Stepchild problems. Are all kids reared this way in UK?

okay, so I feel the need to vent and I dont want to do it towards my husband as it will just start a fight and I cant be bothered.

Heres the thing: my husband (whom I love dearly!), has a 19 year old son that lives with us and is waited on hand and foot by my husband, who by the way works everyday of the week just to make ends meet and he works odd shifts.

Now normally this would not irritate me so badly. I have no problem with doing for anyone if I happen to already be doing for myself. ie; food prep, laundry, etc.

But this child takes the absolute piss out of it all. He will actually lie in bed until his father gets home and then will come down and sit in his father's chair waiting to be fed. The boy has no consideration to do his own laundry or even bring it to the washer and then he (the boy) has a go at his dad if his shirt has shrunk or become discoloured. (Love my hubby but he has no clue about how to use a washer. lol) There is a complete lack of respect by this child to his father. And what honestly gets me so infuriated is that my husband lets him get away with it!

I could fill a forum myself with all the stuff this boy does such as:
1. quite school at 17 sat on ass for nearly a year.

2. father pulled strings to get him into uni for media and the boy only had to go 3 times a week.  out of the full 4 months he was enrolled he went maybe 14 times total. had his dad doing research and typing of his reports (when he bothered to do any homework at all).
3. quit uni without telling anyone of his parents. ( i tend to think he was probably kicked out for lack of showing up) and i understand that this is his choice of not going to school, but his dad went out on a limb for him to get in and he just dicks it off! not to mention what eager learner missed that course because he got the spot?
4. he gets a settlement for over 5000 grand and manages to blow it within 1 month and has nothing to show for it. now yes this was his money, but he could have paid back money to his dad  or even offered to pay for all the gas of his dad driving him all over the place, we are week to week financial people. Gas is a moderate necessity not a privilage for us.
5. he went on the doe (?) not sure if that is correct. and I got the most evelist of looks from the boy, his friend and my husband when I happened to ask during a conversation "are'nt you supposed to look for a job when you are on the doe?" apparently at this stage i won b*tch of the year for just asking a honest question. in america we chastise those that live off the government for pure laziness. i dont think here should be any different.
6. the boy fancies himself a radio jockey and he volunteers at a local radio show, BUT he accepts hours of work into the wee morning and then expects his dad to come get him at 2am when his dad has to be up at 5am! when i asked him why he does that and does he understand that his father is exhausted he actually told me "well he should lean to sleep before hand." 
7. finally but not the last of what he does. he got a job working for virgin answering phones from customers that need help in setting up their boxes, he got to sit on his butt and was even directly in front of the sky sports tv (just like home). he lasted 2 days! and my husband just keeps saying, "well its his life he is fu**in up". but his dad wont say anything.

Now am I wrong to think that this indirectly is upsetting our life together? I cringe when I hear my husbands mobile ring, because it is usually the boy and he will want something that we have to cut our trip out short for. It has gotten to the point that my husband wont even tell me what he has agreed to do. I have to ask and then I feel like a nosey wench! The phone ringing at odd hours of the night, incessive beggin for money (even when on doe) and even though sometimes we have less than 20pounds to spend on food for the week, expecting to have rides all over the place and even just down the street! the fact that as a wife who is home it is my job to make sure that my working husband can relax, sleep and be fed to stay healthy and i cant accomplish that most the time because he is running after the boy. my husband says i have a problem because i was raised military brat. but i dont think so , i think if anything i was raised with a sense of respect for what others do for you.
honestly am i totally wrong? i am supposed to bring my 3 boys over in a year and im afraid of the fact that i see fights coming because i refuse to raise burdens on society. my boys have always known the satisfaction of earning rewards and the gratification of looking after themselves and being indipendent and they are only 11, 9 and 7. now that sounds weird to some, but i mean like picking out their own clothes, making a sandwich, getting their own drinks, etc. and my boys were always proud that they could help mommy with chores. My ramsey vacuumns like a demon (all be it in just one spot. LOL)
does anyone else have this problem with a stepchild? (actually the boy told me he doesnt even think of me as a stepmom, just the woman that married his dad. but i didnt take offense because he once told me "just cause he ejaculated in my mom doesnt make him my dad." so the boy just has no respect what so ever.
Please tell me if I am wrong. Because as marriage life goes this is the only thing we ever have words over. i think because i feel that my oppinion does not count and that makes me second ringer to everyone else.

is his mother in the picture at all?

