Dennis and Rebecca Pacas
After Vice President Kamala Harris announced she was running for president, one criticism lobbed against her was that she is not a parent because she has never given birth to children. But she is the stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff's two children.
Like Harris, my wife is a stepmother to my son.
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 a parental role. It was a role she enthusiastically took on.
Although she didn't give birth to my son, my wife is absolutely his second mother.
My wife didn't immediately take an authoritative role or force him to treat her like a parent. At first, she was more like a grown-up friend — someone he knew he needed to respect, but someone who would take him on drives to get ice cream or let him pretend to drive her car while I was inside the grocery store.
I was worried about parenting with another person all the time. As the primary parent, I wasn't used to dividing parenting duties. My wife was aware of that and always deferred to me as the primary parent.
But the bond between my son and my wife was instant. He had never met someone I was dating before, but he liked her immediately.
Over the last four years, she's taken on more parental responsibility but never tried to act like she was more of a parent than myself or my son's father. She is a bonus mom, someone there to kiss him goodnight, help him with his 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 ensured he kept up with assignments. When the playgrounds opened, she would take him to play, armed with a backpack full of whatever was 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 him; I know my wife will make sure he takes a bath and goes to bed on time.
There are days when I will ask her to tag in 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 parental role with my son has strengthened our relationship. I knew I loved her almost immediately after we met, but seeing how my son responded to her made me more secure in my decision.
Sometimes, she still refers to him as mine, and I always remind her that she's his mom, too. We do everything as a team: school meetings, performances, birthday parties. Everyone knows us as his two moms, and there's no one else I could imagine doing this with.
My son now sees my wife as the missing piece to our family puzzle. He proudly claims her as his other mom.
"You're my mom too," my son will say when my wife calls herself his stepmom. He made that decision. My wife never wanted to force a close relationship on him, but he pushed for it.
Popular media depictions of stepmoms are largely negative. The common trope is that they're evil.
For example, you have characters like Meredith Blake in the Lindsay Lohan version of "The Parent Trap," the 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 seduce the father into marrying them before revealing they intend to get rid of his daughter so that she will be the only woman in his life.
Maybe there are stepmoms out there who fit this description, but by and large, stepmoms are there to be whoever their step kids want them to be.
I know that's exactly the role my wife plays, and my son and I are all the more lucky for it.
