Hudson Valley Parent

How are we related? Notes from a lesbian step-mom By MARCIA SZYMANSKI W " I'VE STRUGGLED TO DESCRIBE WHO WE ARE AS A FAMILY AND ON A MORE PERSONAL LEVEL, TO DESCRIBE MY OWN ROLE IN THIS FAMILY." ~Marcia Szymanski Freelance writer and step-mom to her wife's two children, Mollie and Jacob. 18 Hudson Valley Parent August 2013 hen I first began dating Sharon, her 7-year old daughter, Mollie, sat quietly while I was around. Eventually, she became accustomed to my presence and warmed up to me. At first, Mollie saw me as a new "playmate" who rode bikes with her, helped her build sand castles and taught her to play tennis. As my relationship with her mother blossomed, Mollie struggled to name what she saw with her 7year old vocabulary. One day as I leaned over to kiss Sharon, she put it all together... "You're really a man, aren't you?" Two years later, Mollie and her brother, Jacob, know that I am not a man. I am their lesbian step-mom. What's in a name? What does it mean to be a lesbian step-parent? The term itself has an awkward feel. Step-parent implies marriage, but as lesbians, marriage has not always been an option. Co-parent might be a better fit, but that implies an equal sharing of responsibilities. Yet for Jacob and Mollie, their father still participates in decisions involving them. He and Sharon share custody and share the major financial expenses. Legally I have no rights, no responsibilities. Despite my involvement helping with homework, tending to illnesses or fixing dinner, my role remains nameless to the external world. How do I explain my role? I still feel very much like Mollie did in those early days... trying to understand and explain something for which the English language has no vocabulary. Sharon and I are two lesbians raising two children. Jacob and Mollie are Sharon's biological children, born in the context of her heterosexual marriage. As the four of us deal with the normal struggle of becoming a family, I struggle with the absence of a vocabulary to describe who we are as a family and on a more personal level, to describe my role in this family. Am I still an adult playmate or a supportive ally? Am I a step-parent, a co-parent? Am I all of the above or none of the above? I suspect the answer lies somewhere in-between. Been there, done that... I did not enter into the world of step-parenting naively. Rather, I came into this role with prior experience. Prior to my relationship with Sharon, I was in a heterosexual marriage. My former

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