Stepfamily loners

When Dakota read the 1,518-page manifesto and personal details of the Norwegian spree murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, she couldn’t help seeing the similarities between his stepfamily childhood and hers – wondering if being an only child whose parents divorced and then married others, bringing other children into the mix, had any bearing on both of them becoming loners in adulthood.

“Breivik starts off his manifesto with an introduction on how cultural Marxism began and in it was a telling statement that summed up, I think, what his problem was,” says Dakota. “He wrote: back in the 1950s ‘children grew up in two-parent households, and the mother was there to meet the child when he came home from school’. Note that he used child rather than children (when in the 1950s an only child was rare) and a he-child rather than a she-child.”

“I think he was telling us that his parents fell foul of the cultural Marxist philosophy about the irrelevance of marriage and stay-at-home-moms and that he suffered because his parents had split up when he was a baby, found new partners, and nobody was there to meet him when he came home from school because mom was working.”

“That was exactly how my life started off,” says Dakota, “and while it may be true also for many late Gen-X / early Gen-Y kids, only sensitive souls would suffer from it – and because I did, I think Breivik did, too.”

“His mother, Wenche Behring, a nurse, had a daughter from a previous relationship and his father, Jens Breivik, a diplomat, brought three children with him,” says Dakota. “When Jens took up with a work colleague, Tove, he moved to France, and Wenche later married Tore, an army officer, and settled in Norway.”

“There was a bitter custody case – apparently Jens and Tove thought they would make better parents than Wenche and Tore – but they lost and Breivik’s primary male role model was defaulted to his stepfather, a likable goat, who infected Wenche with genital herpes and ended up spending his time in Thailand with prostitutes.”

“Breivik visited Jens and Tove regularly in France until they split up when he was 12, and while Jens isolated himself from his son from the age of 15 (when the boy got busted for graffiti), Tove remained friendly with the boy – as did his half-siblings.”

“He maintains that as a result of his super-liberal, totally undisciplined, matriarchal upbringing he had been feminized to a certain degree – and he disapproved of that,” says Dakota. “He obviously lacked a strong father figure – as I did – and because we both grew up with far too much freedom to do our own thing, without boundaries and without a proper family structure, we tended towards being loners in adulthood.”

“We both liked our stepfathers – and stepmothers – but very clearly there was an antagonism between Breivik and his mother (he was ashamed that contracting genital herpes affected her brain, giving her a mental age of a 10 year old), as well as an antagonism between Breivik and his natural father, Jens (perhaps for a similar reason).”

“Girls grow up a lot faster than boys so I would imagine his being shunned by his father at the age of 15 – when he needed stern guidance most - would have impacted him,” says Dakokta, “probably making him turn inward, become self-reliant and self-absorbed – far more than any normal boy of 15 would be.”

“I would have liked to have been a child of the 1950s growing up in a two-parent household with my mother there to meet me when I came home from school,” says Dakota, “and I think if Breivik had had this upbringing, one that he obviously yearned for, maybe he would have had a better relationship with his parents and a good grounding for marriage and children of his own – as I would, too.”

“Instead, we turned out to be loners with a jaundiced view of family life – and perhaps society as a whole,” sighs Dakota. “But the path he followed with his lone-wolf ways was so different to mine that something else must have triggered him to do what he did – drugs, violent computer games or a mental illness – who knows?”

Read more by Dakota:

Was Breivik a secret Israeli operative?
The ethics of politicizing children
Breivik’s online fantasy world
Dating psychos like Breivik
Breivik’s social contract betrayal
Breivik’s July 22 Sarajevo Code
Breivik the white knight
Breivik, Christ’s Knight
be proud of your race!
immigration promotes white shame?

See also:

Breivik’s Aquarian Humanity?
Age Secrets of Anders Behring Breivik

a foghorn for silent whispers

When Sarah Ferguson (aka Fergie), the Duchess of York, announced at the Book Expo America in New York that she was a 'foghorn for silent whispers' in her work as an author of children’s books and a patron of children’s charities, Rhoda wonders whether she is trying to soften her brazen image after the 'cash for access' scandal involving her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, or whether she is trying to tell us something about her own childhood and the experience of a step-mother when her mother ran off to Argentina and her father’s remarried.

