I was raised solely by my mother up until the age of about 11. I was an only child (biologically). Never knew my father because he never wanted to know me. Mum’s a foster carer so I’ve always had babies and toddlers in my life. Almost became “orphaned” when I was about 7(?) when my Mum got cancer. She had to have a hysterectomy so no more biological siblings. Mum met who is now my stepdad at 11. We adopted by little brother but we had fostered him since birth when I was 12. Oh and I also have a half-sister on my father’s side but she probably doesn’t know I exist.
Raised with both parents at home, the only marriage for each of them. They just passed their 36th anniversary. I was the only girl of the four kids, with two older brothers and a younger brother who’s about 8 years younger than me.
Wow, most of you people seem to come from such…normal…families. I think that’s weird.
I’m the eldest, born when my parents were married. My sister is five years younger, born in the midst of our parents’ divorce. I have two half brothers that were born out of my mother’s brief second marriage, and since they are ten and twelve years younger than I am, and Mom was doing the single mother gig at the time, I pretty much raised them. Mom’s first husband beat her, the second one beat us. Biological dad had custody of me and my sister for a few rocky teenage years, during which his second wife abused him as well as us - plus they produced another three half brothers for me. Mom’s since been married and divorced again, and her third husband has two daughters that I suppose are no longer my stepsisters. And my first stepdad has yet another son from HIS second marriage, who is about 20 now and still hasn’t quite worked out why his brothers have sisters and he doesn’t. Oh, and Mom’s current SO has three grown children whose names I have some difficulty remembering.
Did I mention that in the grand scope of my family’s history, the above is considered to be pretty tame? I have a grandfather who delivered his stillborn daughter and watched his first wife die as well during that birth, and a grandmother who, at age five, inadvertantly killed her own little sister. We’re a wacky bunch.
I was reared (livestock & plants are raised, didn’t your English teacher drill this one into you?) by my biological parents, who got married to one another after having known one another only a few months and are still married, 41 years later. I was born 9 monts and 9 days after they got married. Mom was 20 and Dad was 23. My little brother (oops - almost wrote “bother” - a near-Freudian slip!) was born 22 months and a week after me. No more kids after that.
Dear ol’ mom and good ol’ dad married in 1967, she was 3 months pregnant. His 2nd marraige (produced 2 kids), her first.
They had 3 kids, of which I’m the middle, only girl. During which time he beat her regularly.
In 1980, dad turns 40, has huge midlife crisis. Sold his small business, bought 3 Cadillacs, gives my mom one. Acquires 18 -year-old girlfriend. Said girlfriend breaks up with him, my mom divorces him. He grows his hair long and gets a curly perm, a la Tony Geary (General Hospital), and moves to Alaska to work on the pipeline. Huge audible sigh of relief from me, my mom, and 2 brothers, yay he’s gone! We move without him back to Michigan, from NC where he’d moved us. Mom’s parents buy her a house near them, thank Og she’s gone from that bastid, they hated him.
1982- dad’s back! Mom and dad get remarried. He’s still a big jerk, major dysfunction re-ensues. And that’s where we stand today. Why, oh why did she get back together with him?? Something I will never understand. I really didn’t MIND eating the Pizza-quick sauce on toast for dinner most nights, but I think money may have had something to do with it.
Hey, you asked.
Raised with older brother and two younger sisters by biological parents.
I was out of the house when parents divorced after about 26-27 years of marriage.
Both have since remarried other partners.
I’m amazed (and happy) to see that so many people had traditional happy families to grow up with. Out of 7 couples in my family (aunts, grandparents, etc) only one made it all the way to “till death do us part”, and that was my maternal grandmother and grandfather.
I was brought up in a “normal” nuclear family: 3 kids (I’m the oldest) and parents who managed to stay married for 19 years before divorcing, despite their obvious contempt for one another.
Biological parents, first and only marriage for both of them. Married until my dad’s death. Two sisters and me.
We had a reasonably happy domestic life, with various and sundry weird little quirks and dysfunctions. (I like to call my mom a cross between Donna Reed from The Donna Reed Show, Morticia from The Addams Family and Lucy from I Love Lucy. :eek: ) My dad was also a piece of work, but mostly in a good way. Overall, a pretty “normal” and happy (but weird) family.
