Addendum

In the comments below, Rachel asked:

The topic of "daddy" made me curious ... do you have any contact with the children's birth dads? How do you talk about that part of their heritage?

And given glaring absence of this topic in that post, I thought I'd clarify a bit.

In our family, we have no "daddies" or "dads." We have biological fathers, but they have zero relationship with our children. I consider "daddy" and "dad" to be relationship definitions and given no relationship, those terms aren't used in our family.

I do imagine that as our children grow in their understanding of the biological basics of human reproduction, they will become curious about these men. Right now, we follow the lead of their mothers in how we reference them. Selina's mother refers to "Selina's father" and Nat's mother doesn't mention him at all. So we sort of follow suite as needed, but the need rarely arises.

When the girls are older and want to know more about these men, I plan to ask their mothers to field the questions, assuming things remain as they are now. I don't know the men in question and can tell my girls nothing about them except the fact that I don't know. This is one reason I am grateful for open adoption. Even if they never meet their biological fathers, my girls will at least have access to the women who can tell them the most about them, as they see fit.

I am also fortunate to have both first fathers and adults raised in the absence of a father (and by this I mean the total absence of a father--not a post-divorce distant or even abandoning father--someone who has never been in the person's life in any way) among my friends, and I have been able to talk to them about how to handle the situation in our family. So a lot of our decisions about it have evolved from conversations with those friends. Chief on the list is simple honesty, (including "I don't know" when applicable) and avoidance of secrecy or shame.

Comments

[Rachel H.]

Hmm, thank you for answering my question! I like your way of thinking about this sort of thing. Dad vs. father is an important distinction. Yay for honesty! Thank you.