Wow. Lots of two-parents folks; are most of y’all older than about 25, if you don’t mind me asking? I’m 19 and most all of my friends were either illegitimate, have divorced parents, single parents, gay parents, were abandoned by their parents, were fostered, etc. Only a couple have the traditional mom-and-pop family, with the 1.5 siblings.
As for me, in more detail, I was born to a single (divorced) woman who had one son by her first husband. My father was married, but not to my mother. Eventually my mother went to prison and I was taken in by my aunt and uncle, who raised me with one of their foster sons. My biological father is alive but I’ve never met him. I have one much older half-brother and one foster brother.
Only child, Dad married once before Mom. I have a half sister but I’ve only seen her three times. She seems nice but there’s 20+ years between us and the last time I saw her I was 22 and childless. She had 4 kids, two of them older than me. We just didn’t have much to talk about. I’ve met one of my neices too.
There was eighteen years between Mom and Dad so I used to have people assume he was my grandpa all the time. He was 47 when i was born. He had heart trouble from the time I was 9 mo’s and had to retire when I was 12. Things were pretty tight, financally.
Mom developed agoraphobia when I was in the later part of childhood and they both took up alchol in a big way during my teens. Life was, um, interesting.
I also had my Grandmother who lived with us until she passed away when I was 13. Great lady.
Dad died in '86, the day before Kid, the Elder was born and Mom died in’95.
I live with Mr zoogirl, not exactly married but 23 years and counting and our teenage sons, Kid, the Elder and Kid, the Younger (not their real names )
I am a twin, I have a set of twin brothers, and a set of twin sisters. (That’s 3 sets of twins for the mathematically impaired)
All together I have 6 brothers and 6 sisters.
I was raised in Chicago, and my father (who wasn’t a good man) went out one day and didn’t come back. I was 11. He left 13 kids and never sent a nickle all those years. I haven’t seen him in 30 years. (although I know where he lives)
My mother would never be confused with a good parent, but you have to respect a woman who can keep 13 kids together on wit and pure stubborness.
Lessee… youngest of five children, parents still married after 56 years, Dad’s first marriage, Mom’s second (WWII widow – or was she?). My sister married young, had four kids, got divorced, and met and married her present husband – whole family is terrific. The rest of us married relatively late, no split-ups. Including Sis, we’ve given Mom & Dad 12 grandkids between us, and 4 great-grandkids (and 2 step-great-grandkids).
My parents have been married for 31 years. I’m the older of two girls; I’m 25 and my sister is 20. Although most of my friends’ parents were divorced, now that I think about it, most of my parents’ friends (does that make sense? like, friends of the family, not my school friends) were and are married. I wonder if married couples attract other married couples as friends.
My left-wing hippie atheist parents are a walking advertisement for the sanctity of marriage.
One (older) sister, parents divorced when I was five.
They’d been married for 19 years, but it was a tense, unhappy union from the time I could remember.
It was very weird when they divorced, though. Back then it wasn’t done, a real stigma. I’m dead serious when I say both my sister and I lost friends because their parents wouldn’t let them play with us any more. (Did they think open unhappiness was contaigous, and that kids somehow carried the virus?) I trace my distaste for organized religion to the Sunday afterwards, when mom took us to church as usual. People–our Christian “friends”–pointedly moved out of the pew when we sat down. Then the sermon started: a long excoriation on the sanctity of marriage. * It was a most pointed, public humiliation in the name of “acceptable” families."
One friend–Louise, bless her–talked to us and walked out with us. The pastor refused to speak to my mother, my sister or me at the door. And this was in a blah, middle-class Methodist church in the burbs. All in all, an icy but ultimately illuminating experience.
My father’s mother, long widowed and aging, left her home to move in with my father. She was a wonderful German gramma everybody should have. My sister and I were with them every weekend, and for a month in summers. We just had two real homes. We adapted and, after a while, most people did too. My sister and I now laugh–ruefully but for real–that we just lived it ahead of the trend.
*There was no question of anything racy like infidelity. They were just two people who were simply could not live together. To be honest, I think they muddled along until they finally had kids.
I’m the last of seven children. My mother had two sets of twins, but one set died. The seven of us were born within six years of each other. My parents were married for 48 years, until my father’s death. My mother remarried after his death, one of his closest friends who was a widower.
My parents were Catholic and raised us all Catholic. With me and a couple sisters it stuck, with the others, not so much. One sister has 4 daughters (also a set of twins which died) and has been married for 27 years. One sister has 2 children - her husband decided she had to get an abortion with the second one so she decided he should leave instead. She’s never remarried. The last sister has one child and is still married to her first and only husband. My brother has 3 sons with his second wife. I have never married and have no children. Both sets of grandparents were married until death did they part. Of my parents’ combined 16 siblings, four have been divorced. I have 41 first cousins.
Raised by both bio parents, first marriage - never divorced (50th anniv this year). Two kids; boy (me) and girl. Right-from-the-cliche suburbia with a big yard, go-cart(s), RV, ski-boat and (for awhile) a small plane.
Us? both bio parents, first marriage - never divorced (25th anniv this year). Two kids; boy and girl. Right-from-the-cliche suburbia with a big yard, go-cart(s), RV, ski-boat and (for awhile) a small plane.
My parents were high school sweethearts who got married when they were both 20 years old. They’re still together (50 years in June), and love each other more now than they did the day they were married. They have actually morphed into this one being - the RobertShirley. No one that I’ve ever asked can imagine one without the other.
