A Parent Without A Name
To all the step-ish parents out there parenting their hearts out.
Before meeting Dr. Robby, Noah Wyle’s fantastically competent and tragic character in The Pitt, I can’t remember the last time I saw my parental role depicted onscreen. Dr. Robby, like myself and so many others, has a close bond with a child who is not his own. As Dr. McKay explains to a new resident in Season 1, Robby is not his dad—or even his stepdad. Robby and Jake’s mom dated seriously for a few years, Robby developed a uniquely strong bond with the kid, and though he and Jake’s mom are no longer together, that bond remains.
I love this because I relate to it—deeply. Depictions of stepparents are here and there onscreen (though still mostly negative), but rarer still is the depiction of the quasi-stepparent. Or what I like to call the “step-ish” parent. A person who parents a child, but is not a parent, not even—technically—a stepparent. As marriage rates plummet and blended families soar, more and more people are encountering this step-ish parent role.
My partner and I are not married. Though we’ve been together for almost six years, living together for the past three, neither of us has any desire to marry. In fact, both of us have an active desire not to. At forty-four, the formality of it feels forced and superficial, the planning exhausting, the expense prohibitive. And though I can imagine being with my partner forever, the delusion that I’ll know that for sure has long passed. Every aspect of the marital enterprise has lost its appeal.
Unfortunately, according to the dictionary—and also my partner’s ex-wife—marriage is what officially makes someone a stepparent. My step-ish kid is told by his mom not to call me stepmom, though I have been tucking him in and making him dinner and helping him with homework for six years, two-thirds of his life, since he was able to form memories. The worst part is that—technically—she’s right. “Stepmother” is defined as a woman who is married to the parent of a child.
But after so many years, introducing myself to the teenage-looking school aide who eyes me up and down when I mumble that I’m his “dad’s girlfriend” at pickup, after I’ve wiped his nose with my bare hands, feels debasing and also inaccurate. It’s not only that I care what the teacher or parent of whoever I’m introducing myself to thinks of me—I don’t, not usually at least. It’s that this little boy is standing beside me, clutching my hand and something in my stomach twists at how off it sounds to define our relationship by way of his father, when he—this child—is so clearly my family.
The first few times I tried to introduce myself as his stepmom, he’d jump in and corrected me. “’Technically she’s my stepmom,” he’d add, mis-using the term but still getting the point across—kind of, but not really—with a hurried, worried tone as if his mom might be listening. I’d nod, distort my face into a polite smile, and exhale a laugh in an attempt to breathe. “That’s right. I’m kind of his stepmom.” I’d told him I considered myself his stepmom because I loved him so much, like a mom, but, not wanting to force him into a position against his actual mother, said he could call me whatever he wanted.
Watching the doctors on The Pitt awkwardly describe Jake as Robby’s “kind of step-son,” I perked up as if catching my reflection in the mirror for the first time. The same way I sort of mumble “I’m like his stepmom” to the school aides feeling a flash of betrayal using the word when I know his mother doesn’t allow it, reprimanding myself for caring what she thinks, then for not caring, and back and forth again, not knowing where to land. For the sake of ease and dignity, I often say it anyway.
Most of the time, I don’t mind this in-between role. The part of me that wants absolutely everything but freezes at the thought of commitment to anything, thinks it’s kind of perfect. I made a very conscious decision not to have kids of my own. The idea of bringing another human into the world because I want something to love and care for when there are so many millions of people and things that already need love and care, then having my life be all but consumed for the next eighteen years preparing three meals a day, shuttling to and from school, the nine-to-five structure I’ve spent my life extracting from, buying this and then that to keep up with growth spurts and playground trends, all decisions in relation to what is best for the child, my own (long buried, finally emerging) desires sublimated under theirs, makes me want to crawl under the covers and stay there.
But I love the spirit of children. I love them so much that I have become, at least according to some (my sister), a little too tapped into my inner child. To have this kid be an intimate part of my life—to be there for him and see each step of his growth— without the tedious day-to-day responsibilities resting on my shoulders as it does for so many women, is a sort of dream. Of course, there are trade-offs, of which not having a name is merely one. I am not, at the end of the day, a final decision maker in his life, which has caused a fair share of conflicts between my partner and I. But I can also go away to write whenever I want, I don’t have the everyday costs of childcare, and I avoid many chores of parenthood. Most days, I feel like an old-school dad. Giving all my love, but not all of my time. And—say what you will—I love it.
That’s not to say I take the role lightly. And I have yet to meet a step-ish parent who does. I’m the one who reads him stories and tucks him in at bedtime. We have our games, our shows, our jokes. When he wakes in the night, he calls my name. There are responsibilities (like drop off and pick up and packing school lunches—that flare my depression, make my body freeze at the thought of being trapped in the tedium of everyday routine and so I rarely do those things. In every other way I give him all the love I have, and I actually have the space and energy to run around and bounce on the bed pretending we’re warriors then wizards then warriors again because I’m not bone-dead tired from trying to have it all.
I wish there were more words for this increasingly common in-between role. Not because I care about my title. My step-ish kid can scream “Em” from every room till the end of time for all I care and I’ll never not come running. But because words create meaning. They give shape to reality. As the grown-up who has read him stories fifty-percent of the time since he was three, I’ve seen the way kids’ stories represent and shape how they view the family structure. There’s always a mom and dad, or, in the strangely popular orphan genre, a dead mom and a dead dad. There may be an aunt or a grandparent who steps in to help. If you’re grabbing stray books from Brooklyn stoops like us, you might even get the treat of two moms or two dads. But there is no me. And without something to call me he doesn’t know where I belong.
The opposite of the joy that comes with freedom and choice, is the terror of being unbounded and undefined. To love something so much, so fully without any legal rights or even a name feels like walking a very high-wire act. At any point it could all be taken away as if it never happened at all. I’m currently writing a novel about my specific familial situation and relationship to which my editor, after reading, tentatively commented with a tremor of worry, knowing the seed of it is based on my actual life, “Um, this feels like a…. horror story?” Me, eagerly nodding— It is! It is!
Robby’s stepson, Jake, doesn’t appear in Season 2. He’s not even mentioned. I’m haunted by this fact though no one seems to be talking about it. This haunts me even more. Season 1 ended with Jake blaming his step-ish dad for not saving his girlfriend’s life. Jake was hurt and furious at Robby. Did he stop talking to him as a result? Cut him off in a way that would be harder—if not impossible—with an actual mother or father. Is it a coincidence that Dr. Robby is on the verge of suicide throughout Season 2? And why has no one connected those two dots? Perhaps because Jake is not his real son, not even his stepson. Robby has no legal right to the boy. In fact, to Jake, he doesn’t even have a name.
Oh man, as you know, I feel this so hard. Though I am now officially a "stepmom," the term still makes me uncomfortable--mostly because the kids are teenagers, and have been mostly fully grown since I met them. So I haven't had any experience with tucking in or reading stories or running around playing games of pretend--which does cause me some sadness and regret. But even though I'm a stepmom in legal terms, I'm still very much figuring out how to define my role in these kids' lives. Every day is a minefield--it's been especially difficult lately, and I'm not sure if it goes along with my accepting that loaded title of stepmother last summer.
I'm looking forward to your novel! There's SO MUCH material to write about....so much of it actually horrific. <3
Gorgeous. He's a lucky kid to have you in his life, no matter what!