Raised by both parents (married for 39 years, and still going strong).
Surviving siblings: (Brother died before I was born)
One older brother, who builds houses for a living. Not the quickest builder, but long after my parents house roll down the hill, the dog house he built for our Father’s birthday will still be standing.
One younger sister, who teaches Kindergarden. Used to work in a inner-city school in Charlotte, but got tired of playing “Count the bullet holes” every fall. She now teaches in Cary. (IMHO, she traded troubled inner-city youths for troubled rich-prick youths. At lease she no longer worries about drive bys)
Currently: I am married to the most wonderful woman in the world, and we have one little boy (nine and a half months old). HC2 (hypothetical child number two) is still in the planig stages.
Born into a traditional nuclear family of practicing catholics in Southern California. Three kids, me the youngest, born between 1960-1965. Father died when I was seven, Mom was an intermittently angry person the years before his death (probably because she had no opportunity for sexual release, but she didn’t know that), and for a few years afterwards (because she didn’t have the wherewithall to raise three brats – which she did know). The three kids fought non-stop from Dad’s death until I left for college permanently in 1987 (well, it seems that way).
And we all get along great now. We’ve been through the wars, mellowed a bit.
Middle kid here (older sister, younger brother). Raised by my biological parents who stayed married about 15 years too long. Eventually they divorced when I was about 24.
I thought it was the 1st and only marriage for both, then at 18 the bombshell hit. Turns out my Mom was breifly married to a man before my Dad, and the other guy is the real father of my older sister. This may have been the best kept secret in county history.
Apparently, the guy ended up in prison not long after the wedding and the marriage was annulled. My Dad didn’t meet my sister until she was 9 months old, but raised her as her own. He married my Mom w/in months and soon I arrived, and 4 years later the kid brother.
My Mom won’t discuss any of this with anyone, it’s as if she doesn’t talk about it, it never happened. But Dad tells me that my sister’s real father got out of prison and moved to the very small town we lived in (pop. 12,000 or so), but never once tried to contact my sis or Mom.
All of our cousins (who lived there, too) knew the truth, and of course all of my parents friends etc. Yet the secret didn’t get out until I was 18 and my sister was 20. One of my cousins who didn’t live in the same town let it slip when we ended up at the same college.
Just a side note, my brother and I are both reasonably well adjusted adults now. My sister is the biggest flake on the continent. So when nature/nurture debates come up, a have to believe nature plays a BIG part.
~S
I feel I should add: My kid brother and I are best friends. I’m still close with both of my parents. I only see my sister because 1) she’s married to a friend of mine, and 2) I love their kids.
My parents haven’t spoken (to each other) outside the presence of a lawyer in 7 years. They’re both still single.
My brother and sister refuse to get along.
Both of my siblings are still close to both of my parents.
Classic middle kid stuff here: I am the only one who can put up with all four of the others–The family mediator.
~S
I was raised by my biological parents, who separated in 1976, when my mom took my two younger brothers and adopted sister and left to escape his alcoholism and rampant anger and beating (of me). They never divorced, they just never talked to one another again. My mother died of liver cancer 8 years ago, my so-called father died a couple of years ago, I dunno, I wasn’t paying attention. I hadn’t talked to him in 20 years.
My next youngest brother has a son from a failed relationship. My youngest brother has been with his partner for over 10 years. My sister has had two failed marriages and has one daughter from the first and a daughter and son from the second (the latter of whom I’ve never even seen a picture of). I’ve been happily married for 6 years, but we’re not having any children.
My maternal grandfather was my grandmother’s second husband. Her first husband was the Unspoken Relative. The man I knew as Grandpa died in 1973, she died in the mid-80s. I can’t remember when my paternal grandparents died, she sometime in the '70s, he sometime in the '80s. I didn’t know them very well. My father’s two brothers disconnected from the family early on. I met one of them only once, and the other moved to England in the '70s and I never saw him again. When he died, his only record of kin was my youngest brother, on the west coast of Canada (!). Of his three sisters, one still lives in the town where she was born, one died in the early '90s, the other lives thousands of miles away.
