noticing that "stepdad" & "stepmom" seem to refer specifically to someone your parent married while you were still a kid & living with them. it's a role. my parents split when I was ~25 and eg mom's new guy is just "mom's partner". wouldn't *occur* to me to call him "stepdad"
What "step-" actually means in family roles
6 tweets · December 2022 · 53 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
and yet, when I have kids, he *will* be a (step-)grandfather to them! because my kids will always have known him in that role. interestingly, since he doesn't have kids of his own, this will kind of make him a grandfather without him ever having been a father!
tbh, the sense in which he'll be "step" seems minimal. sure, he's not their bio gdad, but since there's nobody else who's ever been in the "grandmother's husband" role from the gkids view, he's no less a real gdad than any dad to an adoptive or surrogate kid is 🤔
like the meaning of "step-" is functionally something like "instead of" (etymologically it seems like "step-" relates specifically to the *loss* of the original parent—initially in the context of orphanhood... which again, doesn't apply to grandkids in this situation!)
incidentally, in my family, we have different names for each grandparent, chosen from things like "grandad", "grandpa", "pop", "opa" and mom's partner will have such a name as well. as, most likely, will my dad's partner, tho they're not married & she might just go by her name
the observation in the first tweet above seemed sort of absurdly obvious, but eg wikipedia doesn't make this distinction. it just says: > A stepfather or stepdad is a non-biological male parent married to one's preexisting parent.