The choicest epithets – wicked, mean, cruel – are often flung at hapless stepmothers. Such stereotypes are reinforced by a barrage of regressive TV serials, films and epics that portray the stepmother as the scheming other woman who has dislodged a haloed biological mother from her pedestal.
Then, there are all those fairy tales about the wicked stepmother like Cinderella and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. At a very tender age children get brainwashed into believing such tales are for real.
The gentle Dr Geeta Maheshwari, marriage and remarriage therapist and a stepmother herself. . .