Why stepmom Abby Wambach prefers the term 'bonus mom,' and more parenting advice from the former soccer star

Two years after news of their unlikely courtship kicked off headlines about the soccer star and the “Christian mommy blogger,” Abby Wambach and Glennon Doyle are redefining what it means to be partners and parents. And two-time Olympic gold medalist Wambach spoke out about it in all of its complexities by headlining at a parenting conference on Friday.

When Wambach married bestselling writer Doyle in 2017, she became not only a wife but also a stepmom to Doyle’s three kids, now 10, 12, and 15. And on Friday morning at the HuffPost How to Raise a Kid conference in Brooklyn, in an onstage conversation with HuffPost Editor-in-Chief Lydia Polgreen (watch it here), she offered a bit of what she has learned so far:

Kids are people too.

When Wambach and Doyle fell in love, the retired soccer star recalled, they were particularly cautious when it came to easing the kids — then 8, 10, and 13 — into their relationship. Wambach (who is a member of the board of advisers for Oath, the parent company of both HuffPost and Yahoo) says she based her approach on the idea that “no matter how young these children are, I have to respect where they are and meet them where they are.” For the youngest, Tish, who is “like a gaping wound” in her sensitivity to the world, Wambach recalled, she adopted an extra glacial pace. It was hard for all the children, though. “It wasn’t the gay thing,” she said, as the kids “had all been to more gay pride parades than I had.” It was more that their family was falling apart, as Doyle was divorcing her husband of 14 years and the children’s father, Craig Melton.

Change the narrative of what it means to be a family.

Wambach may technically be a stepmom, but, she explained, “We like to use the term ‘bonus mom.’” It’s just one of the many ways she, Doyle, and Melton have rewritten the story of what divorced and step families look like — such as how Melton and Doyle wrote “divorce vows” to ensure they’d remain friends and co-parents when they split. “They left each other whole and more fully human,” rather than bitter and broken, Wambach said, adding that she is “good friends” with her wife’s ex-husband (they even play soccer together), and that the entire family — three parents, three kids — vacation together.

Encourage girls to be strong — but don’t forget boys in the process.

Wambach is “very much a feminist,” she said, as is Doyle, who never hesitates to shout empowering bits of wisdom to her daughters Tish and Emma about how to stand up for themselves and fight off toxic masculinity. But then Doyle had a realization, Wambach shared: “She said, ‘I haven’t been whispering in my son’s ear that you can be vulnerable, you can be kind.’” Now they both make an effort to get that message to their teen son, Chase.

Ease off being overprotective.

While there are plenty of reasonable things to ban from kids (“Our children do not have social media. They will never have social media,” Wambach declared, for example), the former pro athlete doesn’t believe that pain and struggling should be among them. “I don’t think we should be steering our children away from pain,” she said, making a case for resiliency. “We actually have to be pointing them into the fires of their life so that they can do it. And we do it with them over and over and over again so we can show them that they’re fireproof.”

Know that helping children succeed is not the only goal.

Wambach’s two youngest kids play soccer, which “gives them some cool street cred, I’ll be honest,” she said. But she stressed that a vital part of the sports experience — and all of life, for that matter — is failure. “Part of what makes sports so beautiful and important for these children is the learning of failing — the learning of failing in the moment, the learning of failing at losing, the learning of failing around their peers, the learning of making the ultimate mistake that makes their team lose,” she said. “And what we parents don’t do well enough is let our kids fail, is let our kids fall down so that they can figure out how to pick themselves up.”

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