Offspring

[Beskar]

Blood doesn't matter. Afterall, you don't marry Family members since you can only love them, right?

You can and do form bonds with people who do not share the same genetic material. I even have friends who I love more than family members. I even thought my step-fathers family was closer then my fathers side, I loved them as I loved my aunts/uncles, etc. Even called his mother "Nana". It simply depends on the environment the kids are raised.

It was when I ended up hitting around 16-17 is when this changed. It seems it was far easier to be accepted when I was a child, but later on, these arguments came in, I wasn't a "real family member". Then members of my step-fathers family, people who I accepted as if they were 'blood' were distant and cold about it, and that was terribly heartbreaking to simply end up rejected so majorly.

So fostering and adoption.. it really is taking on a child and raising them as your own, it is the joys of having that close relationship with some one and it is perfectly viable and possible. In a way, it is like owning a pet. Pet's become "members of the family" and they are an entirely different species!

So I offer to help my sisters kid with his skiing, but I don't extend the favour to the two other kids. This caused an emotional uproar in that family, and I felt like an absolute ****. But hey, at the end of the day, I have to stick to my beliefs.

I put it this way. Imagine that family together, then you simply take that one kid out of the three and they get to go Skiing, etc. How do you make the other children feel? Jealous? Rejected? They are no longer with their mother and you felt the need to rub it in, because they are not blood. It is perfectly possible for you to be an uncle to them, they might even end up viewing you as their favourite and you having a healthy relationship with them.

Want my honest opinion? Is it just your sisters son with her and her husband, or the three of them? if it is just him, then you can do just him sort of guilt free. If it is the three of them, then you should take all three.

Where I come from, genetics are extremely important in deciding a child's future. Sure, environment has a big impact, say.... roughly half or so? But environmental factors is not A-Z in deciding factors here, is it?

No, 90% of it is environment, 10% is genetics.