There's an elephant in the room where people try to emphasize that ideally there is no difference between an adoptive parent relationship and a biological one and celebrate adoptive families that uphold the ideal But a lot of adoptive parents clearly don't see it that way
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Then I got to college and actually had a prof who had written a book exhaustively doing research on stepparents that said "No sorry the fairytales are accurate"
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"Congratulations to your family if your family is an exception but our ancestors wrote about evil stepparents all the time because that's a basic common pattern that happens and our society hasn't changed that much" Abuse and neglect of children by stepparents is fucking rampant
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(It's arguably misogynistic that the stories focus so much on evil stepmoms when it's stepdads who are responsible for the most horrific and yet sadly common stories of abuse But the stats about how often stepparents are involved in CPS reports are really really stark and grim)
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I'm not saying this as some great defense of the ties of blood, as someone who has plenty of literal scars from blood family
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I almost want to say it in the much more cynical sense - bio parents with 100% of all the weight and pressure of our culture saying you MUST love your kids because they are your FLESH AND BLOOD and a PART OF YOU nonetheless still abandon their kids alarmingly often
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And it's like if you relax that enormous pressure by even just a little bit, you give them that one psychological out - "He isn't even really your kid" - people's eagerness to dip out when things get hard becomes overwhelming It's depressing as hell
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