Assignment 7: Definition of Family: How Many Brothers and Sisters Do You Have?

How many brothers and sisters do you have?  This seems like a very easy and straightforward question for anyone to answer, but for me, the answer is anything but simple.  The answer depends on how you define family, brothers and sisters.  You could say that my family tree is more like a bush, with lots of different shoots, roots and branches.

I was adopted when I was eight months old by my Minnesota parents.  My adoptive father and mother had been married about seven years when they traveled to Romania to adopt me.  My adoptive dad had been married before and has two sons by his first marriage which ended in divorce.  I am the only child of my adoptive parents’ marriage.  That means that I have two half-brothers, who are 26 and 24 years older than I am.  I have never lived in the same house with either of my half-brothers, both of whom now have families of their own, and I don’t really know them very well because they have both lived far away from us my whole life, and they rarely visit us.

But my brother/sister count doesn’t end there.  When my parents adopted me, they learned that my biological Romanian sister Elena was adopted a few months earlier by a family from Ireland.  When I was five, we traveled to Ireland, and I met her.  She is just 13 months older than I am.  Elena’s adoptive Irish family had one biological daughter, and when they adopted Elena, they also adopted a boy from Romania, Nicolae, at the same time.  He is not biologically related to Elena and me.  So, my Irish-Romanian sister has an Irish sister and a Irish-Romanian brother who are not at all related to me. 

Last summer my parents and I traveled to Romania to see the orphanage I lived in and to try to locate my birth parents.  We learned that my birth mother died about five years ago, but my biological father is still living.  Unfortunately, he was away from the village when we were there so I didn’t get to meet him.  But we learned that I have two Romanian brothers, one older than me, and one younger, as well as three more Romanian sisters I hadn’t known anything about until last summer.  That makes a total of two Romanian brothers and four Romanian sisters (including the Irish-Romanian one).  I got to meet Ian, my 20-year-old Romanian brother, and Angela, my 16-year-old Romanian sister with the help of Romanian social services. 

My older brother and (I think) my oldest sister grew up with my birth parents.  Beginning with my sister Elena, however, the rest of us were turned over to the state for our care because our parents were very poor and had no circumstances to take care of us.  Elena and I got adopted, although not together.  Ian has lived in orphanages and group homes all of his life, and he will soon go off on his own to earn his living working in agriculture or forestry.  My little sister Angela lived at first in the orphanage, but she has lived most of her 16 years in foster homes.  When I met her this summer, she had quite recently been moved to a new foster family, and that is where I met her.  Her foster mother was taking care of her and another foster child.  My youngest Romanian sister Danielle is also in foster care. I didn't get to meet her.

But I am still not quite done with the sibling count.  In my birth parents’ village, we learned that after my birth mother died, my father sired another daughter who is now about three years old.  She is my half-sister.  I didn’t meet her and don’t know her name.  This young girl was left in the care of a relative, perhaps an aunt, who asked my adoptive parents to try to find a family to adopt her in the United States because the aunt doesn’t want to take care of her any longer.  I guess my birth father is not interested in providing for her care either.  She will likely be turned over to the Romanian foster care system soon because it is difficult, if not impossible, for Americans to adopt children from Romania now.  It occurs to me that I might have other half brothers or sisters in Romania as well.

So here is my grand total sibling count:  two U.S. half brothers; one Irish-Romanian sister (who has a brother and sister of her own); two Romanian brothers; three Romanian sisters; and at least one Romanian half-sister.

And here is the irony:  While my grand total makes it appear that I am rich in brothers and sisters, I am effectively an only child.  I have been raised apart from each and every one of my nine siblings and half-siblings listed above.  I really don't know any of them very well.  In addition, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, none of my siblings or half-siblings count as members of my family for any governmental purpose.  According to the Census, a family is “two or more persons including the householder, who are related by birth, marriage, or adoption, and who live together as one household” (Newman, p. 195).  That means that my census family consists only of my adoptive dad, my adoptive mom, and me.  The three of us are also a “household,” according to the Census. 

Newman says that according to the government’s definition of families, over 40% of U.S. households are not families because they consist of people living together who do not meet the narrow definition of familial relationships (p. 195).  My situation is different.  I have all sorts of siblings related to me by birth, marriage or adoption who do not live in my household, so they aren’t considered to be my family under the government’s definition.  Newman also says that “of all the groups we belong to, family is usually the most significant” (p. 194). That's because they provide us with a personal history and with much of our identity.  Newman also says that “family is one of the main social institution that addresses not only our personal needs but also the fundamental needs of society” (p. 194).  From that perspective, I suppose that perhaps the Census definition has it right in my case, for the most part, as it is my adoptive parents that have consistently addressed my personal needs and the fundamental needs of society to provide for my upbringing.  But it is nice to know that all these other siblings and half-siblings of mine who are also part of my personal history by birth, marriage and adoption also exist.  Although they are not a part of my day-to-day life, they are a part of me.

And by the way, if anyone has any idea how to draw all of this on a family tree, please let me know!  Here are a couple of ideas I found for this while surfing the net: