stepchild

red-headed stepchild

Someone or something that is deemed less desirable than or inferior to someone or something else, often resulting in mistreatment. Why does management always see the art department as the red-headed stepchild?
See also: stepchild

step-child

A child of a step-parent who assumed the parental role through marriage to one of the child's original (usually biological) parents. Most commonly, the step-parent is the second spouse of one of the child's biological parents. My step-children come to visit their father and me every other weekend.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • be/have done with somebody/something
  • be in line with (someone or something)
  • better of
  • (someone or something) promises well
  • begin with
  • begin with (someone or something)
  • bird has flown, the
  • beware of
  • beware of (someone or something)
  • be rough on (someone or something)
References in periodicals archive
Placing a duty on a stepparent to contribute to the maintenance of the stepchild would not affect the duty of the biological parent of that child with respect to maintenance.
In "Notes on a Stepchild," Thurman depicts himself as a precocious, introspective child whose early sense of isolation was further exacerbated by frequent illnesses and a dark complexion.
Thus, only a descendant of a stepchild is not included.
Will the fact that she was a stepchild herself help Danielle and can she become a model stepmum?
There are sound judgments, honest mistakes and then that third entity: the unspoken-of stepchild of stress-mediated capitulation to those bent on corrupting long-term outcome for short-term gain.
And the guy who is interviewing me, the red-headed stepchild Jeremy Morgan.
Hudson is married and has one child and one stepchild.
1 Abject Art If abject art wasn't exactly the miserable stepchild of a market fallen on hard times, its various forms nevertheless found a perversely suitable terrain on which to thrive as we witnessed the overnight disappearance of an art scene that had hitherto nurtured scores of art students on dreams of '80s largesse.
For years there has been a growing movement within the engineering community to push for development of a technological analog to the National Science Foundation (NSF) -- largely owing to a suspicion that engineering was never likely to rise above its stepchild status in an agency whose primary responsibility was a fostering of basic research in the pure sciences.
Because my stepchild is so happy when spending time with us and it bothers my husband's ex.
Malone-Hawkins, herself a stepchild and a stepmother.
It is certainly a welcome feature of this handbook that it considerably broadens the somewhat narrow definition of the word "Bildung," which in German connotes the cultural formation of a small elite, by including an excellent essay by Rudolf Endres on the training and education of artisans ("Handwerk - Berufsbildung"), a much neglected stepchild of research.
Entry into stepchild status in a sense normalized one's family situation, but the effect on the life chances of the child, at least as depicted in fairy tales, was not always happy.
Charles Krulak, the commandant of the Marine Corps, likes to ask, "Are we going to have Son of Desert Storm or the Stepchild of Chechnya?" His answer.
Historically, workers' compensation was the stepchild of corporate property and casualty insurance.