After Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she would run for president, one criticism against her was that she is not a parent because she has never given birth to a child. But she is stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children.
I am no longer in a relationship with his father and have been in a new relationship for four years. My wife came into my son’s life when he was 6 years old and quickly stepped into the parenting role. It was a role she took on with enthusiasm.
Although she did not give birth to my son, my wife is absolutely his second mother.
My son and wife’s relationship started off friendly
My wife did not immediately assume an authoritative role or force him to treat her as a parent. At first, she was more like an adult friend—someone he knew he had to respect, but someone who would drive him to get ice cream or let him pretend to drive her while I was inside the store. food.
I was worried about parenting with another person all the time. As the primary parent, I wasn’t used to sharing parenting duties. My wife was aware of this and always hid me as the primary parent.
But the connection between my son and my wife was immediate. He had never met anyone I was dating before, but he instantly liked her.
My wife has taken on more responsibility as a stepmother
Over the past four years, she has taken on more parental responsibilities, but she has never tried to act like she is more of a parent than I am or my son’s father. She’s a bonus mom, someone there to kiss him goodnight, help him with homework, and love him unconditionally.
During the pandemic, my wife volunteered to take the lead in helping my son with virtual school so I could focus on work. She created a schedule for him, made him lunch, and made sure he kept up with his assignments. When the playgrounds opened, she took him to play, armed with a backpack full of everything she needed.
I have gone on several overnight trips, leaving the two of them alone together. My son doesn’t even call or text me when I’m gone because he’s having so much fun hanging out with my wife. I never have to worry about it; I know my wife will make sure he takes a bath and goes to bed on time.
There are days when I’ll ask her to tag along and do the bedtime routine because I’m working or want a break, and she does it without question. My son knows that if he needs something, he doesn’t have to come to me all the time.
Seeing my wife willingly step into a parenting role with my son has strengthened our relationship. I knew I loved her almost as soon as we met, but seeing how my son responded to her made me more confident in my decision.
Sometimes, she still refers to him as mine, and I always remind her that she is also his mother. We do everything as a team: school meetings, plays, birthday parties. Everyone knows us as his two moms, and there’s no one else I could imagine doing that with.
My son now sees my wife as the missing piece in our family puzzle. He proudly claims her as his other mother.
“You are my mother too”, my son will say when my wife calls herself his stepmother. He made that decision. My wife never wanted to force an intimate relationship on him, but he pushed her.
The media has distorted the perception of stepmothers
Popular media portrayals of stepmothers are largely negative. The common is that they are bad.
For example, you have characters like Meredith Blake in the Lindsay Lohan version of The Parent Trap, Baroness von Schraeder in The Sound of Music, and, of course, the prototype: Cinderella’s evil stepmother.
These women are always seen as temptresses who come in and lure the father into marrying them before revealing that they intend to get rid of his daughter so that she can be the only woman in his life.
Maybe there are stepparents out there who fit that description, but in general, stepparents are there to be whoever their own children want them to be.
I know this is exactly the role my wife plays and my son and I are the luckier for it.