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I can understand how you are feeling with the step parent adoption. Some people find it unnecessary especially when your parents are married. I personally don't think it's unnecessary and it can be beneficial to families who want to use it. My husband did a step parent adoption for my kids (on rapidadption.com) because their biological dad was not even trying to be in their lives. No child support...no phone calls...would move away every time his wages were garnished for child support and then it would take a year to find him again. Yes I am married and we do not plan on the divorce in the future but if something were to happen to me my husband would have full parental rights. He is their father and no, you don't have the be the same DNA to be considered family.
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I know this was posted years ago, but I wanted to share my insight. Just because YOUR step parent adoption was not something you felt was in your best interest does not go the same for everyone else. My daughter's father is not in her life at all.. he is a known drug addict and has been in and out of rehab since she was born. He has not paid a dime in child support (not that it matters) and I recently found out he moved out of state. So why not just leave it alone, right?
Well let's think. God forbid something ever happened to me... his pernity was established by the courts, so guess what? If he wanted to be the POS I know he is he would take her and no one from my family ( people that helped me raise her) would ever see her again. So in the end having my husband adopt her ensures that she will always be taken cared of in the event that something happens to me.
I'm not sure if you are a parent, or if you are just sharing your personal experience as a child..but as a mother (and as most) we do what we feel is best for our child. Now if my daughters bio dad was a stand up guy and fought to see her and loved her and supported her in NO way would I ever consider doing this... but he is not. My husband and I do everything for her, so why should she walk around with his last name when he hasn't put any work in, besides getting me pregnant? Why should she be forced to have to get to know a stranger that hasnt fought for her a day in his life? Maybe if you were put in the same situation as a mother you wouldn't feel so negative about step parent adoption.
So just like the response that was given to you triggered your emotions, yours did the same to me. I am sure others who may have read this may have felt the same way and just decided not to put the energy into responding to it.
Beachy, I get that just like in any adoption some people had good experiences.
That wasn't mine. And I'm not looking for touchy feely my adoption was what should have happened stories. You message didn't help me. It just annoyed me a little. While your adad may have been a blessing, my adad as you call him - I refer to him as my adoptive ex-step dad, was one of my major traumas, so maybe you can understand why your story doesn't help me right now? Did you read all of the thread and my request for support because I'm struggling with this right now? Because it doesn't seem like it.
And I don't know how old you are or when your parents divorced, but do you remember the movie Kramer vs Kramer? It reflected a cultural shift in how both parents were viewed after divorce. It was highlighting the beginning of father's being able to get custody.
In 1970 when my folks split, moms could easily shut dads out of the picture. They didn't have a lot of recourse. My mom just moved us and didn't tell him where we were. He had no way to find us. He went on a business trip, came home and we were gone. Even if he'd had money to take it to court, in 1970, the courts viewed Mom as the best place to be. Custody wasn't viewed or treated like it is today.
And I'm sorry - but your comment about even if your mom had attempted to limit contact he could have done all kinds of things to maintain contact with me is just naive. Sorry, but what a crock of sh*t. Exactly what in the 70s could my dad have done to maintain contact? If he doesn't have the phone number (and doesn't know her new married name to get it) how does he call? If he doesn't know where we live, how does he come by to visit? If he manages to get the phone number and call, exactly how does he get me, a minor, on the phone if she says no? If he shows up at the house, she's going to send me to my room and not let me see him. What other way did he have to contact me? I didn't check the mail when I was little, so she could easily keep any mail that came to me. The fact is she had all the power in the early 70s. Fathers didn't. We didn't have fb, or email. There wasn't any way he could have reached me that didn't go through her.
I don't need rosy "adoption is great" stories and your implication that my dad is somehow responsible for not having a relationship with me from someone who doesn't know what their talking about. Whether you mean to or not, you basically said, a dad could have done "all kinds of things" to maintain contact. Stop judging my dad.
And yes, I'm angry - your post angered me. My dad is a good man, not a perfect man, but still a good man. I'm not sure if you thought your post would be helpful or just felt the need to defend step parent adoption. I'm not debating step parent adoption here. We're talking about struggling with it as an adoptee.
So I was adopted by my ex-step dad when I was 7, not because my dad didn't want to parent but because my mom wasn't allowing him to and he thought he was giving me an opportunity for a "normal" family.
That's not what happened. I've dealt with the abuse, I've dealth with the fact that he no longer wanted anything to do with me after he and mom divorced. After my divorce, I went back to my birth name (yeah judge).
But here's what's getting me - Step parent adoption on this forum. It's making me angry.
I keep asking why every time someone posts about wanting to adopt their stepchild. No one actually answers the question. They usually give some cryptic response about it being for the best.
It pisses me off. There really is rarely a reason for step parent adoption in my opinion. If you are married to my mom, fine, you can still have a relationship with me, but you don't need to try to make it like my bio dad doesn't exist.
I don't care if the dad hasn't been around, why do you need to erase him for your husband to have a relationship with your daughter? Answer - you don't.
If he's in a different country, again, what harm does it do to leave that legal relationship alone? Answer - I really doubt it does any harm.
So many of these cases are really more about father's rights. Too many times, the mom or custodial parent wants to move on, have his/her new life, with their new complete family. That means eliminating the past spouse/parent and inputting the new one. It's just not needed.
A step parent can be just as close to me if they put the time into the relationship. Changing my name doesn't create that relationship.
So why is this getting me now? I really just need to stop looking at the step parent adoption threads.
This is so old you may be a parent now. In any event, you definitely sound like a child when you wrote it.
Let me tell you about the charmer bio-dad to my kid: when my wife brought her daughter home he decided, the first night, to go to the bar to show off pictures of his new little girl. He returned stumbling drunk in the middle of the night waking them both up. He'd routinely come home having pissed himself and, a few times, stumble in to piss on the couch.
Visits were treated as a means of control, routinely canceled at the last minute to prevent my wife from making any plans. They were also routinely canceled mid-visit with calls to come get the kid that could come any time, day or night. Insistence on a week-long Christmas visit was met with a demand to get the child, who was unhappy, no later than 7AM the day after Christmas. In a different state, six hours away. During visits, she'd stay in whatever trailer he happened to be living in which, like his truck, he chain smoked in.
I'm an adoptive stepfather and, honestly, it's not easy. My kid has a tinge of both her bio-dad and you: entitled and ungrateful. All but resentful that I'm not grateful for the constraints, time, and money spent to be perennially treated like a stepparent. All the responsibilities and none of the rights; that's life after a stepparent adoption.
We get a little angel who skips school, sleeps around, and lives in her shiny always new phone except for the few minutes she takes to look up to try bossing me around. She has effectively no chores. And a mother who justifies it by saying her daughter had such a hard life when she was young so she now gets the responsibilities of an infant and the rights of an adult. And I can't do a thing about it without her mother flipping out and yelling and screaming. Thanks to bio-dad -- who's been gone a decade now -- my wife has the idea that men should have no rights except to provide.
I don't know what happened but you sound like an ingrate. Let me tell you what your charming bio-dad did when giving you up. He signed off on lengthy papers that it was just fine. Sat through a waiting period where he could've changed his mind but didn't. Then attended a hearing where a judge pretty much shamed him and tried to talk him out of it. He persisted and agreed over and over and over to give you up. Why? Most likely because he didn't want to pay child support. There's your prince charming.
Grow up.