ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the legal contexts surrounding step-parenthood and ponders the mystery of the near invisibility of the stepfather in the popular imagination. It seeks to show the linking of a stepmother with negative associations was more often implicit than explicit. The figure of the stepmother has been an object of suspicion and derision in European cultures from the earliest times, regularly cast as a selfish and neglectful anti-mother. Disputes over wills reveal opponents' fears of a stepmother's ability to influence her husband, an ability that grew over time. England's traditional inheritance regime had provided various protections of the interests of children from a first marriage. Legal archives confirm the unfairness of the stepmother stereotype and provide yet more evidence to explain why far fewer widows than widowers remarried in early modern England. Arguably the only English law specifically directed at stepfamilies was the common law exclusion of 'the half blood' in intestate inheritance.
