My feelings about parenthood are analogous to my feelings about any other sort of chosen human relationship, like having a lover.
I can easily imagine some people are burned by love, or have suffered in a bad relationship, and choose to remain single as a result; I can also imagine that some feel no desire to have such a relationship. Seems that, for them, remaining single is a valid choice - but not one I would want. It is better, on average, to take the risks inherent in starting a relationship, in order to perhaps gain love - even though it is a risk and there is no guarantee you will gain it, and being non-single puts a big cramp in your lifestyle - you can no longer order your life exactly how you please, but must take your lover into account; if you live together, this can be very irksome. Plus there is the risk that your lover will be abuse, or overly clingy, or break your heart.
Similarly, I think, having children is a big risk and can end badly - your kids can do bad things, they can break your heart, and they most definitely will impact your lifestyle, to put it mildly. The pay-off is in the possibility of love - a different sort of love than what one feels for a partner, and in some ways, a more significant sort. It is not a type obtainable without the risks and efforts of parenthood.
This is not a “pay off” that can be weighed and measured, unlike the things one gives up in taking the risk to obtain it.
The fact that you consider that omitting the “step” notable makes me feel a little sad for these kids. Not to mention that you regret having a relationship with them at all.
Are you a primary caregiver? Do they live with you? Then why make the distinction of who their biological mother is?
I was raised in a mixed family, and my step mother never let me forget that. It tainted nearly every one of our interactions, and lead to me leaving the house semi-voluntarily at 17.
I didn’t misbehave abormally, I didn’t break any house rules, but I came home from night-shift one day and the doors were all barred with a doorframe jam from the inside. I took the hint and left.
Your post reminded me of that situation because there wasn’t any significant hostility, just a cold cut-off from access to the family because she felt she could, and get away with it.
Male, now elderly and past the kids-having zone; never married, never a parent. For me, re both “1 and 2” – very glad, on all possible fronts, never to have reproduced, and would not change, given a second chance. One perceives that people reproducing, is necessary for the world to carry on; and that parenthood has definitely positive aspects (though the same has been said re their experiences, by some Nazi and Soviet concentration-camp survivors). But – have never experienced the slightest impulse toward fatherhood; and if said had come my way, I feel sure that I would have been at best, a crap father. Thank God that that particular cup, passed me by.
Never wanted kids, though I can remember as a kid myself sort of assuming I’d have them. Then at some point came the realization that I didn’t actually look forward to kids, and that there really was nothing that said I had to be a mom. That was like a load lifted off my shoulders! I didn’t know I’d been dreading it until then.
That was 30 some years ago and I don’t regret my decision one bit.