It’s no coincidence stepmothers today are thought of in a less favourable light than any other family figure. Thanks to more than 900 international stories written about nefarious stepmothers throughout centuries – and the endless stream of on-screen adaptations from filmmakers – they’re frequently perceived as less affectionate, kind, happy and likeable, and more cruel, unfair and even hateful. The bias against them is woven into our language: ‘step’ evolved from the Old English ‘steop’, which captured a sense of loss and deprivation. Even colloquially, describing something as a metaphoric ‘stepchild’ of something else implies its inferiority.
