I don't have an SD, but I thought this article would be helpful to many posters here. It was originally posted by Redcartoon.

Submitted by redcartoon on Fri, 02/12/2016 - 1:25pm.
Recently I sent the following to my mother - although I think she actually meant well. She thought I should be engaged more then "maybe" the teenage girls might like me.

This took a lot of pressure off, but now she just wants me to get out of the relationship after seeing the studies below. The chances of creating a strong bond are dismal at best, and really most problems or friction are a reflection of the children's relationship with their mother and father. It has nothing to do with you.

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When there is a loyalty bind, nothing's worse than stepmom bending over backwards to win the kids over. Drs. Larry Ganong and Marilyn Coleman found that such stepchildren and adult stepchildren are especially rejecting of a stepmother they find warm and appealing, as she elicits tremendously conflicted feelings.

Study of families who divorced and remarried, preteen and teen girls especially described the stepparent as an interloper in their world and an obstacle to intimacy with dad. A stepmother may encounter particularly fierce resistance from a teen girl, both because she is close to her father, and because teen girls tend to model the feelings and attitudes of their mothers.

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There is controversial research by E. Mavis Hetherington that states if a brand new stepmother enters a family with stepdaughters ages 12 to 17, the divorce rates shoots up to 99%. This research does not include families in which the stepmother entered the family when the children are young.

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It's hardest for stepmothers. The longitudinal studies of stepfamily life by psychologists James Bray and Mavis Hetherington and sociologist Constance Ahrons show that kids of all ages resent getting a stepmother more than getting a stepfather, and that they resent her for longer. In Hetherington's study, less than 20% of adult stepchildren said they felt close to their stepmothers. And while more than half of adult stepkids told Ahrons they were happy about mom remarrying, less than 30% were happy that daddy had. Finally, the longitudinal studies and interviews I did for my own book suggest that you don't have to be a "homewrecker" to be resented: regardless of how the previous union ended, a stepmother is likely to be the lightning rod for his kids' unhappiness and anger that their parents broke up.

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What makes it harder for a stepchild to accept a stepmother? What builds a stepchild's resentment of "dad's new wife"? If you think it's her own wickedness of just plain lack of trying, guess again. It may have more to do with the children's mother than anything the stepmother is doing or not doing. According to researchers including Mavis Hetherington and Constance Ahrons, after a divorce women experience more resentment and anger, and experience it for longer, than do men, who are more likely to nurture fantasies of reconciliation and work for "smooth sailing" with an ex spouse. Based on her 30-year Virginia Longitudinal Study of life post-divorce, Hetherington concludes that stepmothers are frequently singled out for very bad treatment indeed by stepchildren who pick up on their mother's anger and resentment and become her proxy in their father's household. As more than one adult stepchild told me, "My mom wouldn't like it if my stepmom and I were close." Often, a stepchild who "hates" stepmom feels that in doing so she is expressing solidarity with her mother. This is why they were so "offended" that you stated I treated you better than anyone else IMO. If mom would explicitly give her permission to like her stepmother, and let her know that being nasty to stepmom is not an option, the behavior, and the resentment it stems from, would likely vanish.

Girls, young women, and adult women in particular are likely to model their mother's feelings and behaviors and subscribe to her beliefs regarding her divorce from their father. This fact, plus the fact of an ex-wife's resentment of her husband repartnering, often fuels the fire of a stepdaughter's hostility toward her stepmother.