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“Better a serpent than a stepmother!”

It's not a line from Cinderella, as written by the Brothers Grimm in the 19th century. It's not even from Shakespeare, whose play Cymbeline included a nasty step-queen. The snake-beats-a-stepmom line was written even before that.

Thank Euripides, the Ancient Greek poet. He was observing life circa 480-406 BC.

So, the good news is, archetypal anti-stepmotherhood is a kind of club.

If you're a stepmother, know that you are not alone, and haven't been for at least 2,000 years.

Of course, in the olden days, stories of stepmothers were abundant not because the biological mothers were divorced and lived around the corner: They were under the ground, dead from childbirth or some other ailment.

Life as a typical contemporary stepmom is even more complex – and potentially evil. Since divorced fathers don't often live full-time with their children, it's anti-stepmotherhood every other weekend.

Some comfort, I know.

But as a stepmother, you have to learn some new coping mechanisms – humour being one of them, especially as Mother's Day, which could be called Stepmother's Under-Appreciation Day, rises on the horizon.

Elizabeth Church, a psychologist and professor at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax and author of Understanding Stepmothers, says that in films and literature, “the only good stepmother was almost a servant.”

Well, that makes sense to anyone who has stepmothered. Biomom gets all the credit, homemade cards and breakfast in bed. Smom – a word for stepmom that sounds appropriately beleaguered – gets to do another load of laundry.

And don't think that by saying “learn some new coping mechanisms” I mean there are rules you can follow. Oh no. There are none.

You have to make it up as you go along. None of what is expected of you comes naturally. Who knows how to be a loving presence when you're only there because someone more important, more beloved, whether dead or alive, is not?

I was a stepmom, to three girls, and not very easily or successfully, in my marriage. They were more like sisters than daughters as the eldest is only 10 years younger than me, which made it even harder to know what role I should try to fill. Now I am an ex-stepmom.

There are no role models for any of this. As Karon Phillips Goodman notes, “You don't grow up and say, ‘I want to be a stepmom one day.'”

The 46-year-old stepmother of two boys, now 23 and 19, and the biomom to her own son, 22, from her first marriage, Ms. Phillips Goodman has written several books on the subject, including The Stepmom's Guide to Simplifying Your Life.

“I felt that I had failed,” she says on the phone from Atlanta, Ga., when asked about her initial adjustment, 12 years ago, to being a stepmother. “I thought I would be a supermom. Everybody has these expectations. As women and mothers we believe we are able to fix things. But as a stepmom you don't know all the issues. There are so many dynamics. So much is out of your control. I had to come to terms with that.”

The most difficult part is that even if you like being a nurturer and, having had a kid or two of your own from a previous relationship, are good at it, the stepmom role is not the same thing. The stepkids did not choose for their biological parents to divorce. And they didn't choose you as the person their father would fall in love with. They're reeling from lack of control, too. Which makes it understandable that you might provoke the classic response, “You can't tell me what to do. You're not my mother!” when you try to impose a little discipline in your household.

Raising stepkids is like half-baking a cake.

Ms. Phillips Goodman's advice is that the knitting of the new stepfamily unit happens gradually. “You can't do everything all at one time,” she says, “You have to build slowly, love them and forgive yourself. Being a stepmother is not better or worse [than being a biomom]. It's just different.”

Statistically, remarriages have a higher failure rate than first marriages. From her study of 100 stepmothers, Dr. Church, who is a smom to two adult children and a biomom to two, found that the cause for difficulty in subsequent marriages often revolves around how to deal with the stepchildren.

And yet, paradoxically, the intention to make things happy is as strong, if not stronger, than it was in first marriages. Many recouplings are an attempt to get it right this time around, to rebuild, to heal the trauma and wounds of a previous divorce.

Still, stepmotherhood can be wonderful. I know of women who claim that it's a fantastic, pluralistic form of extended family for the 21st century. It gives them joy because it brings more people into their lives, and not always under one roof at the same time. They have stepchildren, and sometimes stepgrandchildren, and they count as friends the ex-wives of their current husbands. Sometimes, the ex-husband's new kids are friendly with their new kids.

When I hear or read about these tales of forbearance and acceptance, I figure it's the closest that average people will ever come to experiencing what some people in polygamous communities say they have – a random, kaleidoscopic smattering of gene combinations and a complex web of interesting relationships.

All the joyous possibility of harmonious stepfamilies aside, there is still the problem of Mother's Day and how the stepmom should be validated, because that's what it's about.

Even biomom might suggest to the children that it would be a good thing to acknowledge her somehow. I know that is asking a lot.

My ex remarried, and early on in the new situation I once got irrationally upset when his wife packed one of my three boys a lunch for school on Monday, sending it home with him on a Sunday night. She was trying to be helpful. Me? Insecure? Naw. I decided I was upset because she had included all these processed foods, of which I didn't approve.

The stepmom is a thankless role, for the most part. But the best person to make you feel you matter on Mother's Day may not be the stepkids, after all. It might just be their father, your husband. It matters to him that you try to nurture them, and you have.

Failing that, maybe there could be a new annual day of parental acknowledgment. Smoms Day. Better yet, Smoms Night. Which sounds sort of dark and a little bit wicked. You could go out with a group of girlfriends, and make a toast to your under-appreciation.