Who needs to figure that out, exactly? Why is that relevant to anyone but the family in question?
Another adopter per chance? Paying the bills is only one of the more obvious manifestations of doing all the necessary little things associated with training children to be functional adults. I’m clearly wondering why you think it is necessary to be called a parent to do this. And often it’s not a question of “allowing” the adoptee to respond to the adult as a parent, it’s the adopter forcing the child to call them mother or father when they do not want to. It strikes me as the act of someone that doesn’t really care about the child, only how they are perceived in the world.
Teachers, cops, hospital personnel, depending on their religious tradiations anyone who has social contact with the family outside of a nod when passing, especially the people who have to interact with the child.
My thoughts exactly. Obviously people close enough to the family are going to know anyway. If a random person overhears a little boy calling his stepmother “Mom” or his stepdad “Dad,” and assumes there’s a blood relationship…who cares, really? Who is this hurting?
ETA: If you’re in a situation where those people need to know, you can tell them. Though to be honest, I’m not sure why you need to tell a teacher, “That’s little Tommy’s STEPmother, not his real mom.”
Uh…why?
Unless one is an agent of the state child welfare department, who cares what the actual relationship is? Is this something you feel the need to keep tabs on, the bloodline of all the people you know and/or come across in your daily life?
“Blood is thicker than water” is just an aphorism. What counts is how the child is loved, cared for and taught, and you don’t have to have contributed DNA to do well by a child under those criteria.
Your vast experience leads you to this conclusion, eh? :rolleyes:
This would be an assertion certain to cause controversy and drama on a message board, were one so inclined, but surely that can’t be your intention, right?
I was a very loved (and probably a little spoiled) child and remember my childhood as very blissfull. But it never occurred to me that I needed specifically this one woman or man to call Mom and Dad in order to be happy, safe, and secure. In truth, when I was a child I felt sorry for my friends that only had two parents (or worse only one). They seemed so lonely and dependent.
So you consider yourself to have had more than two parents? Wouldn’t that be biologically impossible? Why are you confusing the language like that?
The genetic relationship between the parents and the child might be important information during a medical procedure, but otherwise what reason do any of these individuals have for knowing about it? A teacher or a cop … why? What use would that information be to them? And what religious traditions are you talking about?
Two words: permission slips. In some districts, a stepparent can’t just sign them. There has to be other legal documentation on file giving the stepparent permission to sign.
May I suggest that your own personal family-related pain and suffering does not translate to universality? You are revealing quite a lot of a very twisted view of the issues surrounding the concept of family in this thread. I’m reading your posts about this and getting a definite feeling that you aren’t really plugged into the concept of family that the larger society holds.
The people who care for you, who raise you, who are there for you when you have chicken pox, who take you to your first day of school, who act as home-room mothers, who drive you to Little League or piano lessons or Learning Center art classes, who then hang the product of those art classes on the fridge, who know what you like to eat and what you like to read and what your favorite stuffed animal is, who have taken on the completely optional responsibility and honor of helping you become a productive and good member of society for no more compensation than the joy of raising a child who had no hope from a very young age…those are Mom and Dad. Regardless of whether or not they contributed to your genetic makeup.
You continue to make adoption sound like a completely selfish act that’s calculated to do more to tickle the adopting couple’s humanitarian sensibilities than to help a child who has no home. That’s more than a little twisted.
I don’t think you need to be the “parent” to raise a child. Many adults raised me, but I did not (nor did I see a reason to) refer to them as Mom or Dad.
Is that still the case if the stepparent has ADOPTED the child in question?
Children need a sense of belonging and permanence. That is why some foster kids who are bounced from place to place have problems making connections with others out of a fear that they will be rejected or abandoned. If you adopt a baby and insist on being called ** ZPG Zealot** instead of mom then the kid will think that you don’t care and are maintaining a distance. Why even bother to adopt the kid in the first place? Adoption is done out of love. The people who become foster parents as a money making plan (I met a few who played to system and knew they would get more by taking in special needs kids) are scum and, unfortunately, the kids pay the price.
But let’s figure out just how off base you can be, ** ZPG Zealot**: what about gay couples who want to adopt? I guess they shouldn’t be reading the book Heather has two Mommies. Instead it should be Heather lives with Ellen and Portia because, obviously, those two women, no matter how much they love that baby and how desperately they wanted her in their lives, can never be her mommy.
This made me laugh.
For the record - I am amused, not hysterical.
I have 2 adopted kids. Well, young adults now.
I will tell them to stop calling me “Mom” and pick another title. Why? Because, it is “fiction”, I am not their mother despite having full legal responsibility for them the first 18 years of their lives. I will also amend my trust. The large inheritance shall no longer go to them when I die, as I am not their Mother.
Also, when they do have children of their own, I will instruct their children never to call me “Grandma”.
I don’t think you get it. “Father” or “mother”* is* the actual relationship between parents and their children, whether adoptive or biological.
There’s nothing to figure out, in other words. A person who points to another and says, “That’s my mother” is usually telling you about a relationship between them. This relationship is what is important, not who gave birth.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m with you…I’m going to start calling my parents…excuse me, my ADOPTERS by their first names, and when they object, I will tell them that I simply cannot go on with this fiction any longer! Then, I will proceed to tell every single person who has ever interacted with me that I was adopted, so they can alter their approach to our interactions as they deem appropriate, now that they know I was lying to them by omission all this time. It’s the least I can do for all concerned, really.
Some religious tradiations consider a person to be ritually “unclean” if they share food, drink or swimming water with someone who is illegitimate or otherwise residing in a state they consider immoral such as a remarriage after divorce under certain circumstances. I consider such beliefs superstitution, but for others it is something they sincerely worry about and I would not want to subject someone who did worry about such a situation to undue trouble. If people are honest about what the family relationships are, this doesn’t happen.
If people want to believe such an ugly, nasty lie, that’s their problem. Why should we cater to people whose ignorant beliefs lead to hurting others?