Reader’s view: Families take many forms beyond ‘married with kids’

I want to address the insular notion that a family must consist of a dad and mom and the children born to them. I do know lots of good families that fall into that category.

However, mine did not. When I was young, my mother died. Dad raised my two brothers and me, and he did it well. In our teens, Dad remarried and another brother was added with Mom (and Dad) adopting the first three of us. The notion then was that women could not do this alone.

My husband and I now have three children, two of whom we adopted. We have four grandsons, none of whom share our “bloodlines.”

If you think that “dad plus mom plus birth kids” is the only family that “counts,” look around. I bet you can find single moms with adopted children, single dads or moms raising their children, remarried dads and moms raising combined children, moms or dads joining to raise someone else’s children, foster parents raising children, grandparents raising grandchildren, and even same-sex couples raising children (adopted or otherwise). “Dick-and-Jane parenting” is only one way to make a family.

I would not limit the ways a child could find happiness and the security of loving adults. And I surely don’t want anything like that in our state constitution. I will be voting “no” on the proposed amendment to limit marriage.

Carol Uecker

Duluth

Tags: readers views, opinion, editorials, family, politics, minnesota