Page and Robert Melton, forever married, in a way.

I read a fascinating profile of a unique familial arrangement in the Washington Post this weekend. It told the story of Page and Robert Melton of Richmond, VA, who were married and had two children. In 2003, Robert suffered a massive heart attack when his daughters were only 3 years and 19 months. His brain had no oxygen for 45 minutes, so when he was revived, he was a changed man. He required the kind of full-time care one can only get in an assisted living facility. As is typical, Page and the children visited Robert every day initially, but over time came less, with the kids only coming on Saturdays for lunch.

Robert’s brain injury was so bad at the beginning that at one point during his initial rehab he looked at his wife and said, “You seem like a nice lady. How come you’re not married?” Susan Baer of the Post continues, Page went “home that day and put away the diamond and emerald ring he had given her when he proposed. Looking at it made her too sad.”

After five years of living alone, married to a man who was no longer himself, Page fell in love with an old classmate, Allan. In June of 2010, Allan asked Page to marry him. But she couldn’t leave Robert without anyone to care for him. So Allan agreed to move Robert to St. Louis where he and his children lived so that Page could continue to be responsible for his medical care. Continue reading »

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Your image of the typical American family probably includes just two parents: one mom and one dad, raising 2 kids behind a white picket fence.

We all know the truth is more complex than that. In addition to all the gay, lesbian and transgender parents, single parents and other alternative family structures, there are many women who have children with more than one man during their lifetimes.

In fact, more than a quarter of American women who have more than one child have children by more than one father.

Continue reading »

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Is there trouble in paradise so soon?

Just a couple of days after they professed their “unconditional and all-encompassing” love to readers of the Vows column in The New York Times, at least half of a scandal-ridden couple is having second thoughts (presumably about the column, not the love).

Carol Anne Riddell and John Patilla decided the story of how they met and fell in love while each married to other people was news fit to print in the Styles section of Sunday’s Times. The reaction from the general public, however, has not been kind. Scores of news and media outlets have reported on the almost unanimous reaction from readers that the column was tacky and flagrantly disregarded the feelings of their children and exes.

“I think if we had had an indication afterwards of the nerve it would have struck,” Patilla told the New York Post, “we obviously would not have shared our life in any way publicly.” Continue reading »

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Is it appropriate to publicly boast about your love if it was borne out of an affair?

The Vows column in yesterday’s New York Times Styles section started off benignly enough:

“What happens when love comes at the wrong time?” it asked.

The answer is the story that led Carol Anne Riddell and John Partilla to exchange marital vows recently in a clerk’s office. It wasn’t a splashy or spectacular wedding, but then again, they had enough drama leading up to their “I do’s” that perhaps a low-key affair seemed more appropriate. And appropriate is an interesting choice of words for a couple that left their spouses for each other, and then decided to let The New York Times write about it.

Carol Anne and her first husband, and John and his first wife were all initially friends with each other when they developed feelings for each other, which each say they tried to deny, but ultimately decided they were “brave enough to hold hands and jump” into leaving their families behind and blending a new one together. Continue reading »

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What if the marriage isn't as sweet as the cake?

I’m a big fan of the Vows column in the New York Times Sunday Styles section. My husband, too.  We love to tuck into a little story about how two people came together. Sometimes we cluck if they came together while they were also together with other people. Sometimes we just sigh and remember how we met. But even more than the Vows column, I love the State of the Union stories.  These are the columns that check in with couples years after their wedding day to see what’s up. That’s what I really want to know. After all, it’s fun to meet and fall in love, but, really, that’s the easy part.

No big surprise, most of the couples featured in the State of the Union are still happily married. Sure, some have had their ups and downs, but they’re mostly together.  Every so often, though, they’re not.  Which is great, because break ups happen. And a divorced couple where both parties are willing to talk about their divorce in the pages of the wedding section?  That’s a couple who take the term “amicable split” to a whole new level. And if the couple has kids, hats off. Continue reading »

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Mom & baby from 1912. Overparenting?

When it comes to over-parenting, we know the story.”Parents these days” protect our  little ones from dirt and pain. Parents call to protest if a darling isn’t invited to a party.  We’re too invested in homework, we buy organic toys, and when our kids go to college, we still hold them too close.  It’s a subject that writers enjoy revisiting periodically ever since the 2005 publication of Judith Warner’s blockbuster Perfect Madness: Motherhood in an Age of Anxiety. Almost six years into the exploration of anxiety-riddled, perfection-seeking parenting, is it time to move on?

The most recent report on the exhausted state of parents who try too hard to engineer perfect children comes from Katie Roiphe via Slate and the Financial Times. In it, Roiphe goes through the usual hallmarks of helicopter parenting – high design, packed schedule, careful prenatal diet.  Reading her case against other parents I felt mostly familiarity  until I got to this line: “You know the child I am talking about: precious, wide-eyed, over-cared-for, fussy, in a beautiful sweater, or a carefully hipsterish T-shirt.”

Actually, I don’t know that child. Because the perfectly turned out little guy who’s also and always a perfect little charmer, I’ve heard about him, but I haven’t actually seen all that much of him.  Continue reading »

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I love my stepson. He was the first kid to call me, “Mom,” in an embarassing moment that made us both blush and stammer and turn away. He was about 9 at the time, and I’d been in his life for a year or so. We were loading our bikes in the car and he shouted, “Hey, Mom, can you grab my helmet?”

He didn’t mean me. He meant his real mom, who wasn’t there. I was, and I grabbed his bike helmet and threw it quickly in the car.

A year later, my new husband and I had a baby, who grew up to call me mom and really mean it. But I’ve never forgotten that moment. The boy in question is 16 now, and calls me by my first name. We play board games and share music collections and get into fierce late night conversations about our favorite TV shows and world politics and everything in between.

He’s a kid in my family, and in some sense my kid, is what I’m trying to say. I love him.

Apparently, my love for my stepson is a pretty rare gift. Salon offers up an essay today on the legions of guilty stepmoms who loathe, or at best politely tolerate, the little monsters their husbands brought into the household by way of a previous marriage.

Continue reading »

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