Waking up from the slumber of what seems to be an eventful nine months and being crowned with the gift of a new baby, for many, is a relishable moment they would like to relive again and again. However, the reality of being responsible for a fragile child begins to set in as soon as the euphoria of welcoming the new born is over. The reality of being responsible for the life of this gift may even become a daunting task during the period. That notwithstanding, I believe it is the dream of most responsible adults to want to become a father or mother at some point in their lives, regardless of the challenges that may come with parenthood. Of course, the gift of a child is relished and cherished much by most parents, including this writer.

The reality of the matter, however, is that there are a lot of people whose gift of children does not necessarily follow the process of becoming pregnant, nurturing the pregnancy to full term and delivering a bouncy child. Some are chosen to be parents by either adopting children or being blessed with the responsibility of step-parenting.

The focus of this write-up is the latter: step-parenting and, to be more precise, the responsibility that comes with being a step-mother. I have always wondered why the story of the wicked step-mother to Cinderella seems to be so registered in the subconsciousness of a lot of people such that it becomes almost repulsive to be identified as such.

I must say that I have heard stories of quite a number of wonderful step-mothers, who, for the love of the children they have inherited in marriage, do not want to be identified under any circumstance as step-mothers but simply as mothers to those children.

As a parent myself, the reality of waking up one day and hearing my child call me “mommy” for the first time was very heartwarming. Thus, I have always admired women who, though they have had no experience of child birth, are willing to stand tall in the face of the challenges of being an “instant mother” to between one and five children, including teenagers. By the preceding I mean a woman’s willingness to become a step-mother to one or more children instantly.

I know a mother of five boys who happens to be my colleague – I have known her for at least 3 years. During this period, her husband has been on scholarship furthering his education in Germany. So I have known Esi (as I would want to call her for the purposes of this article) to be wholly and solely responsible for the upkeep of five strong boys who are between the ages of 10 and 20 years, including twins. Esi and her kids have a special bond, which I have admired for so long due to the dexterity she has displayed as a mother.

I have known her to be very fond of her boys and I have always teased her for her strength in mothering five boys. She would usually walk into my office with stories of how Atta Pee and Atta Kay, two of the boys, tried to pull a fast one on her and how she unfolded the puzzle right before their very eyes, thereby bringing the boys to a total state of shock, since they didn’t expect their mom to outdo them. She will go on to say how her twenty-year-old would sneak into her bedroom to steal her car keys, thinking his mom were a sleep, only to be gripped on the wrist by her while in action

So you can imagine the shock I received when I later got to know that all five boys were her step-kids! I only got to know because I asked about the boys one day, and Esi then said that they had gone to see their biological mom in Kumasi. I was dumbfounded because I had no idea that those five boys were not her biological children, and if someone else had told me, I would never have believed it!

She went on the say that she had no kids of her own but as a woman, who loves her husband very much, she has grown to love his children as her own! “How can I claim to love Ernny (as she affectionately calls her husband) and not love “my kids”? They are mine because I married him and I have cherished every moment with the boys ever since I inherited them through marriage to Ernny some 6 years ago,” Esi added. She said she sometimes had to beg the boys to make time to see their mom since they enjoyed her company better.

A similar story is that of a cousin of mine who has four daughters and got married to a man with two sons and a daughter. This brought the number of children in their household, at the time of matrimony, to seven. And they went on to have twin sons, bringing the total number of their children to nine! This is a middle-income couple who, for the love between them, have taken up the challenge of raising these nine kids equally and with much love, to the extent that outsiders are not able to tell the difference! As a mother, I believe every woman is able and capable of loving the children who are entrusted to her care, be they biological kids or otherwise.

Now, let me share with you a strange event that I encountered in a bookshop while trying to pick up some story books for my kids this Christmas. While looking for books to purchase, there was this lady in front of me, who was also picking up books with the help of the store assistant. And from what I overheard, she was picking up a lot more books for a particular child than the other two (she apparently was a mother to three kids), so the store assistant, out of curiosity, enquired why she was buying a disproportionately high number of books for that particular child. This was a well-dressed “executive lady” who I expected to be level-headed and responsible. Thus, to my surprise, she responded that “the other two are my husband’s kids from a previous relationship.” At this point, fuming with anger and disappointment at her comments, I decided to walk up to her and give her a piece of my mind! I asked, “So, are those two kids not yours too? Are you not woman enough to love three children equally without showing any preferential treatment? If they are not worth being your children, why then do you think that their father is worth being your husband?” At this point my executive lady was embarrassed and speechless. I watched what she would do or say next with the store assistant as our audience. She turned to me and asked what I knew about step-parenting! I informed her that her question was irrelevant, but “I’m woman enough to be a proud mother of children and have a lot more call me ‘mother.’” She was still speechless, and I went on to tell her: “It is about having a heart to love, and to love equally all those who look up to you. It is irresponsible to be separating your husband’s “other” children from the child you both had together in a bookstore, all because of books. I then told her that she was a “disappointment to womanhood” and, above all, a GREAT disappointment to the Man who thought she was great enough to be a mother to his children! She looked up at me and asked, “Who are you? I said to her, “I’m a woman, a mother, and one capable of loving the gift of children I receive without standing in public and pointing out any differences among them!” At this point she was mad and walked out of the shop, leaving her shopping behind! Would Esi have treated those five boys differently if she had kids of her own? Would my cousin have treated those three children she inherited in marriage any different if she didn’t have four girls to her name before marrying a second time? The question then is: Why do some mothers discriminate between their own biological children and the children given to them through marriage or adoption? These questions have been on my mind since the encounter with my “executive lady.” The possibility of many women, including this writer, becoming step-parents in future is very great. The truth is that we will never know when the “honor” of becoming a step-parent would fall on anyone of us, be it in the near future or much later, so we need to be prepared to love our amalgamated family as though it were “unitary” from the beginning! I will be most grateful to hear what stories my readers have and how parents have coped with the gift of non-biological children.

The writer, Naa Wellington, is a concerned citizen of Ghana who can be reached at naawellington@ymail.com.