“Like Fergie, my parents divorced but neither remarried or had other children so I have no personal experience of a stepmother or stepfather or half brothers and sisters,” confesses Rhoda, “but I know plenty of girls who had the same experience as Fergie and it has scarred them for life.”

“My parents divorced when I was 9, old enough to understand what was going on but not mature enough to understand the sex stuff,” explains Rhoda, “and I think it must have been very traumatic for Fergie – at the dangerous age of 13 – to cope with her mother leaving her and her older sister Jane with a womanizing father in order to move to Argentina to marry the polo player Hector Barrantes.”

“I don’t think Fergie had any sort of relationship with her stepfather Hector – even though his property in Argentina was bequeathed to her and Jane,” says Rhoda, “but she surely had to live with her father’s new wife and the three children they had together – and cope with his many mistresses – until she was old enough to leave home.”

“Fergie has never talked about her step-mother or her half brothers and sisters,” says Rhoda, “but when she talks about being a 'foghorn for silent whispers' in her work as an author of children’s books and a patron of children’s charities one cannot help but think that she is obliquely telling us something about her own childhood and the painful experience of being part of a stepfamily.”

“That neither she nor Andrew remarried and brought other children into the mix may be yet another manifestation of her wanting to protect Beatrice and Eugenie from a similarly painful stepfamily experience.”

See also:

Will Fergie and Andy Remarry?

Marriage or Emigration for Fergie?

Mother of the Year?

Fergie’s chutzpah survival

what's next for Fergie?

How free is Fergie?

Oprah tops Fergie’s retirement pot

Fergie Flouts Family

Fergie and the global gravy train

Greedy Fergie!

Fergie smokes, so what?

Homeless Fergie?

Fergie’s £15,000 pa was a lousy settlement

Fergie’s menopausal mania

star struck Fergie

cashing in on the family Fergie style!

Fergie’s broken homes

Is Fergie reliving her childhood?

a foghorn for silent whispers

Sarah Ferguson’s Libran Balance

Age Secrets of Prince Andrew

Age Secrets of Sarah Ferguson

Andrew and Sarah, Duke and Duchess of York

second thoughts about drunken stepfather

Galina had a traumatic childhood. She barely remembers her real dad -- a deadbeat who deserted her mother when she was pregnant with another child -- but she has vivid memories of her stepfather, a huge drinking man who made their lives hell and whose later death from alcoholic liver disease was a relief even though it meant another period of homelessness and poverty for the family.

"I was reminded about my stepfather when I read an article about cfc emissions causing alcoholic liver disease deaths and now I'm having second thoughts about him," explains Galina. "Sure, he drank too much and scared the living daylights out of us, but he did work hard and take care of us when the guy who should have been there for us was nowhere to be seen."

"If his mental and physical condition was caused by workplace industrial pollution -- not alcohol -- then his death should be compensated," says Galina. "It's like asbestos and mesothelioma, isn't it, but how do you prove this sort of thing?"

"Anyway, I feel better disposed towards him now and that's a good thing."

"Here's the gist of the article I read."

The top 10 reciprocal causal factors relating to alcoholic liver disease death surprisingly rate alcohol in sixth place, not first. As a matter of interest, alcohol only rates higher as a reciprocal factor in Cerebral Infarction deaths.

The top 10 reciprocal causal factors in alcoholic liver disease death, in order of highest incidence, are : 69.45% CFC emissions, 63.43% Land (sq km per 1000 people), 63.41% Pork, 62.89% Obesity, 61.74% Nuclear Waste, 61.50% Alcohol, 61.20% Crime, 58.74% Teen Pregnancy, 57.26% Phosphorus emissions and 56.27% European ethnicity.

In total, statistics of 30 countries were examined for the incidence of death by alcoholic liver disease and 33 causal factors were taken into consideration (personal consumption, family and social issues, environmental issues and population).

The reciprocal causal factors were determined as follows. Firstly, the 15 countries with the highest incidence of death by alcoholic liver disease were examined to establish causes and their values. Secondly, the 15 countries with the highest incidences of these causal factors were examined to establish values in relation to alcoholic liver disease death. Finally, these two values were added together to obtain an average.

