Dear Abby: Much younger siblings

[cereta]

DEAR ABBY: I am a 22-year-old male and my brother, "Brian," is 14. When I was 9, our parents split up. After a year, Mom realized she was a lesbian. She is married now to a younger woman, and they are starting a family through in vitro fertilization. Mom's wife is carrying twins -- a boy and a girl.

When I first heard about their plans to conceive, I was devastated. After a few months, Mom and I were able to reconnect and talk about it. I'm happy they're happy, but I'm still uncomfortable with the situation. When the children are born, I am unsure how I will be known. Mom says Brian and I will have "a sister and a brother."

Brian is excited that he will no longer be the youngest. But at my age, as a business owner and in a serious relationship, I prefer to consider Brian my sibling, not the twins. I will love the babies because they are connected to me, but I'm leaning toward being called their uncle or cousin because the twins will not be my blood relations.

I guess I'm "old school," and with all the changes I've experienced in my life I'm not sure I want all of a sudden to say I have new siblings. Is this OK? -- FINDING MY WAY IN CONNECTICUT

DEAR FINDING: I don't think you have to announce anything when your mother's children are born. As long as your relationship with them is a loving one, I don't think the "label" matters.

Comments

[recessional]

....I feel like I need to resort to tumblr gifs to react to this one.

I mean I think Abby's response is the only one that can be given that isn't, um, rather sharp, but good grief, LW.

ETA: Basically, the only reasons to be "devastated" that his mother was going to conceive with this woman are based either in pathology (ie he still feels somehow betrayed by his parents' divorce, his mother's change in life arrangements, and her choice to move on, as well as possibly jealous and threatened by these new kids she's having), or bigotry (lesbians can't "really" have their own children, biology is destiny, biological or chromosomal ties are the only ones that matter, etc), or both.

So in the first case, it's time for therapy, LW; and in the second case, go jump in a lake, LW. And in the third case, well, hopefully the therapy will help you not be a person who needs to go jump in a lake.

Abby, for her part, I think is basically trying not to get into Definitions of Family, which are in flux in general culture and thus would get her a lot of blow-back responses no matter where she came down, whereas this one at least means she won't be hearing from the wishy-washy people in the middle.

[cereta]

I am trying not to giggle, because I remember how VERY, VERY SERIOUSLY I took myself at 22, but dude, seriously: get over yourself. Plenty of parents have kids with wide age gaps. And I think Abby's advice is poor: these will be your brother and sister. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.

Unless you have a different, unstated reason for not wanting to think of them as your siblings, but I'm trying to be generous.

[recessional]

See, my inner twenty-two-year-old is actually the one going "what the FUCK is wrong with you, LW?" >.>

I get the sense Abby is trying NOT to wade into the definition of "family" going on here, in her answer.

[cereta]

Hee. See, I had my adolescent rebellion at 24-26, some I was a VERY serious person in college.

[recessional]

At 22 I had just sort of finished stabilizing after some very, very bad relationships (friendships, but never let it be said those can't fuck one up as bad as romances), sorting out what I wanted vs what was expected of me, sexuality sorting things, mental illness and neuroatypicality, etc, and managed to basically hack out my framework.

Which means 22 year old me is looking at LW and going "literally the only reasons I can think of for you to have these problems are ANATHEMA to me, what is wrong with you". Because she was still sorting out this whole "how, now that I have a solid grounding, to have nuance."

Me now is kind of at " . . . kid, I think you could use some therapy. *facepalm*" instead.

[havocthecat]

I come from a vast, sprawling family of relatives with widely disparate ages and not everyone is a "full" blood relative to everyone else. In my family, it doesn't matter if you share a father with the babies. They are still your siblings and should be treated as such. If you have a more or less familiar relationship with them due to age, whatever, but they're family.

I mostly wonder, from the twins' perspective, how hurt they're going to feel when their older brother doesn't want much to do with them. I don't feel bad for the LW. I do feel bad for the kids, because I have yet to meet children who don't take familial rejection very, very personally. Hopefully the soon-to-be-middle child will help make up for the bad feelings.

[recessional]

Does it make me a bad person that one of my first sort of automatic reactions was "you know 'Brian's perspective would make for a great protagonist in a novel"?

