One of my friends said that step-grandparents who never gave birth themselves can never be real grandparents. Another friend said that blood ties have nothing to do with whether or not a grandparent is real.
What is your opinion? Also, do you think that you think that being related by blood means that the love you feel is stronger? Would it make a difference if the step-grandparent was the only grandparent who had been there since the birth of the first grandchild? What makes a true grandparent?
Answers from all ages, relationships and points-of-view will be appreciated.
Zoe
Blood ties are over-emphasized in my opinion. Yes, they’re important, but two blood relatives separated at birth have less of a tie than best friends who have been pals for 50 years.
A parent is someone who raises a child. Adoptive parents are not “lesser” parents for not having given birth to a child. Likewise, a step-grandparent who has been around since the birth of a child just as 'real" a grandparent as an adoptive parent is a “real parent”.
And a lot has to do with the culture of the people involved. There are cultures that recognize only blood ties as important. Others easily adopt people into an extended family.
I personally hope to adopt someday, one of the reasons is to demonstrate how little i think “blood ties” matter in determining who is a “real” parent. Like it has been said, a parent is the financial, physical, and emotional support of a child…and that is a bond that can be created just as easily with adoption or with step parents.
I have step kids. I started dating their dad when they were very young, ages 3 and 1. They were comfortable calling me by my first name. They still do. That doesn’t mean that I don’t love them as much as I love my own kids. My parents also love them very much. When some one asks them how many grandkids they have they answer 7. Only three of them are “birth” grandkids. They do not love the other 4 any less.
I didn’t know my paternal grandfather until I was 7. I always knew my step-grandpa. I loved them both very much. I refered to my step-grandpa as grandpa Al and my “real” grandpa as grandpa Cecil. I loved them both, and was close to them both before they died.
My parents divorced when I was in my early 20’s. They’ve now remarried. Their spouses are grandparents to my neices and nephew.
My Mom’s husband in particular is close to my youngest sister’s kids. She and her first child lived with Mom and husband for a while after her divorce. So Step-Dad got to spend a bit of time with my neice and they developed a very strong bond. (He has two children from a previous marriage many years ago but had little to do with their up-bringing.) My sister re-married and has another daughter who loves her grandpa like crazy. (That youngest daughter, 7 yrs old, considers her sister’s half sister, her sister, she either doesn’t understand or makes no distinction between family ties.)
I have no children, but my best friend has three sons, I am Aunt to them with whatever priviledges and responsibilities that brings.
My Hubby does not have a close relationship with his family, he loves his brother and his family but not seeing or talking to them does not bother him in the least. He has not spoken to his sister in more than 15 years but does ask about her when he speaks to his family. His father was abusive to his children, Hubby got out of there at about 14 or 15 and never went back, I’ve seen his parents maybe 5 or 6 time in the almost 18 years since I met Hubby.
We found out last night that his Dad and Mom are ill, his Dad more so. He was talking to his brother last night trying to figure out what needs to be done in regards to them. Hubby has always said that should his father die he wants his mother to come live with us. It’s not my favorite idea but he loves his mother and the need to do the right thing by his family dispite past wrongs is overwhelming.
Blood doesn’t make a family, give birth to it sometimes but isn’t what a family is.
Forgot to add, my friend that I am Aunt to her sons, those sons are from three different marriages. Son #3 is from the current marriage. This Husband’s parents are grandparents to all three boys. Back in September they flew up from Virginia to up-state New York to see the oldest ‘grandchild’ in his school play.
When the boys go down to visit their dads, the middle child always wants to spend time with the youngest boys grandparents.
And if you ask my friends Husband how many sons he has, he will tell you three. They ARE his children as far as he is concerned. (The oldest boy is only 12 years younger than his step-dad.)
My father’s bio parents divorced when he was three. He lived with his mother. His mother remarried when he was six. He knew that man as his father from then on, treated him like his father, he was the only paternal grandfather I ever knew, I carried his coffin when he died.
My mother’s mother died when she was twenty five and I was two. My grandfather remarried. His wife was my grandmother, the only maternal grandmother I can really remember. She knitted me mittens, baked me cookies, babysit eleven grandchildren and now has eight great grandchildren. I read the eulogy at her funeral three weeks ago.
My mother in law remarried here a few years ago. Her husband - in his fifties - had an eighty year old mother. She had two children, but neither of them ever had grandchildren. My children became her first and only set of grandchildren. She was a very vibrant woman for her age, and my children loved her. She died suddenly about a month ago (shortly before my own grandmother). My four and five year old want to know why Grandma died and have cried over her loss.
My mother in law also has a birth daughter placed for adoption as an infant. She has a son, which would be my MIL grandson. Despite blood ties, the ties there are not close at all.
My father met his bio dad when I was a child, despite blood ties, I have seen the man only three times in my life. His wifes death was a footnote in my life. My own children are completely unaware of his existance (their other great grandfathers both passed on before they were born).
My own son is adopted, plus I have a bio daughter. I can’t imagine loving either of them any more. And I can’t imagine their grandparents loving them any more, regardless of blood ties. My adopted son was a particular favorite with both his recently deceased great grandparents. My son does feel a tie to his birth mom - which is natural - he says he “misses her.” Which is understandable. In some odd sense, I miss her too.
My opinion is that your friends comments are insensitive, ill-informed and offensive. Does your friend have step grandparents? Does she have adopted family members?