If causes alone were taken as established facts then something like Coffee rating 64.02% would come into play, but as countries with the highest incidence of Coffee consumption did not have a corresponding high incidence of alcoholic liver disease death its reciprocal causal factor was very low and as such Coffee not make the top 10.

In order of highest incidence, the top 15 countries representing 90.31% of total alcoholic liver disease deaths are : Hungary, Denmark, Finland, Mexico, Germany, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Luxembourg, US, Austria, S. Korea, Norway, Canada, Sweden and Australia.

Compare that with the bottom 15 countries representing only 9.69% of total alcoholic liver disease deaths. These countries are : Netherlands Spain Poland Japan NZ Iceland UK Portugal Italy Greece Belgium France Switzerland Ireland and Turkey.

So, alcohol is not a huge factor in alcoholic liver disease death but it definitely plays a part in the top 15 countries above which have a high proportion of CFC emissions, Nuclear Waste and Land (sq km per 1000 people); and Obese people who consume a high proportion of Pork and Alcohol.

Less important contributing factors include a high proportion of Crime, Teen Pregnancy, Phosphorus emissions and people of European ethnicity.

"Overall, sounds like death was caused by pollution (particularly CFC emissions) exacerbated by alcohol ,: says Galina, " but you can't put that on a death certificate can you?"

"If pollution (particularly CFC emissions) compromise mental and physical body functions then perhaps blaming alcohol for liver disease in people who are already obese is unfair. Also, if death was hastened by a whole bunch of Alcohol and Fat Nazis putting unnecessary stress on these unfortunate people who eat and drink too much, then without this interference they might otherwise have died of Cerebral Infarction or something else."

my stepdad nearly drowned!

When Amelia's stepfather had a state of the art swimming pool built in their back yard - with diving board, spa and fountain -she was thrilled to bits.

"Mom had been taking me to swimming lessons since I was a baby," explains Amelia, "and more than anything else I loved to swim."

"I was eleven when mom remarried and the pool was built, I suppose, to make me like my stepdad," says Amelia, "and the trick sort of worked!"

"To celebrate its completion mom allowed me to have a swimming party with all of my friends over. I became the most popular girl in the class!"

"Mom loved swimming as much as I did," says Amelia, "and she spent as much time playing around in the pool as she could. She particularly liked diving and the pool had been designed especially deep at the far end where the diving board was."

"My stepdad used to join us at weekends for ball games in the pool - and he loved the spa," says Amelia, "but neither mom nor I noticed that he never did laps of the pool like we did or got into diving."

"One weekend my stepdad was in the pool alone - sunbathing on a airbed - and fell off it into the deep end."

"Mom was sunbathing on the deck and didn't pay any attention until he started thrashing around in the water and then she screamed out that he was drowning and I came running."

"Mom had jumped into the deep end and was trying to drag him down to the shallows but he was pulling her under by the time I got there."

"I stood there in shock for a second watching my mom and stepdad drown," says Amelia, "and then I jumped in, went under the water behind them to avoid my stepdad pulling me down, too, and then I pushed his back and swam as hard as I could towards the shallows."

"I don't know how we made it with my stepdad thrashing around - grabbing at anything he could get hold of," says Amelia, "but finally we arrived at the shallows and I pulled him up to get some air."

"He was still thrashing around, pulling us, and generally going berserk," says Amelia. "I had never seen my stepdad behave so strangely and neither had my mom."

"My mom was very angry. She shook my stepdad hard and swore at him for nearly drowning me and her."

"He looked sheepish and said he was sorry - and then admitted that he couldn't swim!"

"This made my mom angrier than ever. She screamed at him for not telling her, and being eleven years old I couldn't believe that any adult couldn't swim - especially one who had a swimming pool built in the back yard!"

"After that mom forbade my stepdad to go anywhere near the pool until he agreed to take swimming lessons. He refused - I guess he was too proud to admit a weakness - and then she wouldn't even allow him to paddle."

"It's true that he nearly drowned her - she had been under water longer than I had - and seeing how he panicked like a raving lunatic rather than trying to float I didn't blame her for making sure something like that never happened again."

