Catching Up to the Reality of Nontraditional Families

For reasons I won’t get too deep into here, I didn’t get married to my husband until I was 34. He had been married before and has two sons. Now that I’m a stepmom, I have more of a stake than ever in our culture and society acknowledging non-traditional families.

When I was a kid in elementary school, I couldn’t remember a time when my parents had been in love or gotten along. I thought our family was the only “different” one, but even then, I know from statistics now that we couldn’t have been. So why did I think that?

Now, my current occupation involves teaching children from varying nontraditional family settings and backgrounds, whether blended families or having been adopted by family members other than biological parents, etc. I just want them to know a lot of us don’t have typical storybook families anymore, and that’s okay, especially if there’s love and care.

Is it always easy for them? No! And that’s all the more reason why we need more childrens’ books, more TV shows, more books and articles, etc., acknowledging the reality of all kinds of families — those with same-sex parents (thank you, Modern Family), half-siblings, step-siblings, adoption, remarried parents, etc. There are many variations, and I just don’t think our culture or media have fully caught up. I just want all of us with these various types of families to feel like we don’t have to do so much explaining.

I had thoughts about where my life would go when I was in my early twenties, but my path turned out to be atypical. While there are some things I regret, I like to think that nothing was wasted ultimately. But still, my relational trajectory has become yet another thing about my life that’s not a short story. And here I am, lucky and blessed enough to have an almost-but-not-quite parental relationship to two awesome and very different guys, which in turn has shaped our decisions about bringing new babies into the world or not. I am happy to have the family I do now, and the love is there — I just need to know how many others are going through the same things we are sometimes.

Let’s acknowledge our step-dads and -moms on Fathers’ and Mothers’ day. Let’s acknowledge grandparents who parent grandkids or any adoptive parents. Let’s not limit graduation tickets to two. Let’s support and display strong examples of non-traditional families, and may there be plenty of love wherever it can be found.