I can guarantee you that this is a one off case, not all kids are reared this way in the UK. Its a big generalisation to make that they are, I know plenty of people who have kids the same age who are productive, independant & smart. This kid sounds like he needs some tough love, either that or a kick up the ars*.

Good luck with talking to your husband about it!

Teenagers are pains in the butt.  They eat all your food, spend all your money, and want lifts at 2am.  They also mess their lives up and need steering back on track.  This isn't the devil child.  Yes, he's a spoiled brat but he's not out robbing banks.  He's just being a pain.  Have a heart to heart with your husband by all means, but you need to accept that this is his son and what an outsider sees may not be what he sees.    Plus, you can't compare a nineteen year old to an 11 year old. Unfortunately, your lovely 11 year old is going to change and I promise you that you're not going to like all the changes.
Try to step back and work out why this is getting to you so much?

It's 'on the dole'.  

You sound very protective of your husband, and if someone were taking advantage of my significant other or someone very close to me, I would be furious too. Are you sure this boy is alright in the head? Judging by his comment about his father, it sounds like he perhaps had a tough time growing up and is probably dealing with a few internal issues.

Hello from a fellow stepmom.  My guys are quite a bit younger, so I can't relate to the whole impossible teenager-ness of the situation, but it's not always easy being a stepmom, so I do hear you there.  It sounds like this guy knows all the strings to pull with his dad and dad totally lets him, which makes the situation even worse.  You asked if it was wrong to feel that this situation was indirectly upsetting your life together.  Absolutely not, but I'll make a correction: it sounds to me like it's DIRECTLY upsetting your life together.  The kid is 19 years old and dad is still changing his nappies (figuratively, I hope) day in and day out.  Dad needs to man up and cut some of these strings so Junior can make his own mistakes and feel the responsibility of the consequences himself.  If he doesn't, not only will Junior fail to learn some really important lessons in adulthood, but it will continue to affect your relationship with your husband and possibly lead to the deterioration of your relationship.

My advice, if you would like it, is to talk to your husband, even if it does lead to a fight, and tell him honestly how it makes you feel about the situation.  If that doesn't get results, try counseling.  He should be putting you first, not brushing you aside to baby his fully capable adult son.  To borrow some an oft-used stepmother adage, we may be second wives, but we're never second best.  If you are feeling like you come second, do something about it.  Best of luck.

You sound very protective of your husband, and if someone were taking advantage of my significant other or someone very close to me, I would be furious too. Are you sure this boy is alright in the head? Judging by his comment about his father, it sounds like he perhaps had a tough time growing up and is probably dealing with a few internal issues.

Or he's just a snarky teenager who doesn't think before he speaks.

well thats another side of the story. when i first came over it amazed me how much my husband would do for his son's mom. she would call and he would drop whatever he was doing and run to her side. now i know what that sounds like and i thought it at first too, until i realized he would do it for the nan of that side also. my husband is a wonderful man and he has a heart the size of the great mersey, but he is a bit of a (shhh) doormat.
It was always initiated by the son saying "you have to go do this for my mom". there were times that we would have to babysit her kids while she boozed it up. now that lasted all of about 10 months until i got fed up of people using my husband to be and then talking sh*t about him after he did them a favor. so i put a right stop to it.
then we were hassled for about 5 months when the boy would get upset he would "drama queen" the problem up and my husband would get a call from the ex and she would yell and scream at him.
so one day i had enough and i looked the boy straight in the eye and told him "you have a problem with something we did, then you come talk to us first! family business is family business and im tired of you lying and twisting the disagreement to your own advantage." since then, no phone calls that i know of over piddly sh*t.

