I want to start off by making clear what I mean when I say “step-parent”. This could be someone married one of a child’s parents, but I also see it as someone who is in a relationship with one of a child’s parents and helps care for the child and loves them as one of their own.

It isn’t easy stepping up and caring for a child who isn’t biologically yours. It means more to the child than you know having another parent in their life who loves them and cares for them like their biological parents do. Not only for the child but for the child’s biological parents you are with, it means a great deal to be with someone who treats the child as their own. Being a solo mom of two younger boys I can definitely say being with someone who cares about my boys as much as I do or as much as they care for their own means more to me than anything.

I personally have experienced it. Having step parents, being a step parent, and having someone besides my children’s father be there. Now I have an amazing step-mom, step-dad, a little girl I helped raise most of her life and we still get to be a part of each other’s lives even though me and her dad are not together anymore. Step parents are basically choosing you. They didn’t give birth to you or father you. When they decided to date/marry your parent they knew what they were in for, they knew the other person having a child(ren) was a package deal. To come into a child’s life and care for them, if it is feeding them, playing with them, even going to school functions or being there on bad days, they choose to care for you and love you. I feel that alone says a great deal about a person.

A very good friend of mines fiancé once said: “I have three kids that just happened to be born before I met them, but they are just as much my children as if we shared the same blood”.

Being the child of a step parent in most cases is wonderful. I can honestly say from experience it is amazing to see another adult care for you as much as your mom or dad does. For me growing up when my mom or dad wasn’t around for me to go to my step-mom or step-dad was always there. I could go to them with any of the normal things I would go to my parents for, and they would readily accept the task of helping me. Not because they had to or because they felt obligated to. They did it because they wanted to. They made me feel special and just as loved as my biological parents did. Round of applause for you guys. I don’t feel like step parents get the credit they are due.