I suspect if LW's mother were the egg-donor/carrying the twins he might feel a slightly different kind of conflicted, and that he's honing in on the fact that (GASP) it's just this woman his mother's with who's having a baby with some random guy's sperm and his mother expects him to be FAMILY with these brats!

Which is why I strongly, strongly suspect this is rooted in discomfort with his parents' divorce, discomfort with his mother's sexuality and remarriage, etc, because somehow I don't think he'd be writing this letter if his mother were adopting a child. (If nothing else, because I think everyone KNOWS what the "general" reaction to that would be, ie: you are a horrible person what is wrong with you.)

(Not that people don't FEEL or BEHAVE in bad ways to adopted children, but it's not the kind of thing it's acceptable to SAY in this context.)

[ellen_fremedon]

But how close would people expect LW to be to the twins if this were his dad who was now expecting kids with a younger spouse? He's more than 20 years older, and we don't even know how close he lives to his mother and brother or how often he sees them-- if he visits once a year at Christmas, he's probably not going to have any sort of relationship with the twins at least until they're old enough to use Skype, and if they get to that age and have no interest in him no one would think that was odd.

I mean, I agree that LW is being an awful person here, but I think there's room for a lot of emotional distance from the twins for non-awful reasons.

[recessional]

Oh I think it's entirely reasonable not to have a relationship with them; it's being fixated on the very IDEA of them being acknowledged as his siblings that's icky.

Lots of people don't have close relationships with siblings or half-siblings for a lot of reasons, but they're not so uncomfortable with the idea of those siblings/half-siblings being acknowledged as siblings that they're writing to advice columnists basically looking for public approval of their decision to strip the title. Especially since he focuses on "announcing" - ie on other people knowing.

That's the bit where I go "oKAY kid, ick."

[ellen_fremedon]

Yeah, his whole attitude is pretty horrible. But I do wonder how much of that is pushback against the idea that of course he's going to be as close and involved with these siblings as he is with Brian because FAMILY.

[recessional]

The use of "devastated" in re his mother having new kids at all - rather than "annoyed/frustrated", etc - implies not that much to me.

[kaberett]

oh, absolutely - I just think it's completely apparent from the letter that non-awful reasons are not, in fact, the reason that he's worrying; or he'd have phrased it as "I'm 22 years old and going to have new siblings, I know that large age gaps happen but I have NO IDEA HOW TO NAVIGATE THIS, what sort of involvement in their life is expected/appropriate", rather than... what he actually wrote.

[redbird]

Sure, but that letter reads more like "Dear Abby, I'm about to have siblings 22 years older than me, and I don't live with my parents anymore. Is it okay to be like an uncle who visits sometimes?" or "I feel like an uncle, what do I do if my moms expect me to be the big brother who's there a lot and helps take care of the kids?"

[recessional]

This, very much. It doesn't read "I was devastated when I found out and now don't want people to know I have siblings."

[kaberett]

(mmhmm)

[ysobel]

I'm leaning toward being called their uncle or cousin because the twins will not be my blood relations.

...this is why terms like "step-sibling" exist...

[vass]

It sounds like Brian was born the year his parents split up.

So LW had this period of two years between age 8 and 10 when his mother got pregnant, he had a new baby brother, his parents split up (not necessarily in that order) and THEN his mother came out.

In his teens he forms his identity in opposition to his mother's, and becomes a cross between Percy Weasley and Petunia Evans. Which is not a great look, and he's behaving badly and being a right homophobe, and he is 22, and should know better, but he still might well grow out of it.

And then, just when he thinks it's all over and he's Finally Grown Up and Understands The World Now, and he's (probably) graduated from college and started a business, gotten a girlfriend who shares his values... now this.

Dear LW,

It is definitely OK to feel unsure and upset. But please call the twins your brother and sister. They'll understand that your relationship with them is not the same as their relationship to each other, since you're 22 years older and their half-brother, but it's extremely likely to hurt their feelings if you call them something else. It'll feel pointed, like you're reminding them every time that you don't accept or approve of them.

It's clear that maturity and responsibility are important values for you, and the mature, responsible thing to do is to be kind and polite and not take your feelings out on your mother, your stepmother, or especially your new half-siblings. Unfortunately, you don't have any control over what changes happen in your life. That's life. And your mother's not doing this AT or TO you, she is just living her life. And the twins are DEFINITELY not existing AT you.

[azurelunatic]

THIS THIS THIS