An Excerpt from My Article-in-Progress: "A Mom by Any Other Name: Fulltime Stepmoms, Adopted Children, and Invisible Families"

In this autoethnography, I discuss my and other fulltime stepmoms’ experiences and perspectives and the implications for notions of who is family and to whom “belong” maternal rights and responsibilities themselves. I also consider some of the challenges that come with the particularity of my own situation as a fulltime stepmom to an internationally adopted child.

I have somewhat arbitrarily defined fulltime stepmothers as women who live with their partner along with their partner’s child(ren) at least 2/3 of the year for at least two years. Just like any other kind of mother, one does not necessarily love the children from the first moment, and some adjustment period is warranted. In many cases this period may require more than two years; nonetheless, after two years we have achieved substantial understanding and ability to reflect on our situations as necessary to my current project. Amy Janan Johnson et al. would characterize us as either mostly residential or fully residential stepmothers (130). I further note that in Jason B. Whiting et al.’s ethnographic study of self-identified “Successful Stepmothers,” all had been married for at least 5.5 years (99); these authors indicate that “research suggests that it takes 5 to 7 years for a family to stabilize following a remarriage” (107).

In August 2021, I gained IRB approval, with the invaluable guidance of Dr. Sarah Chard, and interviewed three other self-identified fulltime stepmoms, whom I met through a social media group (of which I had been a member for almost 2 years), who meet my criteria, as above, and who volunteered to participate. I do not claim a representative sample and did not even collect demographic data. I was concerned that reporting with too much precision and detail would compromise my participants’ confidentiality; fulltime stepmoms’ situations tend to be unique as it is, in my experience. Instead, I just want more of our perspectives heard and realities recognized. I hope that other scholars are motivated to pursue further ethnographic research with this population.

Johnson, Amy Janan, Kevin B. Wright, Elizabeth A. Craig, Elaine S. Gilchrist, Lindsay T. Lane, and Michel M. Haigh. “A Model for Predicting Stress Levels and Marital Satisfaction for Stepmothers Utilizing a Stress and Coping Approach.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, vol. 25, no. 1, 2008, pp. 119–142. DOI: 10.1177/0265407507086809

Whiting, Jason B., Donna R. Smith, Tammy Barnett, and Erika L. Grafsky. “Overcoming the Cinderella Myth: A Mixed Methods Study of Successful Stepmothers.” Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, vol. 47, no. 1/2, 2007, pp. 95-109.

Cultural Event 1: Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation monthly meeting today

Today I (virtually) attended part of the Baltimore City CHAP meeting. I was running late from a previous meeting and then struggled to log in, so I missed the first 8 minutes and stayed later to make up for it. The entire hour and a half that I was in attendance, the discussion centered on BGE's claim that, to maximize safety, they have to install natural gas components outside historic homes, which seems to have only become the case within the past couple of months. This installation represents, at the very least, aesthetic and very possibly structural integrity problems for these homes. Speakers included the commissioners, community members, and BGE representatives. I found the community members more convincing than the BGE representatives; I was inevitably thinking of my own recent experiences with BGE as I made that assessment though.

On 6 Oct 2021, Verizon, without notifying anyone (including Miss Utility!) ahead of time, sent contractors to dig up our and our next-door neighbor's front yards to hook up service for someone ... around the corner? (At least, the contractors claimed that they worked for Verizon. Verizon later claimed that they had no record of having sent anyone to do that work and could not identify these workers.) In the process they hit the gas main and caused a gas leak in my front yard but didn't attempt to inform my family, who was mostly home at the time. The fire department quickly arrived, followed by BGE, who checked near our front door (for leaking gas?) with some kind of gauge, which I witnessed thanks to our Ring doorbell system. BGE also called Miss Utility to report the emergency dig they had to do after the leak. After we all left, BGE turned off our gas, requiring us to call them to arrange an inspection to get it turned back on, which we did. Later, BGE informed us that whatever they did to turn our gas back on that day was temporary. They were going to need to make another appointment with us for another visit out here to fully repair the damage.

On 12 Oct, BGE made their third trip to our home in a week to explain that the repair that they still need to do is actually replacing our entire gas line because the current one is too close to the surface. Also it runs oddly diagonally across our yard. This project will involve ripping up part of our street and our yard, although they promise that they will fix all of it eventually. They will leave the old line where it is, but they will no longer use it at that point.

However, when a company came to do landscaping repair on the yards, as BGE had promised, they told us that they had not been told to do anything in our yard. We called BGE, who sent someone to our house again, unannounced, while I was in between back-to-back meetings. Their argument was that the ticket they'd given to the repair company included our yard, and that ticket was marked completed, so the landscaping company must have repaired our yard.

... Not everyone understands logic.

Of course, if grass doesn't grow in the spring, we can call BGE, and they'll get it fixed then, right?

A larger concern is the fact that all the houses on our street were built by the same company around the same time (in 1972). Shouldn't one at least suspect that their gas lines were also too shallow and in need of replacement then? Or are they really going to only do what they saw they have to do and not even check everyone else's? It seems, unfortunately, that the latter is the case. No one else's lines were replaced while the street was ripped up -- just ours. We did deliver a note to all of our neighbors urging them to consider demanding that BGE inspect their gas lines too.

The important takeaway for me, however, was that BGE is indeed more concerned with minimizing costs than with any sort of responsibility to the communities they serve. That is why I found the community members more credible.

Of course, I did not stay long enough to learn the outcome of the discussion, and I couldn't quite read the commissioners during the meeting well enough to determine where they seemed to be leaning on this issue. I realized when I looked up the above link for CHAP that it is part of the Baltimore City government. Consequently, I have to wonder how well they serve their intended purpose and the community members who come before them. How much power to supersede BGE does this committee have? How do commissioners get these positions? And do they typically go way over the planned times for discussions? If so, what happens to the discussions they don't get to when the meeting finally ends? Is there a risk that that may happen next month, when the Sarah Ann Street homes are on the agenda?

The Politics of Community

The "professional" media representations of Poppleton just don't focus on the stories coming out of the people in Poppleton. They are always a sidebar or an afterthought, typically not even mentioned by name. The journalists never ask hard-hitting questions of the developers, such as whether the cost of their "low-income" units is comparable to what the people they've displaced were paying for their preexisting homes or where they are spending the public money they earn locally or how they masquerade as locals to enable their own profit. The reporters never push back when the developers even lie outright, such as when Dan Bythewood claimed that they had doubled (!) the number of low-income housing units in Baltimore.

The phrase "community in transition" reminds me of relevant readings we did in Dawn Biehler's Environmental Justice course last semester. Just hearing the phrase immediately makes wary the people likely impacted by any transition, and justifiably so. They will be understandably concerned that they retain what they need after any transition. Another meaning of "transition" is, after all, death.

Their concern is not cause to exclude them from the planning and the process, even though they may be reluctant. Rather, they must not only have a seat at the table but also a just share of the decision-making and change-making processes throughout. The Center West developers are not working with the existing Poppleton community at all.

As I indicated in class, in the public documents for the Save Our Block movement, I would like to see more emphasis on the issues. In addition to what I mentioned in class (reorganization and a bit of explicit articulation of the broader context of robbing Black families of community, stability, and generational wealth without in-kind replacement):

• I'd like us to add the word "redlining" to the timeline in the zine.
• I suggest we add a bit of emphasis to crucial words throughout so that they jump out at a reader just skimming the booklet.
• Perhaps we could add a few adjectives.
• I'd love to be able to do a bit of proofreading too.