Photo: Christine Cousins Photography
On the eve of Mother?s Day, are we really having a conversation about what makes a ?real? mom" Are we really enforcing some kind of hierarchy that arbitrarily assigns the most motherly to the top slot and staggers all others somewhere below"
I guess so.
And here we go.
Reddit user “Vietnamazinggg” recently posted a strong and heartfelt response to being told she wasn’t a “real mom” because she and her wife adopted their son. She wrote: ?Not every experience is your experience. Not every mother is a mother because she gave birth. Not every child is yours or a ?part of you? because you grew it inside of you.?
Here?s what I believe to be true: The different, and sometimes winding, paths we all take to motherhood land us all in exactly the same exact place. There is no single ultimate type of mother. We are all real moms.
As both a stepmother and a mom via adoption, I too have felt the sting of judgement, the implied message that I am somehow less of a mother because of how I got here. I have felt the heavy expectation I be the “mom-away-from-mom” to my husband’s son, yet have also been denied appreciation and empathy for the challenges of loving and mothering him as my own. I’ve been pitied for my infertility, as if gestation and delivery are the pinnacle of motherhood. I’ve even been asked?in front of my daughter?if adoption was our “last re...