The Book
Is there anyone who doesn’t carry the image of the stepmother who
turned into a witch and terrified children in Snow White, or Cinderella’s
mean stepmother, who made her clean the palace all day long? And the mean
image of fairy tales lives on in the present and became a practically
indisputable synonym for stepmothers in our society. Evidence of this
is that if you look up the word “madrasta” (stepmother) in
a Portuguese language dictionary you’ll find it as an adjective
for “unloving, ungrateful and mean.” In order to demystify
the stepmother’s role and prove that a relationship with a man who
has children can work, teacher Roberta Palermo decided to tell her story,
presenting the most common problems and the most likely solutions for
each situation. Very simply and objectively she demonstrates how the new
family can function, formed by three other family systems – the
ex-wife’s, the ex-husband and children’s and the current wife’s
--, in which normally none agree with the new marriage.
In the book, "Madrasta , Quando o homem de sua vida já tem
filhos" (Stepmother, when the man in your life already has children),
Roberta reveals possible solutions for this difficult coexistence, and
in a cheerful mood shows us how to deal with this complicated kit of human
relationships and how to avoid its problematic traps, creating a happy
family.
"Roberta Palermo is able to go through all the structures of the
different family systems with which she interacts. She tries to understand
them all, demonstrating an incredible capability of putting herself in
the other person’s shoes. Consequently, she can successfully interpret
how the ex-wife must feel and also interpret the family structures of
the exes in terms of the intruder (herself), who enters the system causing
changes no one desired."
Maria Rita D'Angelo Seixas, PUC/SP doctor of psychology and coordinator
of the Family Therapy course of the Psychiatry Department in the Universidade
Federal de São Paulo - Escola Paulista de Medicina