Talk:stepfather

Tricky

This and similar definitions are tricky if we want to be accurate (perhaps over-pedantically so?). The definition at the time I write this is:

1. One's mother's husband other than one's father

If my mother married John Smith before I was born, then left him, without divorce, for Bill Bloggs, and I was born of this union, then the given definition would make John Smith my stepfather. ----Old Comment, 213.208.107.91, December 19, 2004

Yes, this is a tricky & interesting issue. I don't know what that 'the first husband' is called in relation to later children. Here's my scenario:

(1) A warrior is married to a woman and has children (Group A).
(2) The warrior dies in the line of duty.
(3) The woman remarries to a farmer and has children (Group B).
(4) The farmer is the stepfather of the children of the warrior (Group A).
(5) The warrior is the ??????? of the children of the farmer (Group B).

The answer appears to be that the warrior is not a stepfather of the children of the farmer. The best you can say is the obvious: that the warrior is the first husband of your mother. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:15, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Here's another scenario.

(1) A woman gives birth to a child with bio-dad "A".
(2) Another man "B" who is married to the woman is listed as father on birth documents and acts as the father of child for years.
(3) Bio-dad "A" later gets the child for years.

Clearly Bio-dad was never a stepfather. Under the broad sense written as "A husband of one's parent distinct from one's biological father", the other man "B" could be a stepfather of the child. This defies my understanding of what a stepfather is; I would not say this is a stepfather. I don't know of any famous cases where other man "B" would be correctly called stepfather. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:51, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Ex-stepfather

See the discussion on stepmother. There appears to be two distinct definitions of stepfather in use.