Shout out to all the “Real Parents”

Call me oversensitive, Christmas brings it out in me. Family get togethers + booze and there is always some inevitable shit that goes down because of it. This year all it took was two small sentences to set me off, while discussing the things my daughter (6.5) says and how I love the genetics and the things that you don’t realise you say until they come back at you out of your child’s mouth, my cousin pipes up “She won’t be much like [Husband] because he’s not her real Dad”.record scratch Wait, what’s that you say!?!Guys, my husband is my hero. Like, he is a unicorn and we are the luckiest girls in the world. He found me, broken, with a whole busload of baggage when she was two and a half and he’s still here. He’s been through anxiety, PTSD, panic attacks and days where I just disappeared because it was easier to hide behind my walls than break them down and risk being hurt. We’ve been together 4 years now and he married me (god help him!) and has legally adopted our little girl. He’s an amazing Daddy. He works incredibly hard, comes home, reads stories before bedtime and absolutely worships the ground we both walk on.Then we have “The Sperm Donor” or as quoted above, “The real Dad”. He, after 6 years together, left us when our first child was 6 weeks old. He was an hour late for her birth and when we got her home told me I needed to stay with my Parents for support as she was a sickly baby. 9 months later I found out he’d been having an affair with a woman 20 years his junior. I found out because I took DD home and there was another woman living in our house. We’ve never seen him since. Despite him only being an hour away.So to all the people like my cousin that think to be a “real parent” you need to be in it from conception I say “F**k you!” Real parents aren’t about biology. Real parents aren’t about birthrights. Any old numpty can make a baby, but it takes someone amazing to be a Daddy or Mummy. Real parents listen to your stories, real parents kiss your knee when you fall, real parents ask how your day was over the dinner table, real parents watch you throw an epic screaming fit, wait till you’re exhausted, pick you up for a cuddle and go “now that didn’t get us very far, did it?”, real parents read bedtime stories, host your friends for campfires and s’mores, help you build your Lego, pick up your wet towels, unball your socks and tell you to cut your shit out when you’re being a little bugger!So to all the accidental parents, the adopted parents, the auntie and uncle parents, the grandparents who parent, the “lady up the street that has a soft spot for you” parents and all the wonderful, kind, gentle, awesome parents in between. Never doubt that you are incredible and I, for one think you are amazing. Biology doesn’t make you any less important in that child’s eyes. So never let anyone bring you down with their Neanderthal crap. Parenting is hard and to step up and volunteer to take the reins is an admirable thing and I applaud you all. All the best for your families in 2019. You rock!!*and to all the “Sperm and Egg Donors” out there (because I realise it’s not just men that are awful) I hope your next shite’s a hedgehog! via /r/Parenting http://bit.ly/2CBUtdI