I had 3 older brothers, one of whom (the one nearest to me in age, seven years older) died of AIDS in 1990. My two living brothers and I remain very, very close (as is the entire family).
When I re-married in November I asked the photographer to take a portrait of the five of us. It is the only such photograph that I know of (surprisingly enough, given our closeness), and my mother is absolutely radiant in it. She calls it “The Queen and Her Court.”
I’m the older of two kids. When my sister is around and the question of birth order comes up, I say I was the birth, and she was the afterbirth… She usually mumbles something about how I did such a good job of teaching my ass to sit between my shoulders and speak…
I was raised by both parents until they split when I was 13, over my father’s skirt chasing. Mom had a rough go while I was in high school. My sister briefly flirted with speed while in high school, but got over that. Neither of us had a good relationship with Dad for those years, but it warmed up all the way around when everyone was an adult.
Youngest child, and only daughter of bio parents who’ve been married 45 years. I was, apparently, unplanned and unwanted and have been treated as the thing the cat dragged in all my life.
Not married, no kids and intend to stay that way …
Elder brothers have been married and divorced (or common law equivalent) several times, and some of their ex spouses came from *ucked up families
I thought my story might be unusual in 2004, but it appears that’s not the case.
I was raised by my biological parents. I’m the eldest and only son. I have two sisters. My parents are still married after 41 years and were high-school sweethearts. I’ve been married to my high-school sweetheart for 16 years and have 3 little ones myself. My sisters are both happily married and one has 4 kids herself. All of us remain close and live within 100 miles of each other. All that said, the most amazing sense of stability comes from the geneological research I’ve done on the family.
Following both my mom’s and my dad’s sides of the family, I can go back to the 1700’s and there’s nothing but typical married, biological parents raising their kids, all in either North Carolina or Virginia. It’s difficult to articulate, but the feeling of belonging I got from that research has been moving to say the least. I love my wife deeply, but even if we were at odds, I don’t think I could ever divorce her now, just because I don’t want to be the one to break the chain.
I was raised by my grand-mother on my mother’s side. Until she died when I was 13. My parents were living in a Paris subburb, while I was living in a small village in the countryside. I would see them twice a year : they would come during summer for vacations, and I would come to Paris with my grand-mother for Christmas.
I’ve 4 elder brothers who were raised by my parents. The main reason why I wasn’t is that my mother didn’t want her own mother to stay alone. So, they send me there. It didn’t struck me as weird until I hit my 20’s, and following various remarks made by other people. The way you’ve been living always seems “normal”, I guess.
This situation wasn’t heart-breaking for me. As i said, when I was a child, it was just the way things were. Besides, it had the advantage of allowing me to live in the countryside, and doing plenty of things childs living in cities or subburbs can only dream of. I still wonder how I could have had anything remotely looking like my concept of “childhood” in a city or subburbian area.
The major and quite serious drawback was that my grand-mother, being elderly, was in poor and declining health. So, I was always affraid that she could die (which eventually happened, of course), and very concerned about her health issues (heart disease).
When I hit 11, it was time to enter middle-school (or whatever it is called in english/american parlance). Since the place I was living was a very small one, I had to go to a boarding school (coming back over the week-end to my grand-mother’s) if I were to stay in this area. My mother gave me the choice between going to this boarding school or coming to live with them. I choose the boarding school because otherwise my grand-mother would have had to live alone on a permanent basis or to go to a retirment home. I think I should never have had to handle such a choice at this age (don’t take me wrong : it wasn’t a blackmail by my parents. I don’t think my mother even mentionned my grand-mother. But since I was living with her, the consequences were obvious.)
After my grand-mother death, when I was 13, I came to live with my parents. My brothers, being older, were hitting adulthood, and except one, had left or were only living there on a part-time basis, depending on their jobs/studies/military status. I left immediatly after having completed high school, not because my parents were terrible (they were nice people) but because I needed independance.
Another veteran of divorce here - my parents split up in 1966 after about a decade of marriage, leaving my mother with a five-year-old (my elder sister), a three-year-old (me, the guy in the middle) and an infant (my younger sister). I grew up with them.
My mother has never remarried, my father has done so twice (both ended in divorce) and so I also have two half-sisters and a half-brother. (Or steps, whatever.) My sisters are both married, and I have six nieces and nephews. I have some cousins on both sides of the family, but haven’t seen any of them for ages. Then again, I’ve been living outside the U.S. for a decade now, so I don’t see my own family very much, to say the least. I’m single.
Fortunately my parents’ divorce was relatively amicable as these things go, and my mother did not go in for talking our father down in front of us or otherwise trying to turn us against him. Quite unlike one of my childhood friends, whose parents had a seriously poisonous relationship that I believe was largely responsible for the serious emotional problems that afflicted him in adolescence and early adulthood.
I was raised by an elderly Shao Lin monk who found me upon a lotus leaf over a still pond…
Well, no. I just read too many comic books. I was raised by both my biological parents, until my mother died when I was 15. My brother was 8 years older than I, and already living nearby with his wife and daughter, so my father and I were alone in the house after that–fortunately, we’ve always gotten along very well. There was no teenage strife that I can recall. My brother and I were raised, quite literally, in the family business–Dad ran the electronics repair part, Mom handled the books, and we kids hung around, played, and (later) helped out in the shop. My niece and nephew mostly grew up in the shop, too–Dad and my brother still own the place and work in it.
I firmly believe that if Mom were alive, Dad would still be happily married to her.
)
She usually mumbles something about how I did such a good job of teaching my ass to sit between my shoulders and speak…