My Grandma divorced my Grandad and re-married before I was born. I called her second husband Grandad, (he died in December.) The fact that there was no blood ties meant nothing to us. Although my mum called him by his first name and not Dad, he was always my Grandad, and I was always his Granddaughter.
Blood ties are irelevant. It’s how you feel about someone that matters.
I’ve always said that if any point in time, I’m contacted by the hospitals where I gave birth to be informed that there was a ‘mix-up with the babies’ and the kids I’ve raised weren’t my ‘birth’ kids, then too bad. (There’s really not much of a chance of this happening though.) These kids are the ones I’ve raised since birth, and nothing could make them less of my children–blood or not.
When the girls were little, I remarried a guy who was there more than their bio dad. He was a parent teacher meetings, there for the middle of the night vomits, there with a BandAid for scraped knees, and fixed about a billion lunches and snacks. Our marriage didn’t work out (although we’re still very close friends today, years later), but they still view him as a more important part of their lives than their bio dad ever was.
I’m with phall0106 on this. It is not the blood that is important, but the family. Almost any one of us could have been mixed up at birth, and not be of the same blood as our parents. But surely your family would still be those parents who bought you up, and those Children you bought up (and siblings and …) no matter if there was or was not a mixup at birth?
Blood, shmud. If I ever have kids, god forbid, there’s “blood” relatives I wouldn’t want to be around them. Just cause we share DNA doesn’t make them decent people.
My mums side of the family is Irish. One of her cousins went to a house, knocked on the door and shot the young women (could be girl, I can’t remember) who answered it. Why? Because she believed in the ‘wrong’ religion.
There are definitly relatives who are best not knowing.
I agree with those who say blood relation is unimportant, at least to me. Outside my immediate family (Mom, daughter, siblings) my family of origin (especially my Dad’s side) is filled with alcoholics, murderers, child rapists and assorted self-serving unethical people. I had to cut ties with them. This quote, cheesy as it is, helped me out in that:
The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
“However, analysis of homicide cases indicates that the differences are genuine and massive. The youngest children rarely have stepparents, but when they do, studies in Canada, Britain and the United States indicate that their risk of being fatally abused is on the order of 50 to 100 times higher than risk at the hands of a
genetic parent. Having a stepparent has turned out to be the single most powerful predictor of severe child maltreatment yet discovered.”
I grew up in the house of my (step) grandpa. He passed away in 1976, but to this day I would fight to the death with anyone who would dare say that he was somehow not my “real” grandpa.
The way you treat people and are treated by them is what makes a family relationship. Blood matters little if at all.
My grandfather remarried after my grandmother passed away. Though I was already in my twenties, I feel much closer to Grandma Dorothy than I ever did to my “real” grandma.
So, Zoe, your friend is essentially saying that the only reason my grandma Jerry is my grandma is because she has some biological kids to add to the mix? If she hadn’t provided my dad with another stepsister, she wouldn’t have baked me birthday cakes, picked out dolls, sewn me little things to play with, taken inordinate pride in my minor accomplishments, come to my wedding shower when she was so weak from chemo she could barely get across the room, watched my wedding video with tears in her eyes, and still call me her granddaughter twenty years after my grandfather died? Your friend doesn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground, and you can tell her I said so.
My paternal grandmother died when my dad was 2, and Grandpa remarried a couple of years later. My first step-grandparent was an evil harpy who hated my dad and took it out on me and my brother. She made huge differences between us and her “real” grandkids, as much as Grandpa tried to even things out. That’s what the family tells me, anyway; she died when I was 2 or 3. I barely even remember the woman. I’ve always called his third wife Grandma; she’s been a part of my life since I was four years old, and she’s the only paternal grandmother I ever remember. They were only married two years before he died, and she’s been remarried for twelve years or so. It does’t matter, she’s still my grandma and always will be. If she hadn’t had kids of her own, nothing would be any different, because she would have loved me just as much.
It’s nothing to do with blood, or even with marriage. I love all my family equally, whether they’re full, step, or half (the step-steps not so much, mainly because I barely know them and what I do know of them is pretty jerkish). I don’t differentiate between my dad’s sister, his half-sister, or his stepsisters, or any of their kids. They’re just my aunts and cousins, and I love them even when I don’t like them very much. The grief I feel at the fact that my dad’s stepsister’s husband is dying of lung cancer is as great as it would be for any of my other uncles.
A family is made from love. I have friends who are more my brother than he born to my blood and I believe that grandparents can be related by birth - or not, but if they are related by love, that is all that counts.
My sister was/is closer to her “steps” than I am, though I’m the one with the blood ties to them. My paternal grandmother never made any distinction between her son’s step daughter and her biological grandchildren, and since I was still very young when my parents broke up and mum took my sister and I to another province, sis had a closer relationship with gran than I did. No “step-granma”, her.
Nowadays, sis has lunch with my father’s sister once a week (I live in another part of the country) . When she got back in touch with our family after years of seperation, she regained two nieces.
We haven’t seen a couple of my mother’s sisters in years, despite living in the same small city. So much for blood.
I’ve known my younger sister since before she could walk across a room unaided. She used to call me “Ti” before she could manage Melissa. Now she freaks me out by being so darn grown up when I go home to visit. We don’t share any genetics. But she’s my little sister.