Because The Heart Has Room For All
How my blended family taught me that parenthood isn’t about who came first—it’s about who stays, cares and makes love feel endless
The three of us were sitting on a bench in the park, sipping on a terrible green juice after a workout. Sometimes healthy choices feel good, and then there are times when holding an unholy decoction of wheatgrass, gooseberry and pineapple just fits the image of three sweaty women in yoga pants. As we cooled off, my friend Ananya began to talk about her ex-husband’s new partner.
“It seems like the relationship is serious,” she said, masking her discomfort with bravado, “He introduced her to our daughter and they’ve been spending time together.”
“How do you feel about that?” I asked her, as our friend Swati, the only childless member of the group sat up to pay attention.
“She is my daughter, that’s all that matters,” Ananya said, undoing her hair, “He can introduce her to whomever he likes, but she is mine; she knows where her loyalties lie.”
Ananya and her husband had been separated before divorcing a year earlier. Their daughter was seven at the time, and they shared custody—an arrangement eased by the fact that they lived close to each other and maintained a cordial relationship, despite some lingering resentment.
“I don’t think you need to worry,” Swati said to Ananya, “She’ll see the new woman as a friend; you will always be her real mother.”
People use the word ‘real’ a lot—for parents, products, love or faith—perhaps because the implied exclusivity reassures us, emotionally, but it made me wonder how my friends viewed my situation.
“Is that how you guys feel about me?” I asked, a lowered tone betraying my otherwise emotionless delivery, “Do you think I am not my stepson’s real parent?”
The three of us were sitting on a bench in the park, sipping on a terrible green juice after a workout. Sometimes healthy choices feel good, and then there are times when holding an unholy decoction of wheatgrass, gooseberry and pineapple just fits the image of three sweaty women in yoga pants. As we cooled off, my friend Ananya began to talk about her ex-husband’s new partner.
“It seems like the relationship is serious,” she said, masking her discomfort with bravado, “He introduced her to our daughter and they’ve been spending time together.”
“How do you feel about that?” I asked her, as our friend Swati, the only childless member of the group sat up to pay attention.
“She is my daughter, that’s all that matters,” Ananya said, undoing her hair, “He can introduce her to whomever he likes, but she is mine; she knows where her loyalties lie.”
Ananya and her husband had been separated before divorcing a year earlier. Their daughter was seven at the time, and they shared custody—an arrangement eased by the fact that they lived close to each other and maintained a cordial relationship, despite some lingering resentment.
“I don’t think you need to worry,” Swati said to Ananya, “She’ll see the new woman as a friend; you will always be her real mother.”
People use the word ‘real’ a lot—for parents, products, love or faith—perhaps because the implied exclusivity reassures us, emotionally, but it made me wonder how my friends viewed my situation.
“Is that how you guys feel about me?” I asked, a lowered tone betraying my otherwise emotionless delivery, “Do you think I am not my stepson’s real parent?”
Deep down I knew they didn’t mean to exclude me, but their words reminded me how quickly love and loyalty are framed as ‘us versus them’, ‘stepmom’ versus ‘bio-mom’.
When I first told my friends that I would be raising my partner’s son, they were all extremely supportive—that is, once they recovered from the shock of picturing my loud, brazen self with a child. The reassurances were manifold: Children don’t care about who gave birth to them, only about who is there for them; being a real mother is not about biology—adoptive and queer parents share just as strong and meaningful bonds with their children; with time, my stepson and I would form our own unshakeable connection.
But how then does that square with what they were saying—just as sincerely—to Ananya?
I couldn’t shed the suspicion that a biological mother would have been offered support in a very different way, and it made me wonder: What would my friends and family have said to me if, at that very moment, I had been the biological mother and not the potential step-parent?
To me, that’s the functional difference in the situation. Over the past seven years, I have been part of many discussions on this topic. In these conversations, the most common theme I have noticed is that the position we take about parenting depends on whom we choose to support. I’m not offended by this. Cognitive bias is natural. We do our best to comfort the person right in front of us in the manner they need. That old saying—blood is thicker than water, or its original version, the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb—gets bent whichever way comforts the listener. Birth parents hear it’s about nature; step-parents, about nurture.
But the truth is, anything can happen, right? Nothing guarantees the loyalty of our children. We can’t control whom they grow to love or look up to. We can do everything right and still fall short. We can stake claim, but never own. We can love them and still lose them. They may even bond with someone else as a parent.
For me, the real question isn’t nature versus nurture, but why we frame step and biological roles as adversarial at all. If I had said to Ananya that her child may come to love the new partner of her ex-husband, she would likely have been angry with me and our friends would have concurred. Swati, more agreeably, promised her the eternal loyalty of her daughter, as if the love of a child is a zero-sum game.
Every parent–child relationship is its own space, and I sought only the opportunity to create my own, not encroach upon the one he shared with his biological mother. We say it takes a village, but the moment a step-parent appears, many of us panic and turn it into a contest.
While I didn’t say it, I hoped someday Ananya would see that the liberty to love without the expectation to possess is groundbreaking. Children don’t measure love in halves or keep score the way adults do. They don’t see love as something to take from one and give to another. To them, family is a feeling—the warmth of a bedtime story, the hand held during a walk in the park, the comfort of knowing someone is on their side.
And maybe that’s what parenthood, in every form, is truly about: not competing for a child’s heart, but joining in their world with patience and presence. When we step away from fear and rivalry, something extraordinary happens—we see that love is not a finite resource. It multiplies, expands, and makes space for more.
Later that day, when my stepson greeted me with impatience and excitement—“You’re eight minutes late! Let’s go, we’re supposed to build houses for the stray puppies today!”—I felt it again. In his voice was no question of blood or biology, only the certainty that we were about to create something, together. For him, it wasn’t complicated at all: there’s the mum who reads to him at night and a mum who helps him build houses for dogs—and there is room in his heart for both.
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