Of steopmodors

Over the hill and through the woods
to steopmodor's house we go...

Off to Connecticut to celebrate my stepmother's birthday today.

Did you ever wonder where we get the step- relationship from?

It's interesting, and connected to bereavement, not -- as I had assumed from my limited personal experience -- to divorce and remarriage, except very recently.

As with much of our language and legal custom, the roots go back to the Angles and Saxons and the importance of kinship and kin groups.

The step- prefix referred to a child who had been orphaned by the death of EITHER parent.

Someone who married the surviving parent became parent to the steopcild -- the child who was bereft of a parent -- and, by extension, a steopmodor or steopfæder.

Within the last century or two the step- relationship has been further extended in common parlance to include remarriage after divorce, complicating even further our already tangled skein of relationships.

---

More information --

• Wikipedia: "Discussion forum entry on 'step parents'"
  
  
• Michael Quinion's World Wide Words: "Step-"
  
  
• Ask Yahoo: "Why do we use the term 'step'?"
  
  
• Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898): "Stepfather"
  
  
• IngentaConnect: "The transformation of kinship and the family in late Anglo-Saxon England"
  
  
• Wikipedia: "Stepfamily"

-- Dan Damon

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