What would Cinderella's dad have said?

He'd have been really, really mad.

The column we’re discussing here: Dear Prudence,March 06, 2025 (scroll down to the letter from Bad Baby Talk).

Last week I posted about a young woman who had an affair with a married man. In case you’re wondering how it turned out, he didn’t leave his wife for her; he left her for his wife.

Classic affair and classic outcome—so classic that the mystery is how she expected anything else.

Today’s post is about a woman who doesn’t like her boyfriend’s ten-year-old daughter. This is the classic mean-stepmother motif, it never works out, and again, it makes you wonder…

Where has this woman been?

Has she ever heard of, oh, Snow White, or Hansel and Gretel, or Cinderella? Did she read about this horrific stepmother, from the AdviceObsessed archives?

Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it, people!

The woman we’re discussing today sought advice from Slate’s Dear Prudence. Her problem?

As she tells it, after dating for “a while,” her boyfriend introduced her to his daughter “as a friend.” The letter-writer recognizes this as a new level of “seriousness.” Unfortunately, though, the girl makes her “skin crawl.” She uses baby talk with her father, and wants him to help her with a lot of stuff she should be able to do for herself, such as change her clothes or go to sleep. She still sucks her thumb.

The girl’s parents are indulging this, and have made it clear they don’t want the LW’s advice. So how’s the LW handling it? She writes: “When I interact with her, I either ignore the baby behavior or treat her like an actual toddler. ‘Can she go to the potty like a big girl or does she need help?’”

This generates “a very negative reaction.” So what can she do?

Prudie says as long as the LW is just the girlfriend, the baby talk is none of her business (though she says it more politely). This is true.

Then she says the daughter is probably “acting out” in the LW’s presence, the way kids often do when their parents bring home new babies, for instance. This is also true, as well as obvious. At ten years old, this child is not buying the transparent lie that the LW is a “friend.”

So far so good. But then Prudie warns the LW that her boyfriend is “surely observing your interactions with his daughter,” and what he sees will definitely “affect the future of your relationship.”

In other words, Prudie advises the LW to watch her step, or she’ll lose her boyfriend.

AdviceObsessed begs the LW to please, please lose this boyfriend, because she’s very, very bad for his daughter.

To say someone makes your skin crawl is intense. “‘Can she go to the potty like a big girl?” crosses the line into hateful.

Years ago I read a statistic about the percentage of second marriages that break up, when the father has an adolescent daughter from his first marriage. This was then compared to breakups of second marriages when there was no such daughter.

I read this before the internet was fully mature. To save it, I would have had to clip the page on which it appeared, and I didn’t. I’ve regretted it ever since, because my sporadic efforts to find those numbers in the years since have all failed. But please take it from me that the difference the daughter made was jaw-dropping.

It’s nice when a father sees no conflict between his love for his wife or girlfriend, and his love for his dependent child. Usually that’s how it works. But if there is a conflict, his first duty is to his child, who is helpless without him, and must not grow up in a home where she is hated. He must protect his daughter and care for her, and she needs to see him do that.

Period, full stop. It’s extraordinary that Prudie doesn’t understand this. She’s really let this nascent family down.

A final note: I don’t want to publish this post without apologizing to the many, many step-parents out there who are doing holy work with their spouses’ kids. Women like the LW are an insult to you all, and you deserve better. May all your children call you blessed.