"Since then mom and I have been in a sort of conspiracy against him," explains Amelia. "She's scared about my leaving home one day and being left alone with him."

"Hey, it was my mom's decision to marry the man and that he turned out to be a dud is something she's got to live with," says Amelia, "I've got a real dad I like spending time with and as far as I'm concerned that other guy is no relation to me whatsoever!"

my stepmom's garden party

Billie is 14, an only child, and spends vacations with her father and stepmother. She always comes home with funny stories about these visits because her stepmother -- although nice -- is a social climbing snob and tries her best to smooth out the rough edges in her stepdaughter.

"Last time I visited, my stepmother took me to a garden party and told me is was going to be my debut into high society," explains Billie. "I had never attended an adult function like this before and my stepmother filled my head with all the dos and don'ts about proper behavior."

"What my stepmother never explained to me was the correct procedure for removing glass from my mouth when a fine crystal champagne flute broke in the middle of my sipping its contents," laughs Billie.

"I don't suppose any etiquette book has the answer to that one," sighs Billie, "so I had to use my wits."

"I was standing with a group of adults at the time the incident happened," says Billie, "and they were boring me to tears with some silly social gossip."

"I was tapping the glass flute against my teeth out of boredom," says Billie, "and the next thing I knew I had a mouth full of glass!"

"One of the ladies turned to me and said something and I just hid the glass behind my back and smiled sweetly with my teeth literally gritted with glass."

"I hope she didn't expect an answer to whatever she said," laughs Billie, "because I was suddenly overcome with terror that I would swallow the glass and I ran off to the nearest bushes."

"I spat out as much of the glass as I could and threw the broken champagne flute into the bushes - where I hope nobody will ever find it."

"I then brushed past lots of people trying to find the bathroom and when I got there I locked myself in and rinsed my mouth out thousands of times until I was certain that all the glass had been removed."

"There was a knock on the bathroom door and I heard my stepmother's voice asking if I was alright."

"I couldn't tell her the truth, she would have died with shame," laughs Billie, "so I lied and said that I had suddenly developed a tummy ache and she seemed to believe me."

"As expected, my stepmother was more concerned about the impression I made on her friends by running off in such an unladylike manner," laughs Billie.

She said: "Even if you have a tummy ache you should bear it as best you can and never, ever leave a group of people without first excusing yourself."

"Imagine what my stepmother would have said to me had I told her the truth," laughs Billie.

"She would have probably forced me to retrieve the broken glass from the bushes and pay for its replacement from my pocket money and I was certainly not going to do that!"

"She would have also probably made me apologize to the hostess for breaking her precious crystal glass," muses Billie, "and I wasn't prepared to do that either."

"No," says Billie, "all things considered I think I handled myself very well. Don't you?"

"I certainly won't be clicking any sort of glass to my teeth again - but then I don't expect my stepmother to be inviting me along to any more of her garden parties again, either!"

"It's always a relief when I come home to mom," says Billie. "She has no airs and graces like my stepmom and just lets me be myself."

a stepfamily killer

It was a tiny column in the newspaper, just a filler, and Erica only noticed it because her eyes were drawn by an unusual but familiar name. It was her ex-stepfather's name and the grandma who had been murdered was his mother.

"I was having a coffee break in the canteen at work when I saw the article," says Erica, "and I was absolutely frozen with shock."

"Not just because I knew the women who had been murdered - but because she had been murdered by my ex-stepfather's nephew - her cherished grandson. It wasn't a total stranger who had murdered her, but her grandson."

"My mother had only been married to this guy for a few years," explains Erica, "but of course I knew the boy and their whole family."

"This was her golden-haired boy," explains Erica. "He was the grandson she doted on and lavished with gifts as if to compensate for the fact that the boy's father - my ex stepuncle - had refused to marry his mother."

"Boy, am I glad my mother got out of that awful family!" exclaims Erica. "I think she only married to give my brother and I a father - albeit a step-father - but there was so much stuff going on that family that she decided we were better off without them, and so we were!"

"Murder is terrible in anyone's book," says Erica, "but when a grandson murders his grandmother - and the newspaper gives a passing mention of it - what does that say about our society?"

