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I used to lie in bed with my stepdaughters, rubbing their backs as they drifted to sleep, feeling the delicate ridges of their spines through their pajamas. Paper stars decorated their walls, and a yellow halo of light shone around their door, cracked open so they wouldn't feel scared.
Technically, I was a "childless cat lady," but I didn't feel like one.
The twins are 11 now — tall and lanky and somehow, incredibly, heading to middle school — but I met them when they were 2 and still in diapers.
For nine years, I've helped feed, clothe, and shelter them — not as their mom or dad, but as a parent nonetheless.
Being a stepparent has never been easy. A standard marriage contract requires partners by law to support any children they create, and while, as a society, we recognize and celebrate both biological and adoptive parents, the role of a stepparent is murky — even tinged with suspicion.
You're not recognized legally as a parent and have no official say in the children's care. No one buys you cards or flowers once a year. Plus, you may have to contend with negative stereotypes like "Were you the other woman?" And "Do you even like your stepkids?" (No, and usually!)
That sometimes indifferent, sometimes skeptical gaze of society can be wearying. But I have always cared for and about my stepdaughters anyway — finding food that would nourish them and not be flat-out rejected (a challenge), squinting to read the right dosage of pink medicine to pour into little plastic cups when they were sick, giving them books and answering their shy questions about sex.
While being a stepparent is complicated, love isn't. My stepdaughters and I love each other.
Three years ago, I gave birth to a girl who consumes, delights, inspires, and exhausts me. We are obsessed with each other in a very particular way. So I can say this with conviction: being a stepparent and being a biological parent are different — but they're both valid. Both roles shape children's lives. All those years I spent dispensing medicine, researching camp options, and planning birthday parties — that was, and still is, parenting.
To call a woman with stepchildren like Kamala Harris "childless" is both to erase her family's reality and also, worse, to perpetuate a deeply flawed, deeply limited understanding of what family means.
If you think stepparents are not "real" parents, you fail to understand that family is not something owned solely by blood but something built, with or without relatedness.
When their little sister was born, the twins brought her gifts and drew her pictures. Now, if she has a nightmare, they sometimes beat me to her bedside, and I find them murmuring soothing words. Because of them, my daughter is fearless on her scooter and slightly better at sharing. Because of her, the big girls know what it is to be eternally cool. They are all surrounded by more love.
I know all stepfamilies are unique and that some are unhappy. I also know that the perfectly "blended" family is a myth, that sometimes I want to throttle everyone in my house, and that families like mine (like everyone's, maybe) are complicated and require constant negotiation, whether logistical, financial or emotional — and that sometimes this is terribly difficult.
But that negotiation also strengthens us; our bonds are repeatedly tested and frayed, then reknit and fortified. This was true before my daughter was born, and it's true today.