So the bridge was burnt from that side (and she knew it) so now to irritate us, she invites herself along to celebrations that we are having for our side of the family. she is pissed off because just as she is and her son is, i also am an alpha and i take attacks at my family as personal vendettas.
i wont stand for it at all.
she only lives about 3 miles away, no one lives far away on the Wirral LOL but she still insists on my husband bringing her son to her for visits. they dont seem to be bothered by our sitting in the car for what was supposed to be a 5 min thing ends up being an hour or more.
apparently the boy came to live with his dad at the age of 11 and before that it was she had him 3 days a week and my husband the other 4. the boy isnt even named after his dad and she collected the tax credits for the boy all the time and never contributed anything to his dad.
so you see what type of people i am dealing with. but i would like to say that as far as the firing line goes, the boy refers to her as "the  psycho wh*re of tranmere who will sleep with anyone for a fiver"

the boy isnt even named after his dad

What does this mean?  First name or last?  If they weren't married then 19 years ago it would have been difficult to give the boy the same last name as his Dad.  It's just the way it worked here then.

Nineteen is not a kid. Nineteen is going to the big boys' prison age. Nineteen is very nearly not-a-teenager-any-more age. Legal-contract-signing age.

Sounds like this young man needs the boot of reality swiftly up the backside of selfishness.

That said, I don't think you can get in the middle of other people's relationship with their kids. I doubt you'll make any headway and it'll just be upsetting all around. I mean, YOU can act any way you like toward him, but I think you have to be pretty gentle with your husband about making suggestions.

Then again, what do I know? I've never been a mom of any kind. Though I am a step-kid with a forty-year awkward relationship with a stepmother.

Lord, this is starting to sound abit like a Jeremy Kyle show....

You have my utmost sympathies but your husband sounds like a complete doormat.  

I know i'm a hardass but I just couldn't put up with this for very long....life is too short for that kindof stress that you no doubt, internalise and go about grinding your teeth about. He's nearly out of his teens. Time for your hubs to cut the apron strings and throw out some ultimatums. If he wants to be a DJ, great. Go for it. But your husband needs his sleep too so i'd tell the little man he needs to figure out a way home on his own. In a way, the damage has been done and getting any kind of change is going to be horrific.    

i am very protective of my husband and of my children. And in the begining i tried to be that way with the boy, (by the way i only call him this on here as i dont want to use his name), but i saw quickly that would not be happening. i did it for about a year and infact i kept a very personal secret about the boy from his dad, because it was not in my place to tell his father as it was the boy's choice in life. And when the boy found out that i knew (i always had an inklling but it was confirmed when i was sent a conversation from MSN where he was talking evil about me and other things were included in that conversation.) he calmed down and was actually civil to me. I thought HOORAH! he understands that he can trust me and does not need to fear me, how wrong was i?
it soon became apparent after his father found out the secret that the boy was nice out of fear that i would use it as ammunition to mess his life up.
in the first 3 months of my first visit, the boy had shared private information about my ex with all my inlaws (my ex not a good man!), told his mother that we were being loud in the bedroom (which ended up with me being called a "harpy tart" and being told i need to be quite, as if! if you dont have fun enough in the bedroom to be noisey, your doing it wrong! LOL).
he runs behind my back and talks bad about me all the time, but he does it with his dad too so no big surprise there!
he refers to me as the "non-english one" to his mom. not really offended by that because im not english but i do have a name.

That said, I don't think you can get in the middle of other people's relationship with their kids.

Sure you can.  If your stepchildren are living with you and it's affecting your relationship with your spouse (especially if said stepchildren are old enough to go to the big boys' prison!), it is your duty to try and make it better.  If stepmoms were always pushed to the back burner, nobody would ever sign up for that job!

What does this mean?  First name or last?  If they weren't married then 19 years ago it would have been difficult to give the boy the same last name as his Dad.  It's just the way it worked here then.

his last name. it was explained to me because they were due to be married but then he couldnt take her crap. my husband says this was a way of keeping him from getting screwed by the support agencies here. so i understand that part, just dont understand why she kept collecting for a child that wasnt even there?