"How many other grandmothers out there are being murdered by their grandchildren and nobody cares?" asks Erica.

"On the front page of the same newspaper prominence was given to a story about a soldier who had been killed by snipers in Iraq," says Erica.

"That soldier's death is a tragedy - just like any killing is a tragedy - and yet that soldier's business was killing," explains Erica. "He had been trained to kill and he had chosen to join the army and get sent to arenas of war where he risks being killed."

"An old woman sitting at home in the suburbs is not in the same league as that soldier."

"She may be at risk from a neighbor going berserk with a gun - or a drug addict on the prowl for easy pickings," explains Erica, "but you wouldn't think she would be at risk from a visit from her grandson, would you?"

"The story of her death in the newspaper was, in comparison to that of the soldier, short and sketchy."

"I do not know how she was murdered or why she was murdered," says Erica, "and I have no desire to find out. I am not part of their family any more, even as a stepdaughter, and I am so glad I'm not."

"My concern is simply that she was murdered - and murdered by her grandson."

"I look at my brother - now 15 years old - and imagine whether he would be capable of murdering our grandmother?"

"I wonder whether my future grandchildren would be capable of murdering me?"

"If I had been an old lady reading that story I would be scared - very scared," says Erica. "Maybe that is why the newspaper editors don't publish similar stories - or choose to publish them in tiny filler columns on page 6 where hardly anyone would read them."

"Either nobody cares, or we're just too scared to face the terrible violence that is now so common place in family life."

"I am so glad that my mother didn't make us change our name to that of our stepfather," sighs Erica. "But even so, someone else did notice the story and asked me whether the murdered woman was related to my stepfather."

"I just died of embarrassment," says Erica. "Why should some guy my mom married for a while be anything to do with me?"

my stepsister the poisoner

Ramona's mother married a divorced man with custody of his 12-year old daughter who, when Ramona was born, was so jealous that she tried to kill her.

"I believe women shouldn't marry men with older children and that families should stop having children when the eldest child in the family is approaching 13 because it is a very dangerous age and little babies risk being maimed or murdered by the older sibling."

"I've seen it in countless families," sighs Ramona, "and it pains me greatly to learn from my mother about the terrible things that my stepsister did to me when I was born."

"After my mother caught 13-year old Maria trying to smother me with a pillow she was afraid to leave me alone," says Ramona.

"Of course I cannot remember much of what happened in my first year of life but several terrible things did happen to me at Maria's hands that I am still suffering from today."

"Several times my mother had to rush me to hospital with poisoning symptoms and she told me that Maria had once put some caustic cleaning fluid in my feeding bottle."

"It's a wonder that I lived through the terrible things that Maria did to me," says Ramona, "and sometimes I wish that I had not lived because I am 25 now, still living at home and still suffering from stomach troubles and nervous troubles that prevent me leading a normal life."

"Mom said that Maria was jealous of me and that's why she tried to kill me," explains Ramona, "and remembering what I was like at 13 I know that my own behavior changed for the worse at that age."

"Maria was going through adolescent rebellion when I arrived and mom said she hated me from the start," explains Ramona. "I'm not making excuses for my stepsister, but when you have to put up with a little baby who cried day and night like I did, I guess it was horrible for her. And yet I was crying so much because Maria might have been sticking pins in me or maybe I was just picking up on all the negativity around me, my mother's unhappiness, my father's anger and my stepsister's hatred."

"Maria ran away from home at 15, two years after I was born," explains Ramona, "and she never really came back to the family."

"She's 38 now and for all I know has children of her own," sighs Ramona. "I wonder if she remembers what she did to me and how she'd feel if someone did the same to her baby."

"It's true that Maria cursed me," says Ramona, "yet my parents must also take responsibility because you no more leave a baby with a 13-year old -- stepsister or real sister or neighbor -- than you leave it with a mad dog."

"I guess mom lets me stay at home and takes care of me so good because she feels guilty," says Ramona. "Dad says I should get over whatever Maria did to me and gets angry when my mom talks about it."

"He says that if mom hadn't told me these things I'd be none the wiser," sighs Ramona, "and I guess he's right about that."