I watch “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”.  Don’t ask me why.  I’m sure it would take a very comfortable couch and years of psychoanalysis to try to figure it out.  I don’t have the time, patience or respect for psychoanalysis to do that.

Women love to watch these real housewives shows and act all shocked and horrified.  They/we/me pretend we are nothing like them.  We would never be that catty, that mean-spirited, that self-obsessed and we certainly would never ever make our lips look like that!

Whatever.  This is not the vortex of this post.  What I am especially fascinated with is Camille Grammer, soon to be Kelsey Grammer’s ex-wife, mother to two of his four children, wife #3 out of soon to be 4.

Without reducing myself to the generic cat fighting that women sometimes engage in (and yes they do), Camille Grammer is an interesting specimen.  She is a woman who had a surrogate deliver her two children because supposedly she has "Irritable Bowel Syndrome".  Really, the hideous stretch marks that were caused by the births of my four ungrateful children are no pretty sight, I can tell you that much.  WHATEVER her reasons, I think Camille might be brilliant.

Camille, at the urging of her husband of “Cheers” and “Frasier” fame, Kelsey Grammer, chose to expose her life on national television via a reality show ala Snookies or Snookums or whatever-her-name-is style.  We can only pray there’s no book deal in Camille’s future.

Watching the show can be painful (yes, I’m a closet masochist), but even I am uncomfortable watching Camille being told, while the camera is magnified on her face that the husband she purports to love madly is madly in love with a 29-year-old flight attendant he impregnated several months earlier (this ended in a miscarriage) who is madly in love with him and because they are so mad about each other, Kelsey, an addict to immediate gratification, must have a divorce and have it NOW, despite the 13-year-marriage and two small children involved.  He’s slated to marry Wife #4 in February of this year (isn’t that like, next month?).

I don’t care that Camille appears to be a self-centered, passive aggressive woman who sets up her “friends” to be verbally assaulted by a delusional psychic who makes Camille look like a close relative of Mother Teresa.  She is still a human being and I have great compassion for her.

I really do.  And I’ll tell you why.  Because in my Real life, I work with stepfamilies.  I work with ex-wives and I work with new wives.  I work with stepcouples, stepchildren, stepfathers, and mostly stepmothers, the lowest rung on the family ladder. 

If you’re a stepmother, you know exactly what I mean, unless you’re part of the 0.5% that doesn’t.

But this isn’t about the plight of stepmothers.  It’s about what I call, “Wannabee Mothers”…women who invade other womens’ lives and think that because they have some kind of relationship with a man who happens to be a father, they can suddenly lay claim to the children of that man as if they were virgin territory back in the days of the Wild Wild West.

On the “David Letterman” show this past Thursday night, David’s first guest was none other than Kelsey Grammer who entered the stage with confidence, grace and a bomb, I mean aplomb.  He was frothing at the mouth to share the good news of his impending nuptials and seemed ever so slightly irritated at having to first discuss his not-yet-finalized divorce.

He chided Letterman’s reticence for showing anything less than euphoria when he prompted the famous talk show host to be pleased for the “new developments” in his life. 

The camera then suddenly moved to the” green room” where the newly engaged flight attendant sat with Kelsey’s two children from his marriage to current wife Camille.

Kelsey was gushing about all their recent family time, the time he and “Kiss Me Who Needs A Condom Kate” have been spending with his two children and how fahbulous the children are doing. 

Kelsey’s son was perched on the lap of his soon-to-be stepmother while his daughter sat to the left of them.  All three of them had on the brightest of smiles and big waves to the audience who was applauding as if they had just won the recent Idaho state lottery and they were all one big regular Brady Bunch.  Grammer had said his children wanted to become actors and he wasn’t kidding.

So this is the thing that bothers me and because of the professional work I do, the truth of the matter is, a stepmother does not automatically a mother make.

Now before all you stepmothers get your panties all in a wad, simmer down.  Believe me, I know what you do.  Lord knows I know what you do!  And honestly, I’m on your side, AND the mother’s side, AND especially the children’s side.  But research that is so solid it’s considered fact and the National Stepfamily Resource Center, as well as the majority of stepfamily experts, advocate that stepparents, as a general rule of thumb, avoid trying to do anything that resembles parenting.  There’s good reason for this but that’s a subject for a different post.

Bottom line, Kelsey Grammer has had three marriages and is geared up for #4.  Will this make his new 29-year old bride stepmother to ALL four of his children from his three marriages?  I’m so confused.

Grammer’s children have no choice about their father’s marital liaisons and have no power over which women he chooses to bring into their lives.  But as soon as the enamored couple says, “I do”, wife #4 will be stepmother to Camille and Kelsey’s two young children.  Seeing Kelsey’s latest side-kick on national television sitting there with children perched on her lap like newly adopted puppies from the pound just didn’t sit well with me.  And knowing that Camille, the mother to those children, had to watch this made my heart hurt for her.

There is no more tenuous relationship than the relationship between the ex-wife and stepmother.  One must tread ever so carefully when trying to get between a mother and her cubs.  

The  “Big Love” final season premiered last night.  Thank god those polygamous Mormons don’t believe in divorce.