After Vice President Kamala Harris announced she was running for president, another criticism leveled at her was that she is not a parent because she has never had children. But she is the second mother of her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children.
I am no longer in a relationship with her father and have been in a new relationship for four years. My wife entered my son’s life when he was 6 years old and quickly took on the parenting role. It was a role he took on enthusiastically.
Although she did not give birth to my son, my wife is his second mother completely.
My son’s relationship with his wife started to become friendly
My wife did not immediately take responsibility or force him to treat her like a parent. At first, he was like an old friend – someone he knew he needed to respect, but someone who would drive him to get ice cream or let him make like he’s driving his car while I’m in the grocery store.
I worried about raising children with someone else all the time. As a primary parent, I was not used to dividing parenting duties. My wife knew that and always looked up to me as the main parent.
But the bond between my son and my wife was immediate. She had never met my ex before, but she liked him instantly.
My wife has taken on more responsibility as a stepmother
In the last four years, he has taken on more parental responsibility but has never tried to act like he is more of a parent than me or my son’s father. I’m a bonus mom, someone who can kiss him goodnight, help him with his homework, and love him unconditionally.
During this epidemic, my wife volunteered to take the lead in helping my son with real school so I could focus on work. She made him a schedule, made him lunch, and made sure he kept assignments. When the playgrounds were open, he would take her to play, armed with a bag full of whatever was needed.
I have gone on many night walks, leaving the two of them alone together. My son doesn’t call or text me when I’m gone because he enjoys spending time with my wife. I never have to worry about him; I know my wife will make sure she takes a shower and goes to bed on time.
There are days I’ll ask him to come in and do a bedtime routine because I’m working or I want to rest, and he does without question. My son knows that when he needs something, he doesn’t have to come to me all the time.
Seeing my wife volunteering to be a parent to my son has strengthened our relationship. I knew I loved him almost immediately after we met, but seeing how my son responded to him made me more secure in my decision.
Sometimes, he still calls her mine, and I keep reminding him that she is his mother too. We do everything as a group: school meetings, plays, birthday parties. Everyone knows us as his two moms, and there’s no one else I can think of to do this with.
Now my son sees my wife as the one missing from our family game. She proudly says that she is 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 him into an intimate relationship, but she insisted.
The media has distorted the views of stepmothers
The most popular images of stepmothers are wrong. The common trope is that they are evil.
For example, you have characters like Meredith Blake in Lindsay Lohan’s version of “The Parent Trap,” Baroness von Schraeder in “The Sound of Music,” and, of course, for example: Cinderella’s Evil Mother.
These women are always seen as temptations to trick the father into marrying them before he reveals that they plan to abandon his daughter so that she will be the only woman in his life.
There may be stepmothers who fit this definition, but in general, stepmothers are there to be whoever their children want them to be.
I know that’s the role my wife plays, and my son and I are even more blessed than that.
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