have been more passionately pas-sionately in love than Jack was then." Well, in answer to Beat-ice, I can only say that this seema :o me one of those problems that time inevitably inev-itably solves. With a girl as attractive at-tractive and sweet as Alice, marriage mar-riage will come along in a year or two, and Jack, who has made such a conspicuous success as a stepfather, stepfa-ther, can try being a sup-grandfather. |