I have a good connection to my youngest brother, a tenuous connection to my next youngest, and no connection to anybody else in the family. My mother’s three brothers all live hundreds or thousands of miles from each other, and never communicate. It’s a big change from Christmases at Grandma’s when the house was so full of people that you couldn’t move…
I think I’d call us a pretty dysfuncional bunch, wouldn’t you?
I was born a poor black child.
Raised by first generation immigrants. Parents divorced when I was 8. Didn’t see my father again til I was 16. Then saw him only a handful of times since. Mother worked all the time while I was growing up so i never got to really know her either. For example, my mother forgot how old I was and I didn’t know exactly how old she was nor her birthday. I have a sister one year older and a brother 2 years younger. I get along great with both, but they hate each other.
Heard my father remarried 3 times. His second wife was a mail order bride from china that later tried to kill him. Too bad she failed.
His 3rd wife he divorced several months later.
His 4th wife is yet another mail order bride from China. And the kicker is, she’s 5 years younger than me. Supposedly I have a step brother from their union. I have no desire to see him or his evil seeds ever.
and
Me, too.
I’m the oldest of two. My parents were married 13 years; they divorced when I was 10 (my brother was 8). My mom got the house and the kids came with it. My dad moved across state when I was 12 and my brother got to go with. I drove my mom crazy until she let me go live with my dad when I was 13.
My brother was shipped back to Mom when I was 14. He lived with her until he graduated and went into the Marines. I lived with dad for a few more months, then got kicked out by the insane bitch he was living with.
Mom didn’t really relish the idea of my return, so I lived with my 18 year old boyfriend’s family for 10 months (the afore-mentioned wolves–oh, the stories I could tell). Around the time my boyfriend and I split up, my dad got rid of the crazy woman and decided I could move back in.
When I was 16, I started seeing my first husband (he was 23). He moved in with my dad and me. I got pregnant (long story) and had my first daughter 2 months before I turned 17 (got married 3 months later). I had my second daughter 2 months before I turned 18. Left my first husband when I was 19.
Basically, I raised myself from the age of 14 to 19 and did a bad job of it. I did a better job when me and my two kids started growing up together.
Parents divorced when I was a baby, Dad was never in the picture, and my mom (who never remarried) and grandmother raised me (I’m an only child).
Well, since someone brought up dysfunction:
My parents divorded when I was 3. I was raised by my mother ( I have 2 older sisters). When I was 12, I went into the first of 9 foster homes. Over the next 2 years, I was in 8 foster homes. I spent my last 3 1/2 years with the same family. My sisters lived in group homes and foster homes and one sister ended up in an independent living program for teen girls.
Now, my mother is on her second marriage (11 years and happy) and my dad is on his 3rd (the second was to an ex nun).
My oldest sister is seperated from her husband and is living in a trailer with her son, her boyfriend and his 4 kids. My middle sister is on her second husband and they have one kid. She spent the 4 years with her first husband, homeless. The sad thing is that my sisters are only 27 and 25.
Even sadder is that my upbringing isn’t unusual. 
I’m being raised by both biological parents, and they’re both on their first marriage. I have one brother and no sisters.
Wow…that sounds kinda boring. :rolleyes:
Same story for me here as well. My dad was apparently very violent toward my Mom; as a result, there was no visitation nor any child support awarded (this is back in 73). However, I had 4 wonderful uncles who were basically my “dads.” Grandma died in 1980 when I was 7, so it was just Mom (who is permanently disabled from a back injury suffered 5 years before my birth-yes, I’m a miracle baby) and I until I got married back in 02. I did get word that my father died last year, and I did go to the memorial (I know, kinda creepy to go to a memorial for a person you didn’t know, but…). Oddly enough, I found out that no one, not even his widow, knew about my Mom or me. I also found out I was his ONLY child. I tried to contest the will (at the time I thought money would alleviate the pain I felt over being totally overlooked by my father), but found out that if I had been less than 18, I was entitled. I was 29, so I was SOL.
Dysfunctional enough for you??