Thea
I am childless due to infertility, miscarriage, and circumstance. My husband has 3 kids, who were 11, 13 and 15 when I came to their father’s life 7 years ago. They have a mother and do not need me to take that role. These children and their mother have a very, very different background, upbringing, behavior, and values compared to mine. I do not enjoy their company. I cannot relate to these kids at all, and do not appreciate the way they have been brought up and how they behave even now as young adults. If I did not have to deal with them because of my husband’s poor marital choice in his youth, I would not encounter or socialize with people who behave like this.
So, when people refer to me as a stepparent or step grandparent, I feel offended, hurt, and shocked. Probably they think it is kind to make me somehow feel a part of something by artificially relating me to another woman’s children. But instead, I am reminded that I am actually not a parent myself, and never could become one and never will become one. And what is even more painful, is that had I been able to become a parent, my children would have been very, very different from these kids born and raised by another, very different woman. It feels like an offense to my unborn children that they should be replaced by these very different creatures, in somebody else’s mind.
Is there an expression that we childless not by choice and “not-a-stepparent-by-choice” could advocate to increase the awareness of not identifying as a parent to somebody else’s children? So that we could have the peace to try and find an honest existence as a non-parent and the respectful acknowledgement of the loss of our own children, who cannot ever be replaced.
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash