November is National Adoption Month, and I thought it would be a great time to give a little love to the idea of step-parent adoption.
Obviously, this can’t happen if the other parent is alive and well and retains shared custody over the children. Step-parent adoption only occurs when a birth parent is absent for some reason, whether death, mental illness, or sheer lack of interest in being a parent or lack of involvement.
There is something redemptive and beautiful, uplifting and hopeful, about step-parent adoption. It is a true showing of love between a child and a parental figure, evidence of the adult’s true care and concern for the child so that no matter what may happen, even if the marriage doesn’t last, the child and the stepparent will be in each other’s lives forever.
When a child is not your biological offspring, and you commit to being connected to them for the rest of their lives, it is a grand statement of your deep and abiding love and support for them, transcending mere biology.
I facilitated a step-parent adoption for a young woman who was over age 18. She knew that she would want her stepfather to walk her down the aisle at her wedding. While she was a child, her birth father would never consent to the stepfather adopting her, despite the fact that it was the stepfather who raised her with her mom.
The young woman looked to her stepfather as a role model, as a source for fatherly love, and for support and guidance. Only occasionally did she see her birth father, who had moved out-of-state, and that was out of obligation as she got older. But she really considered her stepfather to be her dad.
Family can be who we get from birth and biology, or whom we choose through time. The family we create. Even before the adoption, this young woman’s stepfather treated her as his own in every way – emotionally, financially and socially. He took her to daddy-daughter dances, attended parent-teacher conferences and chaperoned field trips.
I facilitated a step-parent adoption for a young woman who was over age 18. She knew that she would want her stepfather to walk her down the aisle at her wedding. While she was a child, her birth father would never consent to the stepfather adopting her, despite the fact that it was the stepfather who raised her with her mom.
The young woman looked to her stepfather as a role model, as a source for fatherly love, and for support and guidance. Only occasionally did she see her birth father, who had moved out-of-state, and that was out of obligation as she got older. But she really considered her stepfather to be her dad.
Family can be who we get from birth and biology, or whom we choose through time. The family we create. Even before the adoption, this young woman’s stepfather treated her as his own in every way – emotionally, financially and socially. He took her to daddy-daughter dances, attended parent-teacher conferences and chaperoned field trips.
Years later, I witnessed this young woman walking down the aisle at her wedding by her mother and the person who was truly her father. There was such joy and happiness; and I felt happy and warm knowing how special this was for all of them.
In a very different situation, I worked with a woman whose husband wanted to adopt her first child. The birth father came and went from the young child’s life, did not hold a steady job, had issues relating to his drug use, and wasn’t paying child support on a regular basis even though he was ordered to do so.
The birth dad had two other children with another woman and did not seem interested in the child, except as a possession and something to compete with the mom about and a way to cause grief for her. Over the years that the mom and I worked together on different issues involving the birth father, I saw the blended family grow and this little girl mesh into the family they created. She ended up with more siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins from her stepfather’s side of the family.
The child was truly his daughter in every sense of the word. You could see and feel the love when they were together.
But the birth father would not agree to the adoption. Because he stayed present in the child’s life just enough to fill statutory requirements, the stepfather was not able to adopt the child.
The inability to adopt never changed the love the stepfather has for the child or how the child is accepted by the extended family. But there is a security that comes with step-parent adoption that you can’t have any other way.
I salute all the step-parents who bravely and lovingly take this step to welcome their non-biological offspring into the fold of their family so officially!!